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The Bush White House plunged into torture without full consideration of the dark consequences
Published on Thursday, Apr 23, 2009
On Wednesday, the New York Times published a chilling story about the origin of the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials concluded the methods would pass legal muster because they were practiced on Americans as part of military training. The Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program provided pilots and soldiers with exposure to the torture methods used by communists during the Korean War. Tellingly, the methods produced false confessions.
Of particular dismay is that the White House discussion seemed to end there. The Bush team did not launch a full assessment, looking for insights from history or from law enforcement and military interrogators. A cursory look would have revealed that the methods proposed were taken from the gulags of China and the Soviet Union. The CIA briefing neglected to include that the United States long viewed waterboarding as a war crime, even conducted prosecutions on the charge after World War II.
Neither did the CIA ponder deeply its own inexperience. The agency had little practice interrogating hostile and resistant al-Qaida types.
The Times report surfaced during a week when the Obama White House released memos detailing the harsh CIA tactics. The Senate Armed Services Committee issued its own report, among other things, drawing a link from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to Iraq, Americans practicing torture on prisoners at all three places, the directives coming from high levels of the Bush administration.
The mounting accounts led President Obama to adjust his view. He long has held the country should move forward rather than focus on the past. Now he has given the nod to a full inquiry of what he calls ''a dark and painful chapter,'' even opened the door to the Justice Department looking at the prosecution of lawyers who crafted the memos justifying the policy.
The country should conduct a comprehensive review of how the Bush team plunged into torture. More, Obama has the right instinct: The effort should be performed by an august, credible and bipartisan group. A congressional investigation will turn into political combat. It continues to make sense that the administration avoid prosecutions, a process that would be lengthy, complicated and likely less productive than advocates contend.
The decision to use torture was deplorable and damaging. It also reflected a state of fear, President Bush having made clear his determination to take all necessary steps to prevent another such attack. The motives were genuine. The methods were unsound, in large part, because the president and his aides failed to imagine the full consequences.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Deerfield, Oh
Posted 09:36 AM, 04/23/2009
Real torture is having this rag of a paper sell for 75 cents when all they do is cut and paste from the bigger rag NY Times.
