Why aren't all the members of the pro-torture crowd safely rotting in jail?
On Tuesday, December 2 2002, Donald Rumsfeld signed a piece of paper that changed the course of history. That same day, President Bush signed a bill to put the Pentagon in funds for the next year. The US faced unprecedented challenges, Bush told a large and enthusiastic audience, and terror was one of them. The US would respond to these challenges, and it would do so in the "finest traditions of valour". And then he signed a large increase in the defence budget.
Elsewhere in the Pentagon, an event took place for which there was no comment, no fanfare. With a signature and a few scrawled words, Rumsfeld reneged on the tradition of valour to which Bush had referred. Principles for the conduct of interrogation, dating back more than a century to President Lincoln's famous instruction of 1863 that "military necessity does not admit of cruelty", were discarded. He approved new and aggressive interrogation [torture] techniques that would produce devastating consequences.
I don't know why they're not safely rotting away in jail.
[Staff Judge Advocate Lt. Col. Diane] Beaver recalled that smothering was thought to be particularly effective, and that [Major General Michael E.] Dunlavey, who'd been in Vietnam, was in favour because he knew it worked.
The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas." A wan smile crossed Beaver's face. "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard. I can stay detached."
Beaver confirmed what Dunlavey had told me, that a delegation of senior lawyers came down to Guantánamo well before the list of techniques was sent up to Washington. They talked to the intelligence people, they even watched some interrogations. The message from the visitors was that they should do "whatever needed to be done", meaning a green light from the very top - from the lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the CIA.
I hope they begin rotting away in jail very soon, and for a very very long time.
Full story at the Guardian, here.
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