Covering Your Tracks
Today, President Bush signed an executive order banning cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of terror suspects.
In it, sexual acts and attacks on religious beliefs are specifically mentioned, and for good reason. The United States has been guilty of both in the past with regards to detainees. At Abu Ghraib an Iraqi woman was raped by an American soldier, an act that was caught on film though never released to the public, and an Iraqi father and son were also made to perform explicit sexual acts. It is also know that the Qur’an has been desecrated by US personnel in the past.
The practice of water boarding, which the United States has denied the use of despite various accounts by those that have since been released from custody, still remains undefined as being an act of torture, despite the fact that it has been used as such for centuries. In fact, the order states that interrogation tactics must be “determined safe on an individual basis”, an ambiguity that provides ample latitude.
In response to the order, the director of Physicians for Human Rights, Leonard Rubenstein, told the AP…
“What is needed now is repudiation of brutal and cruel interrogation methods. General statements like this are inadequate, particularly after years of evidence that torture was authorised at the highest levels and utilised by US forces.”
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July 20th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Link to CNN.com’s article on the executive order:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/20/bush.terrorism.ap/index.html
From that article, here’s what CNN wrote about the order:
“The White House did not detail what types of interrogation procedures would be allowed. But it did offer parameters, saying any conditions of confinement and interrogation practices could not include:
Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation and cruel or inhuman treatment.
Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would “deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation.”
To me, that seems, seems mind you, clearly defined. But I am not a lawyer.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Ah crap. Just looked into water boarding. I guess psychological torture wasn’t mentioned in the order…
July 20th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Matt, check this out too… If you criticize Iraq now… it allows the President to seize the property of any person who undermines efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html
July 20th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
’bout time he did something about it. Not that they should be over there to begin with. For an American soldier to torture a Middle Eastern soldier is like a Nazi soldier torturing someone of the Jewish religion.
July 20th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Rudy Giuliani thinks water-boarding is fun!
July 20th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Here’s another article on the executive order: link.
July 20th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Moonlight Graham, I figure Rudy Giuliani is just jealous that he didn’t think of water boarding hoodlums back when he was mayor instead of just SWATing them to death.
Personally, I read that executive order as more of a campaign strategy than a policy adjustment. The loopholes in it’s wording, from the sources I’ve reviewed, are large enough to let quite alot of flack through. Certainly the nonsense that the order condemns is necessary and, frankly, embarassingly overdue, but it’s still only a U.S. law: Let us recall that those no longer actually matter to the executive branch, Joint Chiefs, CIA, State Department or the Republican Party. It’s only torture, after all, if someone hears about it.
July 20th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Bush probably just thinks water boarding is some type of sport.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
It doesn’t matter what documents the Bush admin puts into play at this point- if anyone who has been paying attention thinks they’ll ever change their strategy, they’re not paying attention. Mere months after Bush went into office the “course” had been set, and there’s been no deviation for however many years since then. Until those people are impeached (which should’a been done years ago) there will be no change. “Executive Orders” like these are about as effective in reality as Jr. High School diplomas, or “Participation” certificates make you a better person.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
“banning cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of terror suspects.”
there’s no truth in that statement.
“cruel”, “inhumane”, “degrading treatment”, and “terrorists” is all a matter of opinion of what is a “valid degree”.
July 21st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
[quote comment="20271"]To me, that seems, seems mind you, clearly defined. But I am not a lawyer.[/quote]
It’s “clearly” defined. If you read how it’s written, there is much wiggle room that shouldn’t necessarily be there. Keep in mind, this is the government that often debates what “torture” means, and the “valid degree” clause has my hackles up.
July 21st, 2007 at 8:39 pm
The Bush Administration also seems to lazily rely on torture to get information without contemplating the fact that more effective alternatives exist. Where is the focus on improving military investigation units, and improving interrogation techniques from a more tactical perspective (such as proven questioning techniques police often use to catch out suspects in lies and to coax them into volunteering information)?.
Research has proven that information obtained by torture is highly vulnerable to inacurracy. People make all sorts of wild claims and confessions when under physical and mental duress, and the fact they are being tortured builds resentment toward their captors and thus a greater likelihood they will deliberately sabotage them by supplying false information. And when prisoners have been physically and mentally tortured over many years, their state of mind deteriorates and they often find it hard to separate delusions from reality, again making information supplied through torture to be suceptible to distortion and thus patently unreliable.
Why is it more important to the Bush administration to slake their thirst for violence and sadism than actually getting better results through more humane methods? Treating prisoners humanely has been proven as a better way to obtain accurate information and encourage defections. The Bush Administration are too drunk on bloodlust to care.
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:09 am
Either they’ve done all the torturing they needed to do, they’ve outsourced the torture to someone else to keep their hands clean, or they’re just going to make sure it stays secret this time.
No matter which possibility holds true, this edict against torture likely won’t actually change anything, especially as vaguely worded as it is. It’s vague enough, in fact, that anything can be argued on either side. It’s vague enough that it would, if used in court as a basis for challenging these practices, probably make its way through the appeal process to the Supreme Court… and knowing who put who in those chairs, you can probably guess whose side they’re on. It’s perfectly vague, perfect as an ideal tool for splitting the opposition between those who see it as a sign of change, and those who see it for what it is.
As it is, the Order is too general, and thus too weak, to work as an effective tool for preventing torture and abuse.