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The New York Times
Opinion
The Torture Sessions
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com from the Web. April 20, 2008
Ever since Americans learned that
American soldiers and intelligence agents were torturing prisoners, there has
been a disturbing question: How high up did the decision go to ignore
United States law, international treaties, the Geneva Conventions and basic
morality?
The answer, we have learned recently, is that — with President Bush’s clear
knowledge and support — some of the very highest officials in the land not only
approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of
harsh interrogations and helped to create a legal structure to shield from
justice those who followed the orders.
We have long known that the Justice Department tortured the law to give its
Orwellian blessing to torturing people, and that Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld approved a list of ways to abuse prisoners. But recent accounts
by ABC News and The Associated Press said that all of the president’s top
national security advisers at the time participated in creating the
interrogation policy: Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Rumsfeld;
Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Colin Powell, the secretary of
state; John Ashcroft, the attorney general; and George Tenet, the director of
central intelligence.
These officials did not have the time or the foresight to plan for the aftermath
of the invasion of Iraq or the tenacity to complete the hunt for Osama bin
Laden. But they managed to squeeze in dozens of meetings in the White
House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to prisoner abuse,
including brutal methods that civilized nations consider to be torture.
Mr. Bush told ABC News this month that he knew of these meetings and approved of
the result.
Those who have followed the story of the administration’s policies on prisoners
may not be shocked. We have read the memos from the Justice Department
redefining torture, claiming that Mr. Bush did not have to follow the law, and
offering a blueprint for avoiding criminal liability for abusing prisoners.
The amount of time and energy devoted to this furtive exercise at the very
highest levels of the government reminded us how little Americans know, in fact,
about the ways Mr. Bush and his team undermined, subverted and broke the law in
the name of saving the American way of life.
We have questions to ask, in particular, about the involvement of Ms. Rice, who
has managed to escape blame for the catastrophic decisions made while she was
Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, and Mr. Powell, a career Army officer who
should know that torture has little value as an interrogation method and puts
captured Americans at much greater risk. Did they raise objections or warn
of the disastrous effect on America’s standing in the world? Did anyone?
Mr. Bush has sidestepped or quashed every attempt to uncover the breadth and
depth of his sordid actions. Congress is likely to endorse a cover-up of
the extent of the illegal wiretapping he authorized after 9/11, and we are still
waiting, with diminishing hopes, for a long-promised report on what the Bush
team really knew before the Iraq invasion about those absent weapons of mass
destruction — as opposed to what it proclaimed.
At this point it seems that getting answers will have to wait, at least, for a
new Congress and a new president. Ideally, there would be both truth and
accountability. At the very minimum the public needs the full truth.
Some will call this a backward-looking distraction, but only by fully
understanding what Mr. Bush has done over eight years to distort the rule of law
and violate civil liberties and human rights can Americans ever hope to repair
the damage and ensure it does not happen again.
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