Bush Takes Torture to Court of Public Opinion and Is Found in Contempt

[McCamy Taylor]

The LA Times has an opinion piece written by two attorneys, David Rivkin Jr and Lee Casey, who served in the Justice Department under Reagan and Bush Sr. The piece has been reprinted in the Fort Worth Star Telegram and the link is to that site, which is free and easy to access. In a nutshell, they attempt to sway public opinion by making the case that acts of torture and prisoner abuse commited by the US military under W.'s watch 1. are not W's fault if they are illegal and 2. they probably are not illegal and 3. are probably even justified, because these are terrorists we are talking about and American lives are at stake. (Hey, they are presenting a case for the defense, so they want to make sure that they have every angle covered). I found the piece so poorly written that I just had to present it here as a How Not To Try To Influence Public Opinion

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/14893782.htm

The authors complain that the legal case which the ACLU makes is flawed. In an odd choice of words, they call that case a "narrative." This is ironic, since the narrative which the authors have written in order to sway public opinion is much more flawed than the ACLU's legal argument.

The most glaring example of why you should not send a lawyer to do a public relations specialist's job is this paragraph:

"As a matter of law, guilt for war crimes can be imposed up the chain of command only when superiors have ordered the offending conduct or have failed to take appropriate disciplinary measures once they become aware that abusive conduct is taking place.But as these reports demonstrate, allegations of wrongdoing by U.S. forces have been thoroughly investigated and punished when called for."

Now, a judge might read this and hear one thing, but when a member of the lay public reads these words, he or she hears something entirely different. As a member of the lay public, I will now translate what the average person hears. "The commander-in-chief and his generals will never be caught as long as they run the investigation/cover ups and are able to pin the blame on underlings." Everyone in America knows who took the fall for Abu Ghraib. It was the peons. Even the prison commander only got fussed at and had to go write a book about how shabbily she was treated.

But wait, there is more. The authors make the mistake of believing that the readers of this editorial have the average IQ of people who can not get themselves exempted from jury duty. They talk down to their audience---people who actually bother to read the newspaper and the long articles in the Opinion section. Bad idea.

Here is the trail of illogic.1. "President Bush and his war Cabinet opened the door to detainee abuse -- first, by refusing to accord captured al Qaeda and Taliban members Geneva Convention rights; and second, by permitting aggressive interrogation techniques."(note, this point is initially made only to deny it) 2. "Bush has from the beginning made clear that all individuals captured in the war on terror must be treated humanely." 3. "None of the methods authorized by administration officials over time -- including standing for long periods, dietary manipulation and sleep interruption -- are inherently torture or inhumane treatment. All could, if taken to a sufficient extreme, cross the line." 4. "However, the only way to protect civilians against a terrorist attack is to obtain intelligence about the enemy's capabilities and plans, so that U.S. forces can act first... This is why U.S. officials turned to stressful interrogation methods in the first place."

Any reader with an IQ over that of a turnip will note that the authors end up making the ACLU's point which they initially sought to deny--namely that the Bush administration or "US Officials" wanted to obtain intelligence, and therefore they authorized interrogation of captives, interrogation which any reasonable person could have forseen could be taken too far--that is what the Geneva Convention is all about.

The lawyers final attempt at swaying public opinion is so hamfisted as to be laughable. "Americans can justly take pride in their fighting men and women and in the Pentagon's civilian leadership. If the ACLU hoped to prove otherwise, it failed." The reader, with his or her 3rd grade reading level is supposed to interpret this as "The ACLU wants to poke a stick at our troops, the bastards!" The people actually reading this are thinking "I take no pride in Rumsfeld or W. or Cheney. Our troops would be a lot better off without its current civilian leaders."

Finally, the bit at the start about "heavily redacted to remove operational details"---the lawyers only cut their throats when they throw in information like that in the first column. That is like saying "The Minister of Propaganda is bury earning his salary." By the time the word "whitewash" (in quotation marks of all things) appears a few paragraphs later, the reader has already thought of the same word two or three times him or herself. Anytime the reader anticipates a word or image in a narrative, it gives that word an authority it would not otherwise have had.

So, the moral is, do not send lawyers to do the job of Karl Rove.

[bobbieinok]

1. Rivkin was on DRehm show ca 1-2 weeks ago....he constantly

said Gitmo is a wonderful prison, the prisoners are better treated there than in most US prisons, they eat very well, can observe their religion with no hindrance, etc, etc. AND they are probably the best-treated POWs in history.

When challenged by a caller that W had said they are not POWs and thus the Geneva Conventions don't apply, he said indeed, they're enemy combatants and not POWs b/c they were not in uniform.

Of course, caller had no chance to point out how he contradicted himself.

One of the other guests was a lawyer trying to defend some prisoners there. This show was shortly after the 3 suicides; Rivkin was defending the suicides as what the pentagon called it, a 'hostile act.'

His comments were truly surreal; he basically got by with hardly any challenges from the others. Rehm does not like to have her guests challenged, but she sometimes does 'politely' raise an alternative interpretation.