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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004, 02:51 pm
Executive ORDER for torture???

What kind of "Christian" do we have in the Presidential office who not only overlooks ongoing torture, but indeed ordered it? You can claim to be on God's side all you want, but if you're going to profess to be a Christian, shouldn't you follow the rules your God has laid down, in stone no less?

The ACLU had to file a lawsuit to obtain these documents, as the government "failed" to respond to their Freedom of Information Act for them.

To quote the ACLU's press release:

NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

"These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."

...

Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."

The document also says that no "intelligence of a threat neutralization nature" was garnered by the "FBI" interrogation, and that the FBI's Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) believes that the Defense Department's actions have destroyed any chance of prosecuting the detainee. The e-mail's author writes that he or she is documenting the incident "in order to protect the FBI."

"The methods that the Defense Department has adopted are illegal, immoral, and counterproductive," said ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer. "It is astounding that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by the highest levels of government."

...
* Another FBI agent's account of interrogations at Guantanamo in which detainees were shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. The agent states that the detainees were kept in that position for 18 to 24 hours at a time and most had "urinated or defacated [sic]" on themselves. On one occasion, the agent reports having seen a detainee left in an unventilated, non-air conditioned room at a temperature "probably well over a hundred degrees." The agent notes: "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night." (Aug. 2, 2004)</b>

I've archived a set of the documents: ACLU FOIA archive on torture.

What kind of animals have we become? Not just those perpetrating these horrendous acts of torture, not just those condoning it, not even just Bush ordering it -- but us. We're sitting here.

I just sent an email too McCain, in the hope that his unfortunate experiences as a POW himself, and his position in the Republican party, could provide a voice of reason from within the GOP. Read on for the text of the letter...

Senator McCain,

I have always respected your independent view as a traditional conservative, and your impressive history of service to our country.

I am very interested in your feelings on the recent ACLU discovery of possible executive orders authorizing the use of inhumane torture against our POWs (http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17216&c=206), and the ongoing support of not abiding by the Geneva Conventions as seen in Bush's pending appointment of Gonzales to the Secretary of State?

It seems to me that when the US, the strongest (by far) military power in the world, and (formerly, at least) respected Democracy, is using methods of torture against captives in extra-judicial settings, we have absolutely no moral ground to stand on when we request or even expect humane treatment of our soldiers and American POWs by their captors.

I beg of you, as a prominent Republican, to try and persuade your fellow congressmen and women to come out against the use of such inhumane treatment of our captives, for the sake of common moral decency if not for the sake of our current and future American POWs.

I am sure you, having been the victim of torture as a POW, understand this issue in a way I hope to never know.

Signed,

Current Mood: outraged
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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004 09:03 pm (UTC)
[info]inhumandecency

Where does God forbid the use of torture, or otherwise articulate rules about treatment of enemies during wartime? Note that the Ten Commandments prohibit murder, not killing in general. And the Old Testament Hebrew definition of murder is probably also more lax than ours.

I'd also say that if you're going to argue about how Bush should interpret his own moral principles, you also have to grant him his own (avowed) interpretation of the situation: that our military is acting against people who are currently and directly attempting to kill us and will not stop. To my knowledge it takes a bit of a stretch to apply any of Jesus's ethics to that, unless you interpret his teachings as advocating radical and potentially suicidal pacifism. I honestly wouldn't want a president who was christlike in exactly that way...
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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004 09:08 pm (UTC)
[info]griffjon

Fine. I should perhaps fix or remove my argument about Xtian morality.

Doesn't change the fact much that our president appears to have issued an order to torture prisoners.

This, btw, is easily grounds for impeachment, I might add, by way of the fact that Congress ratified the Geneva Conventions and hasn't since nullified it.
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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004 09:26 pm (UTC)
[info]inhumandecency

I do think it's important that we properly understand Christianity and what it says before bashing believers (I think this is an attainable goal in the short-term, while I'm not sure whether I'll ever be able to understand Christian Fundamentalists). On the other hand, I probably decided to snark because it was less terrifying than trying to deal with the main point of the post.
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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004 09:15 pm (UTC)
[info]griffjon

Well, google rules the day:

# Jesus proclaims liberty to the captives and freedom to the oppressed, and lists concern for the prisoner among the issues for judgement (Matthew 25:35-40).
# We should be concerned about the conditions in which prisoners are held and the treatement they receive (Hebrews 13:3).
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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004 09:32 pm (UTC)
[info]inhumandecency

I wouldn't want to draw inferences from those without an understanding of what being in prison meant in the original context. Did prisoners of war even exist? But in any case, I think the Bush administration understands that people don't think it's right to torture prisoners, or even prisoners of war. That's why they're trying so hard to upgrade these people to "enemy combatants" and thence to terrorists, and why they move the (explicit) focus from punitive torture to interrogative torture.

Honestly, I'd rather not argue about the morality of torturing someone who plausibly has information on terrorist plans, and shift the focus to the arbitrariness and pointlessness of a lot of the torture being done here.
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Tue, Dec. 21st, 2004 09:40 pm (UTC)
[info]griffjon

If the neocons can take Biblical passages out of context, so can we. I refuse to fight with gloves on against people wearing brass knuckles.

If we want to get into a "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas style discussion, that's fine, but let's not let it deter us from the plain fact that torture (punitive or interrogative) is illegal under a treaty that we have ratified, and very, very questionable as a moral practice, regardless of the information you hope to gather, or that most of the victims are Iraqis, who have never launched any attack at America. These are not the "terrorists" we're looking for.
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Wed, Dec. 22nd, 2004 01:03 am (UTC)
[info]inhumandecency

My point is not to be appropriately nice to the people who directly ordered the torture. They don't give a crap what we think and will never hear what we have to say anyway. My point is to find a way to talk to the people who vote for them that doesn't involve offending their faith or going in blazing with accusations so harsh that they'd rather go off-line than listen to you.

You're right, the leaders they support use the tactics of ignoring our values and making harsh, unfounded attacks against us. And how many of us has that convinced?

If your answer is "a lot," then okay. What you say is the right thing.
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Wed, Dec. 22nd, 2004 01:09 am (UTC)
[info]griffjon

True, I don't mean to be attacking the xtian faith, just bush's use of it for political gain, without upholding its tenets.

You do have to admit, tho, that the neocon tactics worked pretty well this year.
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Wed, Dec. 22nd, 2004 01:15 am (UTC)
[info]inhumandecency

On second thought, you're right. We don't really need to untangle the official arguments to raise up some good moral outrage among all decent people. This is obviously beyond the pale, if we can just get them into that frame of mind.
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