Anatomy of Torture

Remove all ads!

This is part of a story I read this morning:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201941.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

I won't editorialize on this story myself. I am literally at a loss for words. I would very much like to hear what others here think and feel about this story. But I would please ask in advance that the responses be civil and constructive.

 

That "Hotel Guantanamo" things sounds...interesting.

Anyway as Tal said there is not much to say. Seen it before and it comes hardly as a big surprise. War is hell and war on terror seems to be even worse.

 

You can't catch the pigs without wallowing in the pig **** I guess...

 

Where does Google come up with this stuff??

Graphic, but apt...

 

Irrespective of a "this happens in war" attitude, it's a breach of a duty of care. I'm with Chandos on this one; utterly speechless.

I know I've never shirked away from suggesting that aggressive interrogation is sometimes a valid option, this is sadism, not interrogation. The people responsible for letting this happen (as well as those involved) are negligent at best, and more likely, accessories to murder. That they attempted to whitewash the death and its cause so clinically is enough to make me ill.

"Coroner, what was the official cause of death?"
"Asphixia, caused by - "
"Thank you, that will be sufficient."

If your own representatives aren't willing to have their conduct examined when a man has died in their care, they're either paranoid, secretive or they have something to hide. With the sort of powers they have, none of those are desirable. If you're going to give someone - anyone - that kind of power, they need to be accountable and transparent, not a law unto themselves.

 

These soldiers are thugs and murderers...no other explaination for it...no way to justify.

Hopefully those responsible will be held accountable and brought to justice.

 

My, has that report thoroughly ruined my mood when I read through it yesterday. And I dont trust my temper enough to have another look at it.

There is only one constructive comment that comes to mind with this savage affair: US torture is made a topic by an US citizen - without the usual trite justifications making it even worse. My opinion, mind you.
Personally, I find that to be very encouraging, very respectable.

 

They will not be held accountable, but get a mere slap on their collective wrists. That's a long-standing American tradition and not going to change only because of Iraq, and certainly not under Bush II.

 

Weeell... I hope you're wrong, since the cat is so obviously among the pigeons now.

 

I disagree. It's not a long standing tradition, but a result of how things have become, living in a post 9/11 world. Before then this would have been unthinkable. America has, for the most part, stood for the Rule of Law. After WWII the Nazi war criminals, and this man may very well have been a war criminal, were brought before the Law, at Nuremberg. Even Adolf Eichman received a trial, though I don't think it was at Nuremberg. Nevertheless, it proved that we were better than our enemies; that we were different.

Now our enemies are beaten to death in shadowy cells. They are not brought before the law, so that all mankind may be a witness to what is done. And then their actions are covered up, and shameless lies are given so that the truth won't be known. I've never stopped believing in the innate goodness of the American people. If more Americans speak out, without the fear of being labled unpatriotic, things will change - they have to.

 

But Chandos, there has to be some grounds to bring them before the courts, and if they won't talk, then you have nothing to go on. Then the court can't convict them in a fair trial because you can't show what they supposedly did...

 

Heh... trust me, Gnarf, they don't really need that as a justification to mistreat people, or even enough evidence to establish guilt:

Surrendering the right to a fair trial

Hicks' trial fails test: military lawyers

Milosevic trial 'fairer than Hicks would get'

But hey, don't just take my word for it:

Hicks facing rigged trial, say ex-prosecutors

US policy on suspects illegal, says FBI memo

As a successful (and crooked) politician from Australia once said, never announce an inquiry unless you already know what it's going to say. It seems the same principle applies here.

When your own military prosecutors are saying that there is a gross legal contempt for the treatment of a civilian from an Allied nation (and I should add, about the only one facing trial), there is cause for concern about the attitudes of military personnel. I hardly think they give a damn about how they treat a captured enemy combatant, or what the effects of their "tactical interrogations" (great euphemism, that) may be. While I would never rule out torture absolutely, the reasons for using it must be clear, and accountability placed upon its practitioners. When a man is dies in custody from internal injuries consistent with a beating, there is a case to be answered.

