And Justice for None

Allegations and evidence of beatings, electric shocks, burned skin, puncture wounds, arbitrary arrest and broad ’sweeps’, forced confessions and detention without trial or due process, a ‘ghost’ network of secret detention centers being operated by the Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate terrorist suspects beyond the reach of American or international law - in parallel with those officially acknowledged - that exist beyond all accountability to international human rights monitors, interrogation techniques which “violate all American anti-torture laws,” human trafficking by U.S. defense contractors,… the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

After 9/11/2001, official U.S. policy got changed to ‘extraordinary rendition’ and suspects began being shipped, not to the U.S. and into the legal system (as had been done under the Clinton Administration starting in 1998), but we have been “rendering” suspects to other countries for “aggressive” interrogation. All of them countries with records of practicing torture.

The Iraqi government has reported that its new security forces are resorting to the sort of torture and abuses of detainees seen under Saddam Hussein. Far from being the acts of a few rogue low-ranking soldiers or their units, the abuse is being committed at the behest of the government itself - or at least senior officials within it who are the policy makers. Six months ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) laid out a catalogue of alleged abuses being applied to those suspected of terrorism in Iraq, (as well as Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and other detention centers) and called for an independent complaints body in Iraq. What is extraordinary is that despite the increasingly widespread evidence of torture, governments have remained virtually silent.

Do I really need to remind people that this kind of behaviour is what creates terrorists? One might expect me to bring a certain partisan viewpoint to the topic of torture, which considering the fact that this is the United States of America is a sad statement in itself, but my party, the party of the Democrats, doesn’t condone torturing human beings. I’m a disabled veteran of the Cold War. It’s precisely because of my devotion to our country, and my respect for our military, and my commitment to the rights and ethics I served to defend that I speak out against systematic, government-sanctioned torture and excessive abuse of prisoners during this war.

Republicans, it speaks volumes that your Party not only condones the practice of torture, but defends it. Those of you on the Right who, on the one hand, deny that U.S. personnel (and now the Iraqi security forces that we are ‘training’) have engaged in systematic use of torture while, on the other, claim that such abuse is justified, and that it’s “not as bad as Saddam” - as if the comparison is something to be proud of. I have to wonder how anyone in this once-proud nation can defend the torture of human beings, many of whom, judging by the quiet release of so many detainees, appear to be completely innocent of anything.

No matter what horrible things happen that we find out about and report on at Radio News America and at independent media outlets throughout the world, no matter if the evidence is sitting right before the public in photographs and depositions and bodies bearing the marks of viciousness packed in ice for all the world to see, here in America we are surrounded by this smug and ugly arrogance, this self-righteous, ignorant Republican ‘defense’. Even their talk show hosts laugh it off as if it were some kind of college hazing incident.

And can someone please tell me why we are paying for this:

“British and American aid intended for Iraq’s hard-pressed police service is being diverted to paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings,…”

We have, dear readers, broken international law, the Geneva Accords, and even the International Declaration of Human Rights. The American people and our Congress have been lied to regarding the justifications (all 23 of them) for the invasion of Iraq. We don’t even really know who actually flew those planes on 9/11 because 7 of the so-called hijackers have turned up alive and well, having had their identities stolen years before (and that, in itself, is another whole ball of wax that our government is silent about). We’ve got government whistleblowers trying to tell us about national security and how we’re vulnerable, but no one in the Republican-controlled Congress seems to be taking them seriously. Our ports, borders, chemical plants, nuclear power plants, electrical grid, and transportation systems are still not secured, and even now, no one has explained how a handful of terrorists could even be prevented from launching an attack against the U.S. again on our soil, since nothing here has changed and they don’t need to bring in an Army to do it, just as they didn’t on 9/11. We have tortured and even killed those we captured and took prisoner - without filing charges, without granting due process, without providing any avenue of legal recourse - and let quite a few go free after years of detention because they were, apparently, innocent of any crimes. At least two top officials in the White House, one of them possibly Karl Rove, leaked the identity of one of our CIA operatives whose specialty was WMD’s, and now all her contacts and sources overseas are exposed. The CIA kidnapped a suspect from the streets of Italy without that country’s permission and whisked him off to be ‘dealt with’ in a country with a record of torture.

What has become clear over the past five years is that the Bush Administration’s policies are poorly reasoned and extremely shortsighted, of benefit to few and of liability to those who can ill afford them, and although we the People have been assured that there is a ’specific plan’ for everything from Social Security to the never-ending ‘War on Terror’, no member of the public has yet seen any of these ‘plans’ on paper. We get vague speeches and promises, a sharp and steady increase in secrecy and closed government, and we can only hope that such ‘plans’ actually exist. Until then, I’ll be assuming that the various letters and documents on the Project for a New American Century website are the signed confessions for the legal tribunals I hope to see in the future.

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Aine MacDermot is a Tech Editor at, and writes an Op/Ed column for Radio News America. This article also appears there.