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Rights and Liberties

How Torture Became Mainstream

By Alfred W. McCoy, Amnesty International. Posted May 23, 2006.


The once-clandestine practice of torture is now an official weapon in the War on Terror.
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Just before Christmas last, President Bush and Senator John McCain appeared in the Oval Office to announce an historic ban on torture by any U.S. agency, anywhere in the world. Looking straight into the cameras, the president declared with a steely gaze that this landmark legislation would make it "clear to the world that this government does not torture."

This meeting was the culmination of a tangled legislative battle that had started six months before when Senator John McCain introduced an amendment to the must-pass Defense Appropriation Bill, calling for an absolute ban on "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment. The White House fought back hard, sending Vice President Cheney to Capitol Hill for a wrecking effort so sustained, so determined that a Washington Post editorial branded him "The Vice President for Torture." At first, Cheney demanded that the amendment be dropped. The senator refused. Next, Cheney insisted on an exemption for the CIA. The senator stood his ground. Then, in a startling rebuke to the White House, the Senate passed the amendment last October by a 90-9 margin, a victory celebrated by Amnesty International and other rights groups. With the White House still threatening a veto, the appropriation gridlocked in an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff.

Then came that dramatic December 15th handshake between Bush and McCain, a veritable media mirage that concealed furious back-room maneuvering by the White House to undercut the amendment. A coalition of rights groups, including Amnesty International, had resisted the executive's effort to punch loopholes in the torture ban but, in the end, the White House prevailed. With the help of key senate conservatives, the Bush administration succeeded in twisting what began as an unequivocal ban on torture into a legitimization of three controversial legal doctrines that the administration had originally used to justify torture right after 9/11.

In an apparent compromise gesture, McCain himself inserted the first major loophole: a legal defense for accused CIA interrogators that echoes the administration's notorious August 2002 torture memo allowing any agents criminally charged to claim that they "did not know that the practices were unlawful."

Next, the administration effectively neutralized the McCain ban with Senator Lindsey Graham's amendment stipulating that Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot invoke U.S. law to challenge their imprisonment. Complaining that detainees were filing trivial lawsuits over the quality of their food, Graham's amendment thereby attempted to nullify the Supreme Court decision in Rasul v. Bush that had allowed detainees to pursue habeas corpus appeals in U.S. courts. In sum, McCain's original amendment banned torture, but Graham's later amendment , as finally approved by the Senate, removed any means for enforcement. For a mess of bipartisan pottage, Congress thus bartered away this nation's constitutional birthright of habeas corpus, a foundational legal protection born, ironically, of the British Parliament's long struggle to ban royal torture writs by the infamous Court of Star Chamber.

For the final loophole, on December 30 President Bush issued a "signing statement" insisting that his powers as commander-in-chief and head of the "unitary executive branch" still allowed him to do whatever is necessary to defend America--the same key controversial doctrine the administration had first used to allow torture. Instead of marking closure to the Abu Ghraib scandal, the McCain torture ban has thus sparked a renewed campaign by human-rights advocates to end the use of torture in Washington's War on Terror--an effort that may well prove to be a long, uphill battle.

Only days after Bush signed the legislation containing the McCain amendment, the White House used a portion of the new law, now called the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, to quash any judicial oversight of its actions. On January 3 the Justice Department notified federal judges that it would seek the immediate dismissal of all 160 habeas corpus cases filed by Guantanamo detainees. One week later, the U.S. Solicitor General, citing this law, told the Supreme Court it no longer had jurisdiction over Guantanamo and asked the justices to dismiss the potential landmark "unlawful combatant" case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In late March, when the court began to hear oral arguments in this critical test case of U.S. military tribunals, several justices appeared to reject the solicitor general's argument after vigorously questioning him.


Digg!

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of several books, including the recently published "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror," "Closer Than Brothers" and "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade."

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View:
evil
Posted by: rsaxto on May 24, 2006 5:01 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
An administration that cannot see the evil in torture is an administration which is itself deeply evil. No wonder their entire tenure in power has been marked by failure piled upon failure. We've got to get these monsters out of office soon else the entire planet will be consumed by wickedness.

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Bush and Ethics
Posted by: kgs1947 on May 24, 2006 5:09 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Bush has no ethical standards that he lives by or by which he "guides" this country. He is a man unto himself and responsible only to himself. His cronies, like lemmings, follow his marching orders. He depends on lies, secrets, demoralization of individuals and peoples, and his sociopathic demands to control people, places, and things to get his way. He certainly is not in recovery from alcoholism, but is a sad reminder of how demented the addict's thinking can become. And the country's people applause him. What does that say about this country's future "leadership"? I wonder what kind of a mother he had? This gives pause to wonder also about the quality of parent's parenting skills. Why did he turn to alcohol in the first place? He's living out his addiction in prime time now.

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» RE: Bush and Ethics Posted by: VZEQICVA
Installing Nazis in power always brings torture
Posted by: xbj on May 24, 2006 5:47 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Why the surprise?

Torture became mainstream because a corrupt "Supreme" Court installed Nazis in full public power of the US.

Not German anti-Jewish Nazis, but home-grown American pro-Israeli Government Nazis.

Torture also became inevitable when GOPNazi companies like Diebold and ES&S starting "delivering" the vote to the GOP. Now we have a one party system, where the so-called "opposing" party is deathly afraid of losing their office in the next election, even though all polls will run contrary.

Already we've had two elections where results ran completely contrary to the actual "vote" "count", and a complicit press rubber stamped the result.

You lie down with Nazis, you get up a torturer, covered in innocent blood from head to toe. That's if you get up at all.

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» Nazis? Maybe so. Posted by: Citizendeane
Shama
Posted by: Shama on May 24, 2006 7:24 AM   
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The Return of Tortured Souls
We are bombarded with increasing numbers of articles about torture camps and prisons being run by President George Bush and his staff , but Americans appear to remain in a collective state of amnesia. Morally we know it is wrong, but we don’t seem to make any connection as to how this effects us at home. Consider that the military stresses that they are shaping or developing the character of young men. We should question how training thousands of our young men as military police in the techniques of physical and psychological torture develops character. We all hope that our young men come home safely, but the young men in the military police will return home injured souls. The military will not de-program these young men. They return not only with the techniques of torture, but with the belief that torture is acceptable. This belief will be a burden to them and to our society through out their lives, think of them as your local police officer or your child’s teacher

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Torture - is, was, and always will be.
Posted by: symcokid on May 24, 2006 8:40 AM   
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Torture was never secret to those who were victims of atrocious acts of coercive tactics. It remains an integral ploy since the initial invasion of this Native Indian's Homeland. The blatant thievery, plundering, and annihilation was always justified under the guise of "Treaties", as it was implied to be a mutually, acceptable, and congenial agreement.

Torture is still denied and doesn't appear in the forefront until it is captured on video, then the perpetratrators are exposed. Torture has become manistream today because it is recorded for the entire world to view. Realistically, this "War strategem" always has been and remains an integral aspect of the US government policy of propaganda and misinformation in it's quest to dominate the World.

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Alert: Abu Ghraib
Posted by: mebadgett on May 25, 2006 12:28 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The Former Head of Abu Ghraib, Admits She Broke the Geneva Conventions: http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/9102

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I think...
Posted by: adp3d on May 25, 2006 1:01 AM   
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...that McCain was all but handed first dibs on the Republican nomination for Prez and that he sold his soul to Rove and Co.

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To Bush and cronies:
Posted by: johnecolby on May 25, 2006 6:08 PM   
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I don't want your f**king torture state!

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Posted by: oscarmil on Jan 10, 2007 1:22 AM   
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