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Responsibility for Torture and Abu Ghraib: The Post Shows It Goes at Least as Far as the Vice President
Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2004, there has been widespread speculation that the abuses captured in the shocking photos were more than the work of a few "bad apples." Historian Alfred McCoy, who has written a history of CIA interrogation practices, noted that the practices at Abu Ghraib, including sensory deprivation and stress positions, came right out of the CIA handbook.
Those closely involved shared this suspicion. Last week, Seymour Hersh revealed that the Army's lead Abu Ghraib investigator, retired Major General Anthony Taguba, believes that responsibility went up the chain of command. But he was not allowed to investigate higher-ups.
Congress has not yet conducted a serious investigation.
But thanks to some intrepid reporters, the time of speculation may be ending. The Washington Post (in two stories, available here and here) has presented strong evidence that culpability for authorizing torture goes straight to the vice-president's office, and possibly to the president.
After an extensive investigation, including interviews with over 200 people, the Washington Post has placed Vice President Dick Cheney at the helm of intense bureaucratic in-fighting with the aim of authorizing cruelty and torture in interrogations. Both cruelty and torture are against international law and were against domestic law, specifically the War Crimes Act, at the time they were authorized by the White House.
The vice president and his allies, basing their actions on legal theories of an executive branch with nearly unlimited powers to make war, conspired to secretly authorize interrogation practices like those exposed at Abu Ghraib. These revelations demand follow-up by the Congress and serious consideration of articles of impeachment, as well as criminal prosecution of those involved. Among the Post's many revelations, we learn that the memo sent to President Bush in January 2002 calling the Geneva Conventions "quaint" was actually written by Cheney's chief legal counsel, although it was signed by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who was very much a Cheney ally. It was part of the vice president's overall strategy to ensure that alleged terrorists, already stripped of access to US civilian and military courts thanks to Cheney's legal team, would not be protected by the Geneva Conventions either.
When, in February 2002, the president issued the directive that was to form the alternate basis of treatment of detainees, the language came directly from the vice president's office. It was carefully crafted to allow cruelty in interrogations, a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act. It called for humane treatment in general, but authorized the military and intelligence services to make unrestricted exemptions.
That determination led directly to the so-called "torture memo" of August 2002, written by Cheney ally John Yoo, which claimed that U.S. law permits all but "the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." When the memo's existence was revealed to the public two years later, the administration disavowed its contents, claiming that it was written only to deal with a hypothetical situation.
In fact, the Post shows, the memo was a direct response to a CIA inquiry about the specific case of Abu Zubaida, an alleged high-level Al Qaeda operative. That it was not repudiated for two years suggests that it governed interrogations for that long period.
The Post further reveals that a still-secret memo released on the very same day as the torture memo actually approved a long list of interrogation techniques for the CIA, including the heinous practice waterboarding. Those techniques were later adopted by the military, many surfacing in the Abu Ghraib scandal, which was certainly only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The Post thus shows that the interrogation practices of Abu Ghraib for which some low-ranking soldiers have been given substantial prison sentences were authorized at the highest levels of government with Cheney playing a central role. The President himself may well be implicated.
The Post also uncovered Cheney's role in authorizing warrantless wiretapping, in maintaining secret detention sites for kidnapped suspects around the world, and in denying American citizen José Padilla access to an attorney.
The evidence of the vice president's role in authorizing cruel treatment and torture in interrogations demands that Congress act. We need a full Congressional investigation and a serious consideration of impeachment of the vice president for war crimes. Patrick McElwee is a policy analyst with Just Foreign Policy (www.justforeignpolicy.org). He can be reached at patrick@justforeignpolicy.org.
© 2007 Foreign Policy In Focus
29 Comments so far
Show Allno, impeach the shrub first, then as darth cheney is sworn in, impeach and arrest him.
As much as Bonehead Bush loves to play cowboy, you would think he would have a better idea of what a "good guy" is supposed to be.
This administration has done more to DESTROY the American's "good guy" image in the world than an entire corporate world of "Ugly American" criminals has ever done.
I agree... Bush, Cheney and their buttload of advisors like Rove, Gonzales, Kristol, Perle and Wolfowitz ought to ALL be sent to the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity.
It's a cinch that our useless Congress will never do anything about them!
