Cheney and the apologists of torture distrust democracy

[babylonsister]

Cheney and the apologists of torture distrust democracy

The great threat to our way of life comes not from deranged fanatics but politicians who abuse the language of terror


* Simon Jenkins


The trouble with torture is that sometimes it works; and when it does, the devil sings. Scarpia may have ended with Tosca's knife in his chest, but his torturers got what they needed from Cavaradossi. When Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, said this week that his favoured interrogation methods had saved America from another 9/11, who could gainsay him?

We may find it incredible that democracies such as Britain and America find themselves opening the 21st century with a debate on the efficacy of such medieval tortures as extreme confinement, sleep deprivation and near-drowning. Yet it is now clear that both countries have been reduced by the hysterics of the war on terror to making use of information extracted under torture. Do we just forgive and forget?

The CIA memos released this week by President Obama were accompanied by pardons. These were for possible violations by American citizens not only of the international convention against torture, but of the CIA's own meticulous, if ghoulish, rule book. ­Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 planner, was apparently waterboarded 183 times and barraged with a variety of rough interrogation techniques a hundred times in two weeks before doctors stopped it. What ethic permitted medical involvement in this treatment? Abu Zubaydah, an alleged senior al-Qaida commander, was sent for torture to Thailand before being waterboarded a reported 83 times.

These actions were plainly not confined to the "ticking bomb" crises of torture apologists. They were systematic, intended to confirm the names of accomplices, past events, dates and places. Mohammed apparently "confessed" to every outrage of the past decade. As is known from the second world war, the process of torture so brutalised those taking part that the only restraint was the risk of being held responsible.

Obama has eliminated that risk. In doing so he is prima facie in breach of the torture treaty, which imposes a "binding" obligation on governments to take into custody those, high and low, guilty of perpetrating it. Even open war is no justification for disobeying the treaty. Honouring it should thus devolve to the attorney general, Eric Holder, not the president. Given the weight of ­material flooding the blogs and airwaves, it is hard to see how Holder cannot appoint a special prosecutor. British collaboration will be increasingly exposed as this ­poison seeps through the system.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/apr/21/torture-waterboarding