Leaving aside the issue of trials, there is a duty of care that has obviously been breached in this case, and which is being dismissed in a chillingly cavalier fashion. After Abu Ghraib, this might not come as a surprise, but that is not a good reason for a lack of indignation about it. For me, the issue is not only the treatment of the prisoner, but the frighteningly amoral and almost banal stance being adopted in response to it. People who can effectively beat a man to death and then just pretend it was from unrelated breathing troubles are not the type I would want in charge of protecting me.

 

Chandos,
that changed somehow after WW-II and in parts even earlier. There were very little war crimes convictions when U.S. troops comitted atrocities. In the various wars the U.S. fought they always had some here and there along the way.

When I look at the Tiger Force story for instance, My Lai pales in comparison, but where's the trial?

I agree that America as a nation stands for a nation under the rule of law, one of it's most admirable features.

But that rule applies only to a degree to the military that has it's own judges and own courts behind closed doors. As the saying goes in Germany, one crow isn't going to scratch out another crow's eye. The problem is implicit.

 

Chandos, no offences here and it is laudable to give nazis a trial before wacking em but it really isnt a very good example of the rule of law. It is an example of the victor demonising and punishing the defeated. I am convinced that the Nazis would have done pretty much the same to British and American officials and officers as well if they had won the war. (This doesnt mean that the nazis didnt deserve to be prosecuted.)

 

Joa,
you're right on target with your criticism.

Ever since we dealt with the Nuremberg tribunal in law for the first time, I didn't really feel comfortable over it. The result was IMO right in the end, but the conditions under which the court was set up were anything else but legally bulletproof, and continue to give me a bad feeling

Some of the punished behaviour - how despicable however, was not legally condemned at the time of conduct - which conflicts with the fundamental legal principle 'nulla poena sine lege'.
If there is no law criminalising your act at the time of the act, one made up after the deed can't justify punishing you. That would 'open the floodgates' to arbitrariness.
For that simple reason alone a number of sentences against Wehrmacht officers by Allied Military tribunals were quashed by German courts after Germany regained a degree of sovereignty.

And that's just the start. What about that you have to know the court and judge that punishes you, to prevent arbitrary special courts set up to punish you? I could go on.

Nuremberg argued first of all morally, clad in legal lingo. It created new standards of conduct, that much for sure, and in principle these standards were a great achievement IMO - but that can't help me over my problems with how that court was set up.

For illegally invading Iraq, Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney and the whole lot would need to be hanged by Nuremberg standards - too, that is.

When you look at today: Nuremberg went that far that the current U.S. administration seems to prefer to ignore the standards it set to go back to the ages of before 1918, when there was a right to go to war for every country, and no accountability whatsoever for the actions of the nations, that is, as long as they are the U.S.

[ August 05, 2005, 18:47: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Sorry, IMO, this is not at all "on target." I'm surprised, given the magnitude of the crimes, that anyone would believe that the Allies needed to "demonize" the defeated. That had already been accomplished to a great extent by the actions of the defeated. While some believe that Nuremberg was just the victors abusing the defeated, a lot of evidence was brought before the world in a legal and systematic method. I did not want to get off the topic by arguing about Nuremberg. I only wished to illustrate that if these men of Saddam's regime are guitly of crimes, then they should be charged in a legal and systematic method for their crimes.

[ August 06, 2005, 06:17: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

Don't get me wrong Chandos. It isn't that the crimes weren't comitted, and that presentation in court was in itself unfair. There was no doubt that the accused have in way or another comitted crimes. And it wasn't pure revenge. It isn't neccesary to state that scum like Kaltenbrunner by getting a trial got better than he may have deserved.