Kivals June: you make more sense than all of the democrat bashers.I will vote for the democrats in 08 to give them the majority in all branches of government and when they get it the investigations will follow that we all want but it can't happen overnight like some people seem to expect
Cheney and Bush are the lowest of the low. Allowing low level military personnel to take the fall for their own policies of torture is obscene. Members of our armed services at all levels should be refusing to operate under this regime that puts them in harm's way for corporate gain, directing them to commit crimes against humanity, and then leaving these same people to twist in the wind while they hide in their blanket of National Security. No two people have done MORE to weaken the security of our Nation than Bush and Cheney. I can only assume it is with the goal of creating a perpetual war so that the defense industry can be fed greater and greater amounts of our collective resources. A nation at war, as we should all recall form the Cold War, does not have the luxury of questioning government actions. That is a privilege reserved for times of PEACE. So goes the logic of the patriotic vitriol we hear from government leaders and mislead citizens, but, by design, there will BE no time of PEACE.
But back to the point: Bush and Cheney are rich, powerful men, drowning (sadly, a metaphor) in wealth and luxury, but those paying for their crimes are the victims of a globalizing economy, where the jobs of the middle classes have been shipped away to more easily controlled populations leaving our young people little choice but to join the military. To pay for college, to exist, many people must make this trade. And, in exchange for serving the Corporate Interest (yes, yes, OUR interests, because we, the people, now means "we, the corporate people, the people who really count") they are imprisoned. The last crumbs of the economic pie are taken along with their freedom. Truly, we think, they ought to have known better. Their humanity ought to have intervened. I will not contest that point. What I will say is that, if THESE LOW LEVEL GRUNTS are to be imprisoned, it is morally unacceptable to allow the architects of their behavior to walk free. We should not be turned aside in the pursuit of the TRUE criminals.
I never call my Republican senator, Richard Lugar, because I know how futile it is. I have been writing to him since time immemorial and gotten the most condescending, insulting responses in return, but it is to those Republicans we must turn, now. Put the pressure on them to save their party. They are becoming aware that the lunacy contained in the executive is beyond even the reckless habits of the Republican party, as Lugar's case shows. He has come out against Bush's Iraq policy. It is a start. Call on your Republican representatives and let them know that you support the troops not as patsies for the misguided, inhumane and illegal polices of the Bush Regime, but as human beings putting their lives on the line for an ideal that is being sold out in the worst possible way.
"U.S. law permits all but "the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment""
So the USA only permits the SECOND worst forms of torture...
so, while removing someones eyeballs with a red hot poker may be banned, removing them with a luke warm poker is OK?
DAMN, if i were a Merkin, a would be embarassed to show my face in the civilized world.
I propose a fence at all US borders...to keep torturers in..
kivals, where are these "many" members of congress at? if they exist, do they open their mouths in the house/senate? write an op-ed or letter to the editor? talk about these things to their own constituents? put stuff up on their own webpages? (the answer is, of course, no, they don't.)
you don't have to be in the majority to voice an opinion and begin a process of changing people's opinions.
The House vote count for impeachment has increased a little, but too many on both sides have those deep pockets for corporate campaign money and dark holes in their souls where morality has been inked out.
Still, like chicken soup, it won't hoit! to copy and send Richard Posner's letter [in the comments section after most of today's essays], calling for IMPEACHMENT. Make your own revisions and sign your name and be counted.
This country, this lovely earth of ours, and the people and other living things riding it are in the most dire peril we have ever been in.
What we are up against that has been in the works for so long [Eisenhower's farewell warning, 1961] is a greased machine, increasingly efficient, with so many networked parts [and persons] globally, with control of communication, military, financial, economic, chemical and other technologies and agencies -- government and corporate, that actually having a process of Impeachment may now be part of the past. But we can try ...
For the majority of the people of this country, especially, as someone wrote [I don't remember who], they are oblivious and will not act until they are grabbed by the throat. Realistically then it will be too late for all of us.
On the upside, "the best laid plans of mice and men ...," including extremely evil and psychopathically sick men [with a few women in there] who are characterized by a lack of empathy and conscience, and also lack the ability to understand their own or others
feelings and lack insight where it counts because they live in their own world of an infantile egocentricity, "...oft go astray."
Thus, as in history past, at moments similar to this one, suddenly things happen that are unexpected ... the monkey wrenches caught in the machines, crucial nuts and bolts flying off, power shut off for one reason or another, all kinds of things ... that can be attributed to The Fates, Fortune ... or Spirit ... We can hope.
Take heart. Send your prayers or positive vibes on a regular basis into what perhaps is a User-friendly Universe. And do what you can, especially, educating others as to what is going on. Gently sometimes is best, with an offering of a little chicken soup for the heart and soul.
It can't hoit!
