XPost: uk.politics.misc, alt.politics.british, alt.conspiracy   
   XPost: alt.conspiracy.new-world-order, alt.america, alt.conspira   
   y.america-at-war   
   XPost: us.politics   
   From: oO@oO.com   
      
   McCain-Bush "anti-torture" measure gives legal cover for continued abuse   
   By Joe Kay and Barry Grey   
   17 December 2005   
   The agreement reached between the Bush White House and Senator John McCain   
   on a measure ostensibly banning torture does nothing of the kind. The   
   official disavowal of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of alleged   
   terrorists held by the US is a ploy to cover up Washington's past defiance   
   of international laws banning torture and provide a pseudo-legal cover for   
   the continuation of the same methods.   
      
   The very fact that the US government is obliged to make a public disavowal   
   of torture is a damning indictment of Washington's lawless methods. The   
   whole world knows that the US is employing torture and other illegal means,   
   including abductions, secret prisons, imprisonment without charge or legal   
   recourse, in the name of its global "war on terror."   
      
   The agreement reached between the White House and McCain-a right-wing   
   Republican senator and fervent supporter of the war in Iraq-is in the form   
   of an amendment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Defense.   
   The amendment, as agreed on by the White House and the senator, requires   
   that the US military treat those detained by it in accordance with the Army   
   Field Manual. It adds that no prisoner "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."   
      
   The Bush administration, which had previously opposed any measure   
   proscribing the use of torture on the grounds of "national security" and the   
   "war on terrorism," was moved to work out a deal with McCain after the   
   senator's original amendment was passed last month by a lopsided margin in   
   the Senate, and a non-binding resolution supporting the amendment was   
   adopted by a large margin on December 14 in the House of Representatives.   
      
   The crafting of the agreed-on amendment has been accompanied by   
   proclamations from Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the   
   United States does not condone or employ torture. These are brazen lies.   
      
   What was Abu Ghraib? What about the evidence showing that the sadistic   
   methods employed there were the result of policy decisions made by top Bush   
   administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and   
   then-White House counsel, now attorney general, Alberto Gonzales?   
      
   There are further revelations of prisoner abuse, up to and including murder,   
   in Afghanistan, Iraq and at the US concentration camp in Guantánamo Bay. And   
   there are the CIA's secret prisons, to which the International Red Cross   
   has, in violation of international law, been denied access.   
      
   Let us not omit the practice of "extraordinary rendition," a euphemism for   
   the abduction of people outside the US by American agents and their transfer   
   to the torture chambers of foreign governments in league with Washington. At   
   least two cases of innocent men kidnapped by the US and handed over to be   
   tortured have been exposed: that of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen picked up   
   in New York and dispatched by the CIA to Syria, and Khalid al-Masri, a   
   German who was "disappeared" from Macedonia and trundled off to be tortured   
   in Afghanistan.   
      
   The Bush administration is utilizing, appropriately enough, the "Big Lie"   
   propaganda methods perfected by the Hitler regime to cover up Washington's   
   use of barbaric practices that were employed on a more massive scale by the   
   German fascists.   
      
   In 2001, the US officially repudiated the Geneva Conventions as applied to   
   prisoners captured in Afghanistan. Why would the Bush administration   
   repudiate this cornerstone of international law, if not to provide itself   
   with a license to break the law and employ interrogation and detention   
   practices proscribed by the Conventions?   
      
   In subsequent months, administration officials and lawyers, including   
   Gonzales, sought to redefine torture and manufacture a pseudo-legal   
   rationalization for its use.   
      
   For the US government's verbal disavows of torture to be taken seriously,   
   Washington would be obliged to officially reverse its policy on the Geneva   
   Conventions, release all those being held illegally in Guantánamo and   
   elsewhere, reveal the location of its secret prisons, and close its gulags   
   down. It will do none of these things.   
      
   The McCain amendment will have no effect on US policy toward alleged   
   terrorists detained by Washington. This policy flows organically from the   
   drive by the American ruling elite to achieve by military force a hegemonic   
   position in oil-rich regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia, which   
   is deemed critical to the broader aim of establishing American imperialist   
   hegemony on a global scale.   
      
   The hypocrisy that underlies McCain's position was on display at his joint   
   appearance with President Bush on Thursday. He ended his remarks praising   
   the White House by declaring, "Now I think we can move forward with winning   
   the war on terror and in Iraq."   
      
   The claim that adherence to international law on the treatment of prisoners   
   can be squared with support for the war in Iraq is a repudiation of the   
   fundamental principle laid down at the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals   
   after World War II. The prosecution, led by US Supreme Court Justice Robert   
   Jackson, insisted that the basic crime committed by the defendants, from   
   which flowed all other crimes-including torture, the network of   
   concentration camps, even the extermination of the European Jews-was the   
   planning and waging of aggressive war. Bush, McCain-in fact, the entire US   
   political establishment and both parties-defend just such a war of   
   aggression: the unprovoked "preventive" war against Iraq, plotted years in   
   advance and launched on the basis of lies.   
      
   The differences between McCain and the White House were from the start more   
   a matter of form than substance. The sticking point had been the insistence   
   of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that the CIA be exempted from any ban   
   on the use of torture or abusive methods.   
      
   The real position of McCain and other congressional backers of his amendment   
   is that such open sanction for torture is politically and militarily   
   inexpedient. McCain is well aware that the US and forces trained and   
   financed by Washington have long engaged in such methods, most notoriously   
   in Latin America and Vietnam. Their basic position can be summed up as: do   
   it, but don't talk about it.   
      
   McCain, a Vietnam-era navy pilot who was held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi,   
   is close to sections of the military brass. He speaks for those in the   
   military, and the ruling elite more generally, who consider the open defense   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)