Nuremberg wasn't free of problems. There was this moment when the Brits wanted to accuse Dönitz of a warcrime for his U-Boat war - and that that specific charge was dropped because of his attorney pointing out that the allieds did just that to Japan in their naval blockade. Oops.
The situation duplicated when Göring was initially accused for burning down Rotterdam and other cities. Enthusiasm for that cooled down when the allieds realised that had people like Curtis LeMay and a Bomber Harris in their armies, who did just that, and more 'successful'.
In the end they were a little more broad and let "violations of the laws of war" be good enough. These generally broad terms of some of the crimes where problematic, and left much room for interpretation.

When the Allieds accused some German of attacking Poland in a war of agression, his attorney pointed out this tiny little bit dubbed 'Hitler-Stalin-Pact' to the russian judge. The party of a co-conspirator was playing the judge. Very embarassing for Russia.

The justice was selective -- that being another crucial problem of Nuremberg, even though, Russia aside, Allied war crimes didn't go nearly as far as what the Nazis did.

As far as demonising is concerned, the Allieds weren't entirely free of that: The industrial Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was accused of helping the war effort in Nuremberg, and he was accused mainly for being an icon on the german arms industry - despite having spent the last years of the war in the KZ Flossenbrück for opposing it. He got a mild sentence, but still.

Despite such shortcomings - in a procedural way in the trials were generally ok, and that compensated for some of the greater shortcomings.

Same for the Eichmann trial. While offing good proceedings the jurisdiction of the court, established after the crime is legally somewhat questionable, and the abduction of an accused even more so - despite that I think the verdict was generally correct.

In a way the U.S. avoid that in the trial against Saddam who underwent this process of demonisation from trusted ally to loathed enemy number one. They avoided the pitfalls of an international trial against him and sent it to an Iraqi court - who will face the same obstacles: There were no laws outlawing saddam's actions in Iraq, because Saddam wrote laws to allow what he wanted to do. So sentence him based on what? Iraqi laws? Nuremberg standards?

The ICC would have adressed many of these problems, but was opposed by the U.S. in principle. How ironic.

Insofar the opposition of the current U.S. administratrion, and here I will return to topic, to war crimes tribunals only consequent. These tribunals had significant impact, and the U.S refuse their jurisdiction to escape the 'stench' of being sentenced there.

The killing of that general was not only a result of brutal torture, he was murdered while in U.S. captivity. I just cannot see anything like a murder verdict for those goons.

It will be involuntary manslaughter at best, despite the fact that this poor guy went through an well thought out and organised ordeal at the hands of U.S. authorities.

Hey, let's talk about 4 years and dishonourable discharge, for those who had him last. What about command responsibility? Forget about it. It will not include the officers, they will pass the buck down the chain of command. And then: The OGAs and their U.S. controlled Iraqi death squad are out of reach anyway.

The culprits will get away, just like the culprits of the Tiger Force massacres in Vietnam got away. So simple. U.S. administrations won't spoil their image and self-image by producing sentenced war criminals by themselves.

That is selective justice, which is in my opinion the worst abuse of justice, because it creates an illusion of justice where in fact there is injustice.

Justice and verdicts have a strong moral dimension, that is especially so with the label 'war criminal'. Using this power selectively, you do demonise.

[ August 06, 2005, 17:52: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Chandos, my point wasnt that Nuremberg was wrong, just that it isnt a very good example of the rule of law.

As you say, the Nazis committed enough crimes that they had done their demonising themselves, however, what better way to get people to fully know about them than a trial?

When it comes to law, especially international law war crimes every country is extremely keen that all other countries follow it but dont think it should apply to themselves. If they have enough power it wont either. This is why you ever will only see losers of war on trial in Haag and such, they are at the mercy of the victor. The US is the prime example of this, one set of laws for them and another for everyone else.

 

Oh, yes. That's very true. But nations are, afterall, self-serving entities. There's not even a pretense here that there is a rule of law to follow. It is the "end justifies the means," which is total disregard for principle, if true.

[ August 07, 2005, 06:22: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]