Now is the time for optimism. Just like when everyone thinks the stock market can only go up it moves sharply down. Maybe the torture, spying, war crimes, corruption, economic destruction, fiscal irresponsibility, environmental destruction and executive power grab will be rolled back and we will enter a new age of democracy and peace.
LOL
Anything can happen.
"I'll say it again. Impeach Cheney first, then Li'l bush, then shackle both and spirit them off to The Hague for trial of capital crimes against humanity. Both should be tried and hanged if convicted."
The ICJ doesn't allow capital punishment. Also, to have someone tried, there has to be a complaint filed by one nation against another and both nations have to agree to allow the case to be heard by the ICJ. If one nation decides it does not want to participate, then the court has no jurisdiction unless the situation is a treaty that specifically allows a party to go to the ICJ in the case of a breach of the treaty.
The trial of Mr. Milosivic et al. was referred to the ICJ by both Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzogovina if that is the precedent of which you are thinking. For that to work here, the US government would have to agree to refer the case in addition to whichever other country brought the complaint.
Since we can't get the Democrats to even propose a bill with timetables to withdraw from Iraq, I think that the likelyhood of any follow-on government to the Bush Administration being willing to proceed is non-existant.
"Y'all can cry "impeach!" all you want. It ain't gonna happen. Impeachment would force Congress to undo much of the executive power grab now authorized by law — and the Dems are more interested in seizing those new powers than they are in rolling them back."
I agree. NO ONE relinquishes power once they have it. Democrats are going to be the same as the Republicans if they win in 2008. No big changes, simply an ass at the head of government rather than an asshole.
canuckchuck - "I propose a fence at all US borders…to keep torturers in.."
Build away. I am all for it. Nothing would make me happier than to have real walls around our borders. Everyone would feel safer.
When Nixon won the presidency 34 years or so ago, I wept not knowing exactly why. Having experienced conservative rule, I felt our lives were in the shitter. It's been downhill ever since. Where is that goddamned pendulum?
Can I get a shout out to IMPEACH CHENEY!!!!
Where's that scary Cheney pic, from the other day? y-y-y-y-ikes!
Y'all can cry "impeach!" all you want. It ain't gonna happen. Impeachment would force Congress to undo much of the executive power grab now authorized by law -- and the Dems are more interested in seizing those new powers than they are in rolling them back.
"Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?"
"Also noted that Cheney's advice from Scalia may now come back to haunt both men:"
"Antonin G. Scalia, "arguably the Court's most colorful jurist today," has conspired with Richard B. Cheney the 46th Vice-President of the United
States of America to subvert the U. S. Constitution. The question now is not only about these " high crimes and misdemeanors," but moreover about a larger effort that includes other justices of the court and other members of the Bush administration, members of Congress, their staff and lobbyists. The on-going subversion of law, today has cost many their civil liberties and all the purse of the US government.
Today the evidence is now broad and conclusive; it is only for the magistrate and the people to file the charges in our courts, in our congress and in our local and state governments.
IMPEACH Cheney Now-- Urge your Congressperson to co-sponsor HR 333
I'll say it again. Impeach Cheney first, then Li'l bush, then shackle both and spirit them off to The Hague for trial of capital crimes against humanity. Both should be tried and hanged if convicted.
All evidence points to the fact that the post 2006 election expectations of many Americans for a Democratic congressional majority that would righteously wield subpoena and investigative powers and, in so doing, bring an end to the Bush administration's wild west crime spree, were misguided. Instead, Pelosi's Raiders have chosen to grant the entire crime family an omnibus immunity while they, the Dems, for their part, cleverly exploit the untouched President's lack of popularity(and punishment) to crush his party in 2008. Unfortunately for the Dems, the 70% plus of the American public who's politics are significantly to the left of both parties are a little angrier than they seem to understand. The majority are also a little brighter, inasmuch as they have figured out that the political chessgame is designed to favor only Democrat politicians while it penalizes Americans clamoring for justice and for evidence of a government of laws and not of men.
The net effect of this gambit has left the ever depressed and angry progressives ever more depressed and angry. So much so, that reading each new revelation of possible linkage of Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld to yet another impeachable or jailable offense becomes ever more irritating instead of ever more encouraging. Case at point, another piece of the torture crime puzzle hinted at by Seymour Hersh, and, predictably, another waste of perfectly good ink.
Thus, in our powerlessness and searing frustration, we are left with only one sane response to any and all revelations of misconduct by anyone in the Bush administration, and it is to ask... "if a tree falls in the woods..."
HR 333--Begin impeachment proceedings on Cheney NOW!
