The US does not torture

New rules to misrule

I would not know, but I would leave this to the great legal minds and dons that visit my blog, suppose that is a branch of legal jurisprudence that is called military law.

This is because outlawed outpost of Guantanamo Bay has presented a Military Commissions manual to be used for trying detainees in Camp Delta, the contents of which appear to satisfy elements of civil law and in others indicate a departure from standard and accepted legal practices where the threshold of evidence is as low as hear-say.

The evidence is awash with classified monikers that the patchwork of evidence the defence would have to work with would leave enough holds to make every trial unacceptably loaded against the accused bringing to close to just better than a kangaroo court.

Now, I am no legal expert, the views might differ, no so much by the letter of the law but by political persuasion where the right would contend that these provisions are the best that can be offered with regards to the sensitivity of the issues at hand and the left would contend that premise of innocence until tried and proven guilty is lost.

Some military lawyers already have misgivings about this manual which in the circumstances might have its progeny with the military junta of Myanmar, OK! That was a bit given to histrionics, my point is, and justice should not only be done, it should verifiably be seen to be done properly.

US does not torture

The other part of the evidence that would be most interesting to every civil and human rights activist is the implication that.

+ Some evidence might have been obtained under torture

+ Some evidence was obtained by coercion and is admissible as long as it was obtained before December 2005

The question then is, have these prisoners been tortured? They most certainly have, the spectacle of Abu Ghraib was an excerpt of the “Practical Guide to Obtaining Information” introduced by the commandant of Guantanamo Bay.

As for coercion, we can presume dunking which is the deliberate deprivation of air by pushing the full face into a liquid was not torture till at least December 2005 – avoiding gruesome detail – an activity that gets a full thumbs-up from vice-President Cheney, sorry, the less aggressive word is “water-boarding”, you would be forgiven for thinking it was as hip as skate-boarding.

Yes, “water-boarding” is a variant of dunking where rather than push the face into a liquid, facing upward and the body inclined with the head at the lower point, the gardener simulates a torrent of rain over the face that the gag-reflex creates a drowning sensation as the person almost enters the delirium of death.

However, we must hear the President out, “We do not torture”, he protests, they only use vital tools of elevated persuasion – I will not be good for politics, not with my mastery of semantics.

It would appear my concept of torture is hardly coercion in the eyes of those at the forefront of the war on terror in America. Judge for yourself, as we have been told, the US does not torture.

An admission in remission

The end does not justify the means

When President Bush yesterday admitted to the existence of CIA secret prisons along with the consideration that information obtained from certain of the imprisoned has since prevented terrorism attacks, I thought I could see in the background Niccolò Machiavelli being introduced as Press Secretary (Minister of Propaganda would be too 1930s to contemplate.).

The thought that hardened terrorists would voluntarily divulge information to Americans about plans they might have painstakingly arranged to bring ill to America does take a bit of imagination.

The Gitmo Workbook

In fact, the Abu Ghraib abuse which appeared routine as a means of warped entertainment and in reality blatant torture appears to have come of the Guantanamo Bay workbook since the man-in-charge there was brought in to toughen up the regime at Abu Ghraib.

Somehow, we just have found it difficult to believe protestations of Americans about not torturing their prisoners; caught in the web of the broad terror principle and this Machiavellian notion that subscribes to extraordinary rendition, the existence of Guantanamo Bay, the military tribunals and the unwarranted eavesdropping on Americans.

Immoral grounds

One by one, each of these has been completely discredited if not declared illegal, but we have torturously drawn water from stone as this admission now comes into the light of day.

One more admission is required, by whose authority was the CIA agents shopped to the press?

In all, everything that allows America to maintain the high moral ground in this war on terror has been lost to hubris and bluster, the former is the delusional confidence in the projection of American power and the other can easily be championed by Donald Rumsfeld.

Where truly we have been saved from some terrorist attack we are grateful for those mercies, however using the fear of terror to justify actions and activities that would not stand the scrutiny of basic terms of justice and fairness whilst we are continually stripped of our liberties for the sake of our supposed safety is nasty, unconscionable and Machiavellian – the end will never justify the means.

We have become our own terrorists

Why? Because we become the terrorists we are trying to fight, we deny ourselves the power of our democracies just as the terrorists would have liked to do and our so-called freedoms are rolled back into the bondage of a police state, worse than where those terrorists came from.

As it stands, the only leadership quality America now serves is in having funds and having guns, it is left to others to play the deft hand of real diplomacy in the New World Order.

Wading in Abu Ghraib

Mud glorious mud

Being one never to admit to having big feet the events that have been filling our screens and news feeds from the Iraqi rabbit hole has meant that only a wade would help one keep balance as the truth throws up more mud than the marriage banquet of King Hippopotamus.

Apparently, the despicable pictures of prisoner torture and humiliation are only the tip of the iceberg which could be as large as Antarctica. Pardon me for being given to uncensored hyperbole, but exaggeration in this case probably is just a poor imitation of reality.

The facts of the matter are clearly the following:

1. Junior ranks and contracted personnel involved in the preparation and interrogation of prisoners must have been following orders or set down procedure to get critical intelligence
2. Photos taken posed or not, served to thrill the perpetrators and their protagonists
3. If photos where taken, what was not taken and where was the line drawn?

Digital cameras are the rage

Anyway, the supposed candour of Mr Rumsfeld was a little short of acceptable sincerity on account of the fact that he continually riled the illegal publication of the photos rather than address without duplicity the cases of abuse.

Feigning ignorance of these volatile issues till they were so caught out, we now have a mass hysteria of contrition and apologies even the proposal for compensation - if the compensatees live to make a claim.

Keeping this review short, it is interesting to note that how Guantanamo bay plays into these events; it happens that the commandant of that legal black hole became a consultant to the interrogators in Abu Ghraib or even something more.

By comparison, we know about Abu Ghraib and the utterly sanctimonious acts of the British in Basra because of a modicum of press freedom and those persons who so annoy Mr Rumsfeld by taking pictures with their state-of-the-art digital cameras

We also owe it to ABCs 60 Minutes II who refused undue Pentagon interference to suppress the information we all should be been informed of a lot earlier by those who should have known better.

Guantanamo Reloaded

The only apparent court martials from Guantanamo Bay are related to intelligence breaches or espionage charges the irony of such discipline and adherence to all procedures for prisoners who are neither prisoners of war or covered by Geneva Conventions. Executive privilege holds sway of scrutiny by courts or independent review.

One cannot begin to imagine what the occupants in Guantanamo Bay experience in the light of the revelations in Iraq - one is tempted to say, we did have regime change but the same demons that possessed Saddam's cohorts in Abu Ghraib found new hosts in the Americans.

It goes to show that human beings are susceptible to base and primitive manipulation especially if you are of the first world and very American.

The Summer Collection

The families of the accused have probably missed the point by protesting the good-natured characters of their sons and daughters when back at home.

Not being one to cast aspersions on the dignity of such well meaning Americans following orders as one should in the forces - putting it all in perspective the hooded prisoner was just on a mini cat-walk showing off the Abu Ghraib summer collection.

The one on a leash was taking part in a commercial on how to pose with your dog - subjects for photography competitions have to be more radical and ground-breaking in these times.