http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/10/11/torture_letter_to_hughes"To be honest, you have earned a reputation for being out of touch, for spouting platitudes without understanding the underlying issues"
An open letter to Karen HughesYour duty is to defend America's reputation in the world. To do so, you must persuade the Bush administration to renounce its abhorrent and hypocritical policy on torture.By Sidney Blumenthal
Oct. 11, 2007 | Karen Hughes
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
U.S. Department of State
2201 C St. NW
Washington, DC 20520
Dear Karen Hughes:
You may recall that we met briefly in January 2001, during the transition to the Bush administration, when you dropped by my office in the White House. You were filled with enthusiasm and I wished you good luck. Now I am writing you as the executive producer of a documentary, "Taxi to the Dark Side" (directed by Alex Gibney), to invite you to a private preview in Washington on Oct. 18. The film has been described by the New York Times as "a meticulous examination of American policy on the interrogation of prisoners. It traces the scandals at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere to official changes of policy originating in the vice president's office and approved by the secretary of defense. We see documents listing approved methods of interrogation, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning."
The film includes interviews with military interrogators, victims and families of those tortured, and with members of the Bush administration who opposed the policy, such as former general counsel of the Navy Alberto Mora and Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"Taxi to the Dark Side" has won the prizes for best documentary at the Tribeca, Newport and Ojai film festivals, will be aired this month on major television channels throughout Europe, is being shown next week by special request at the European Union's annual ministerial meeting, and will be distributed commercially by Think Films in theaters throughout the U.S. and Europe in January 2008, after which it will be broadcast on the Discovery Channel. The Times calls "Taxi" devastating." The Guardian of London says its documentation is "irrefutable."
- snip -
Your complicity in the torture policy is one reason that I am writing you. Despite the futility of those inside the administration in bringing the problem to you, you still remain in place to redress it. As the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, responsible for defending America's reputation in the world, you must engage the issue that has most seriously damaged our image. Your obligation will continue so long as you hold your post. Those who care about the good name of the United States will not cease viewing you as a last resort, even if you disdain or ignore them, because they cling to the desperate hope that a nagging conscience or its sudden awakening will compel you actually to do your job.
If you were to start performing your mission in earnest, you would have to persuade the president and his spokespeople to acknowledge the truth of their policy. On Oct. 4, the New York Times reported that in 2005 the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a secret opinion justifying torture despite President Bush's repeated claim, "We do not torture." According to the Times, "The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Then Deputy Attorney General James Comey opposed the policy and "told colleagues at the department that they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it." When the Times' story broke, White House press secretary Dana Perino responded with a familiar refrain: "We do not torture."
Yet the revelations in the Times fit with those disclosed by the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, in his new book, "The Terror Presidency." Goldsmith was appointed to this highly sensitive position because he was trusted politically as a conservative, a member in good standing of the Federalist Society and an ardent believer in President Bush's policies. Upon assuming office in October 2003, Goldsmith began a review of existing opinions, including those on torture. As White House counsel, Gonzales had called the Geneva Convention against torture "quaint," and the president had affirmed two opinions abrogating the convention. In a now notorious opinion, written on Aug. 1, 2002, deputy assistant OLC counsel John Yoo declared that torture consisted of pain "associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions." In other words, torture was whatever the president said it was. Goldsmith writes that the message of the OLC opinion was clear: "The torture law doesn't apply if you act under color of presidential authority."
MORE
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