As disappointed as I am in the actions of Congress, we should remember that there are many in both Houses who wish to hold these criminals accountable, but just not enough. Also, remember that the Dems control the Senate in name only. With 49 Republicans and the Senator from Tel Aviv in opposition, the Democrats really have no power to accomplish any anti-Bush or anti-Cheney actions in the Senate and the House members know that and play the game accordingly.
We should direct our rage at the true enemies of the American public -- the members of the Bush criminal gang and the corporate elite, including those in the MSM, that put them and have kept them in power.
This Nation of ours must take responsibility for the actions of our government.
This can only begin with impeachment. It will REQUIRE far more from each of us -- the citizens of this country. However, IMPEACHMENT of Bush/Cheney et al is the ONLY way we can even begin to redeem ourselves.
I bet if Bush and Cheney experience the same kind of treatment they espouse they won't call the Geneva Conventions "quaint." After their "service" terms end, either through impeachment of after January 20th 2009, they need to be sent to The Hague for war crimes. This has to be done to establish fairness. If the Nazi Cabinet and Milosevic can be tried for war crimes, so can U.S. politicians - the more the merrier. First Bush and Cheney and then all Congressman who authorized the invasion of Iraq, which was against International Law. Yeah they may have did this because they felt paranoid and/or were tricked by their Selected Resident, but that is no excuse.
Close to 750,000 Iraqi men women and children were killed in Iraq since March 2003 and Bush Jr. and Cheney are both directly and indirectly responsible for ALL their deaths, even the deaths caused by violence between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis. After all, under Saddam Hussein, there were no conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, certainly not on the same scale after March 2003. The U.S. invasion of Iraq CAUSED this conflict between the varous ethnic and religious factions within Iraq. Bush Jr. and Cheney were warned of this before they invaded Iraq, but chose to break the law anyway. There are consequences for choices one makes - "Decider."
I am all for Impeachment; why not get rid of the entire frigging bag of scum serving in both corporate parties. Don't stop with Shrub and his fat uncle Cheney. These are the most corrupt bottom feeders one can find on the planet. Every last one is getting wealthy off of their corporate paymasters.
I have no doubts the responsibility for Abu Ghraib goes clear to the top and Bush. His attitude from the beginning has spoken volumes. He thinks these people are sub humans and therefore not worthy of decent treatment (it's sad that military personnel are taking the blame for the messages our leaders have been sending them since they took office). He has the typical southern attitude to anyone or anything that isn't Christian, White and filthy Rich. He has never had a clue what the Constitution was about(just a GD peice of paper as far as he is concerned). He wasn't fit to serve as President when he ran in 2000. He obviously doesn't have a gram of respect for American's or our style of government. He has thumbed his nose at the whole process from day one and tried to change it to suit his twisted view of democracy. Needless to say, it's sad that it's taken 7 long years of corruption for the American people to finally arrive at the conclusion some of us knew in 2000. This man is morally bankrupt! If this is the best example Christian's can find to represent their faith, then Christianity is in deep s... as a religion! They need to leave politic's alone and start cleaning up their moral's.
Peacemaker, I agree with you 100% from the start of this mess in 2000. Just the arrogant look on Bush & Cheney`s faces told you all you needed to know about what we were in for and now we are getting it. It is amazing that the Christian churchs in this country are not up in arms over what is happening but it looks as if they are totally blinded by the abortion hoax.
However, strange things always happen, so don`t give up yet.
Clinton dragged his feet regarding the US becoming party to the International Court of Justice, and no big surprise that Bush flatly refused to sign onto it. This being the case, how are Bush, Cheney, et al to be tried under its jurisdiction? I don't think it can be done by joining after the fact, but please correct me if I'm wrong about that.
In any case, impeachment is the option most suited to the present moment, and that is where our efforts must lie now.
Sen. Lugar actually came out in public this week to call for troop drawdown -- not exactly the rousing "out now" speech you would have liked, but maybe all those phone calls and letters to his office weren't wasted after all.
I agree about the power of labor unions in politics. (And in life itself, there's nothing like that feeling that you have a good job to go to where you can depend on taking care of your obligations in life and maybe even have a little fun now and again). David Gergen's comment comes to mind (paraphrasing) that the rise of the corporate agenda, with all the money flowing into pols' pockets and legislation being written by the K Street lobbyists, corresponds directly with the diminishing of the power of labor unions. Is/was there corruption in the unions? Sure. Where will you not find it? But they delivered for the working person -- strength in numbers is what the people have got. It takes organization.
See my article: "We Want Our Humanity Represented!" at http://hankedson.squarespace.com