Breaking the Leg of Every Arab
Jihad el Khazen Al-Hayat - 15/11/05//
People detained by the Americans in Iraq have died after being subjected to placing bags over their heads, being gagged and throttled, beaten with sharp instruments, deprived of sleep and subjected to extreme temperatures.
These accusations haven't been made by al-Qaida, but appeared in a report at the end of last month by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and it gives "an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan." What I'm saying is that if the "liberation" of Iraq is going to end with the torture and killing of detainees, then why this entire war? Saddam Hussein used to torture them, this and killing them made him happy. I wonder if Saddam Hussein inspired the Americans to create secret detention and torture centers in Eastern Europe, as it recently came out.
The ACLU enjoys a spotless reputation. It found that detainees had died during or after interrogations and interrogators were from the US Navy Seals, military intelligence, and "another government agency," which the ACLU believes was probably the CIA.
I have a file in my office that got so big that I divided it into two, and then three piles, so it wouldn't fall over, on torturing prisoners and detainees, from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq. Practically not a day goes by without some item on torture appearing. There has been quite a bit of news on attempts by detainees to commit suicide at Guantanamo Bay, out of desperation. It seemed that the report was talking about a third world country, not the US, with its long democratic and humanitarian traditions.
A few days ago, I read the 3 November issue of The New York Review of Books, and was surprised that this magazine, which publishes fine articles and deals with the latest books, had nothing of interest to me. This was until I reached the final pages, where I found an item entitled "Torture in Iraq," summarizing a report by Human Rights Watch and including eyewitness accounts. I won't describe them, but rather relay one of the examples, and let readers make up their own minds.
A sergeant from the 82nd Airborne Division describes an incident at Camp Mercury, about 10 miles east of Falluja as follows:
"On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC (person under control) tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all US soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the (expletive) cook. He shouldn't be in with no PUCs."
There were many other stories of this painful type. In the past, we used to hear about people taking out their anger by kicking their dogs. Today, we hear about US soldiers taking out their anger by breaking the leg of an Iraqi detainee.
He is breaking the leg of every Arab or Muslim who accepts such a disgraceful act. However, I'll keep talking about detainee torture, because I fear that it is going to continue, despite the efforts of some administration officials to halt it. They are encountering the insistence by the other side to continue torture, as a justified tool in the war against terror. This is despite the fact that it helps those who advocate terror, providing them with new volunteers every day.
Whenever I hear news about torture, I remember how Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the Commander of joint forces and field operations during the war to liberate Kuwait, refused to turn over Iraqi detainees to the Americans, fearing that they would be tortured.
The new torture team is led by Vice President Dick Cheney. After it came out that detainees are being held in secret CIA prisons around the world, the Vice president didn't try to stop it. Instead, he is trying to protect the practice.
Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, submitted an amendment to the 2006 US defense budget, which read: "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The result was that Cheney lobbied against McCain's amendment, proposing that secret anti-terror operations by non-Defense Department government personnel, if the President decides that such operations are necessary to protect the US or its citizens from terrorist attack.
The Washington Post commented that Dick Cheney will be remembered as the Vice president who organized a campaign to support terror. Cheney is trying to maintain the policy, in a way that Saddam Hussein himself would envy. After the resignation of his aide Lewis Libby, and one of those who falsified documents to justify a war against Iraq, Cheney appointed David Addington as a successor.
Addington was responsible for the "torture memorandum" that was presented to the White House. The three Cabinet members whose work covers the torture issue are Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertof.
Behind these three and in the shadows lurks an obscure government official, John Yoo, who was the assistant attorney general and is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. In August 2002, he sent a strange definition of terror to Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. Yoo said that terror "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." He reiterates that the President has sole authority to declare war, without the approval of Congress, and can interpret, abrogate and violate treaties. All of this is based on the idea that the President is the Commander-in-chief of US armed forces, and no law constrains him in war.
Dick Cheney complained that McCain's amendment ties the President's hands. Perhaps tying his wrists would be less harsh than what they've used to ties the hands of Iraqi detainees with.
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