Torture, Ordered

Ever since the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal broke earlier this year, the standard line coming out of the White House is that it was all the soldiers' fault, that it was all because of a few "bad apples." In keeping with the Bush Administration's stay-on-message-no-matter-what motif, they kept on saying the exact same thing even when it was revealed that military higher-ups not only knew about the abuses, at the very least they tacitly approved because they didn't order them to stop. While the story has mostly died down thanks to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and others in the conservative media who insisted it was much ado about nothing, a few more intrepid souls have kept on following the trail.

Now that trail may very well have led right onto George W. Bush's desk.

Thanks to persistent Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU managed to pry out of the Administration a treasure trove of angry memos from FBI agents stationed in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

The memos complain how Department of Defense ("DOD") interrogators, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval, passed themselves off as FBI agents while using what the writer called "torture techniques" against prisoners. "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way," one memo says, "DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [by] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [be] left holding the bag before the public."

Other memos relay agents' disgust at the use of "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations" in Iraq and Guantanamo, and that Pentagon officials "were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses." In revulsion, FBI supervisors ordered their agents not to take part in such questionings: "We have instructed our personnel not to participate in interrogations by military personnel which might include techniques [allowed] by the Executive Order but beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice."

Yes, it now seems there was an explicit order from President Bush allowing the abuse of captured prisoners, an order the FBI refused to follow. (Astoundingly, the American media has largely glossed over this revelation, preferring instead to dwell on the titillating details of just which tortures were committed.)

One of the released memos, dated May 22, 2004, says that "an Executive Order signed by President Bush authorized the following interrogation techniques, among others: sleep 'management,' use of MWDs (military working dogs), 'stress positions' such as half squats, 'environmental manipulation' such as the use of loud music, sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The letter goes on to say that the week before, after the Abu Ghraib scandal had broken, the order was slightly revised so that "all interrogation techniques previously authorized by the Executive Order are still on the table but that certain techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted."

All of this violates the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners. Some months after 9/11, then-White House counsel (and now Attorney General-designate) Alberto Gonzales wrote a much-publicized memo claiming that mistreatment counted as torture only if the prisoner was killed or permanently injured. He also wrote that the Conventions did not apply to al Qaeda prisoners and that the Government could do pretty much whatever it wanted. The memo sparked a furor when it was leaked, and the White House appeared to back down.

But the FBI memos reveal that abuse and torture continued not just long after the policy was supposedly changed, but it went on even months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. For all we know, it continues even now. And by the way -- given the memo's reference to the order revision allowing such "techniques" only on "very high-level authority," who signed off on the continued abuses?

It appears nobody in the White House realized that the Conventions are there for a reason: to prevent torture and mistreatment of prisoners of war. This is a very slippery slope, if the United States claims it can unilaterally ignore international law and do whatever it likes with captured fighters, what will prevent our enemies from doing the same thing with our soldiers?

Big kudos to the FBI, which is capable of recognizing an illegal order even if the Pentagon is not.

If the FBI E-mails are correct and Bush did indeed issue an Executive Order approving the use of human-rights abuses against prisoners, then ultimate responsibility for Abu Ghraib and numerous other examples of abuse, torture and even summary executions extends all the way into the Oval Office. It doesn't matter how much the Administration tries to make the little guys, who actually carried out their orders, take the fall. They were ordered to do so by their superiors, who must also be held accountable.

The very notion that the President of the United States secretly signed off on the use of torture, no matter how it was defined, is appalling. It's even more appalling to realize they really thought they could get away with it. The moral high ground in the War on Terror is getting further and further away.