WaPo Op/Ed: A Plunge From the Moral Heights

[Renew Deal]

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A19


Come and sit with me for a moment. I am in a room, in a Middle Eastern country, and I am talking to a government official. He mentions the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison outside Baghdad, and what this has done to America's image in his region. He smiles at what he says, for he is a man who appreciates irony. Of course, this same thing happens in his country, he says. Inwardly, I smile back, smug in my confidence that Abu Ghraib or no Abu Ghraib, America is a different sort of nation. It now seems I was a bit too smug.

The recent revelations that the Justice Department prepared memos parsing what is and what is not torture brings to mind regimes that, well, I would rather not bring to mind. These are the torturers of the world, although they deny it, and to bolster their lie they produce copious laws against the practice.

Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose Justice Department prepared the memos -- one of them running to 50 pages and signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the Office of Legal Counsel -- assured the Senate the other day that the memos are of no consequence. They were only internal Justice Department stuff, the scribblings of lawyers and -- most important -- the president has not "directed or ordered" torture, Ashcroft said. In another administration, such an assurance would be enough for me, but given this one's cavalier approach to civil liberties, I have to note that "directed" or "ordered" is not the same as condoned. That's what I wonder about.

I wonder, too, why the much-pressed Justice Department -- all those news releases to get out extolling Ashcroft -- went to all the trouble of coming up with definitions of torture that might be permissible under U.S. law when no one was supposedly considering torturing al Qaeda prisoners in the first place. A 50-page memo is not an hour's work. It's clear someone had torture in mind. The Defense Department and the CIA were looking for guidance.
<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29858-2004Jun9.html

[Sliverofhope]

1. Just what did people assumed happened at Gitmo?

If not torture, what?

[Manix]

2. Ashcroft is a f**kin' freak. Just being in the same room with him

would be torture!

[gandalf]

3. That is a good op-ed. I like that piece:

I wonder, too, why the much-pressed Justice Department -- all those news releases to get out extolling Ashcroft -- went to all the trouble of coming up with definitions of torture that might be permissible under U.S. law when no one was supposedly considering torturing al Qaeda prisoners in the first place. A 50-page memo is not an hour's work. It's clear someone had torture in mind.

---

As far as I know, the definitions of torture in the international treaties are much less narrow than those created in the memo.

[UpInArms]

4. I cannot imagine how anyone,

anywhere would ever believe, think, know or suppose that the intentional torture (for any reason) should be sanctioned at the highest level of any goverment.

My personal thoughts have been wondering what type of "legal" documents Saddam had that showed he was within the "law" to torture the people of Iraq. Would there be similar missives and memos that showed as "President" he (SH) was merely following the "legally" sanctioned route?

[struggle4progress]

5. "Some things are not American. Torture, for damned sure, is one of them."

[IrateCitizen]

6. Just ask any of the millions of black and brown people in our prisons...

... and I'm certain they'd concur with that statement.

[struggle4progress]

7. When Abu Ghraib first broke, there were several good pieces ...

on mistreatment in American prisons.