Peace and Justice Post

By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal Contributing Writer | Online Journal, Apr 22, 2009

Imagine this! One day, you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. You are kidnapped by a foreign intelligence agency, strip-searched, hooded, blindfolded, handcuffed and shackled before being flown to an incarceration centre. Once there, you are interrogated about subjects and individuals you know nothing about. You loudly proclaim your innocence but your interrogators become angry.

Before long, you suffer the indignity of enforced nudity, which may painfully violate your religious or cultural beliefs. Perhaps you are stuffed into a tiny dark space in which you cannot stand. All you want to do is sleep but every time you close your eyes you are dowsed with cold water. This goes on for up to 120 hours.

If you are still unable to tell them what they want to know, you are deprived of food, slapped, made to hold painful stress positions for hours on end, such as kneeling while leaning back at a 45-degree angle, and if you have a phobia concerning insects you will be placed into a box with one. You might be prevented from visiting the bathroom and made to wear nappies.

Lastly, you will be subjected to a process that simulates drowning, whereby you feel your very life is ebbing away — waterboarding. Imagine that you endure this suffering for seven years and all the while you are being told that you will never ever be free or free of it.

All the above was authorised by the Bush administration’s Justice Department. In reality, detainees endured far worse under George W. Bush’s watch with the White House’s full knowledge.

In many cases, the lives of their wives and children were threatened.

There are even reports that children were imprisoned, interrogated and tortured with insects to force them to disclose the whereabouts of their fathers. Remember, too, that the vast majority of prisoners were — and are being — locked up without a shred of evidence against them.

Let me ask you something. If, God forbid, you were in their place and were lucky enough to be eventually released, do you think your life would ever return to normal? Or do you anticipate that your mental, emotional, perhaps even physical existence would be scarred forever?

Having read through the so-called ‘torture memos,’ it seems that Justice Department officials did not consider any of the above-mentioned practices ‘torture’ because, according to them, any harm derived from their use was transient rather than prolonged. Who are they trying to kid?

Kudos to US President Barack Obama for authorising the release of the memos, which was his way of admitting what most people around the world already knew: during the preceding eight years, the superpower has made severe mistakes.

Acknowledgment is the first step to recovery but is this enough? Obama is against prosecuting those responsible for breaching the spirit of the United Nations Convention against Torture or other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as the United States Code and the US Constitution. “Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” he says.

Obama simply wants to close this ugly chapter and move on. But he’s wrong.

Anyone who commits a crime whether he or she be a shoplifter, a rapist, a paedophile, a murderer, a war criminal or a torturer should be made to face repercussions. Nobody should be exempt in the name of ‘moving on.’ Based on that principle, what is the Simon Wiesenthal Centre doing chasing after an 89-year-old former Nazi camp guard, as well as attempting to locate the body of Aribert Heim, dubbed ‘Dr Death,’ so as to dig it up?

In this case, not only have innocents and their families been irreparably harmed and America’s standing in the world along with them, it sets a precedent for future administrations. At the very least, those responsible should be made to make a public apology so that this kind of thing can never happen again.

Obama wants to ensure that CIA operatives who followed orders are immune from prosecution and while I can sympathise with their plight, the same did not apply to those SS officers who followed orders during the Second World War, and rightly so.

It’s not that I am comparing the severity of Nazi atrocities to the actions of Western intelligence services or contractors but, if you think about it, you’ll find that the principle is the same.

There is no excuse for the torturing and degradation of human beings, which harms not only the victim but also the soul of the torturer. It also opens the door for our enemies to torture us. Besides, it doesn’t work because anyone who is tortured will say just about anything to stop the pain. Moreover, evidence gleaned from torture is not accepted by most courts of law.

President Obama, thanks for the truth but where’s the accountability? For without that, there’s little hope of forgiveness or reconciliation.

Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.

Google News

AFP

OSLO — Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials could face legal action in Norway over the Gaza offensive after six Norwegian lawyers said Tuesday they would accuse them of war crimes.

The lawyers, who plan to file their complaint with Norway’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday, said they will call for the arrest and extradition of Olmert as well as former foreign affairs minister Tzipi Livni, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and seven senior Israeli army officers.

Under the Norwegian penal code, courts may hear cases involving war crimes and other major violations of human rights.

The lawyers released a statement accusing Israel of “massive terrorist attacks” in the Gaza Strip from December 27 last year to January 25, killing civilians, illegally using weapons against civilian targets and deliberately attacking hospitals and medical staff.

“There can be no doubt that these subjects knew about, ordered or approved the actions in Gaza and that they had considered the consequences of these actions,” the lawyers’ statement said.

It also said the lawyers were representing a number of people living in Norway.

“It involves three people of Palestinian origin living in Norway and 20 families who lost loved ones or property during the attack,” one of the lawyers, Kjell Brygfjeld, told AFP.

When questioned on the chances of the case reaching court, fellow lawyer Harald Stabell said: “If we do nothing, it is more likely that a similar attack will happen again in the future.”

“In our eyes, the political aspect is less important than the preventive aspect,” he added when asked if the move could hinder Norwegian diplomacy in the region.

Israel’s embassy in Oslo said they were unaware of the lawyers’ attempt to bring the war crimes charges and could not immediately comment.

Israel said the aim of the Gaza offensive was to stop Islamist militants there from firing rockets into their territory.

Gaza medics said 1,300 Palestinians died during the attacks.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved

AP – President Barack Obama gestures during his meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan, not shown, Tuesday, …

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost “our moral bearings” with use of the tactics.

The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods “is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don’t want to prejudge that,” Obama said. The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished an Oval Office meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Obama also said he could support a congressional investigation into the Bush-era terrorist detainee program, but only under certain conditions, such as if it were done on a bipartisan basis. He said he worries about the impact that high-intensity, politicized hearings in Congress could have on the government’s efforts to cope with terrorism.

The president had said earlier that he didn’t want to see prosecutions of the CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, so long as they acted within parameters spelled out by government superiors who held that such practices were legal at the time.

But the administration’s stance on Bush administration lawyers who actually wrote the memos approving these tactics has been less clear and Obama declined to make it so. “There are a host of very complicated issues involved,” Obama said.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a television interview over the weekend that the administration does not support prosecutions for “those who devised policy.” Later, White House aides said that he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them.

The president took a question on the volatile subject for the first time since he ordered the Justice Department to release top-secret Bush-era memos that gave the government’s first full accounting of the CIA’s use of waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning — and other harsh methods criticized as torture. The previously classified memos were released Thursday, over the objections of many in the intelligence community. CIA Director Leon Panetta had pressed for heavier censorship when they were released, but the memos were put out with only light redactions.

Far from putting the matter in the past, the move has resulted in Obama being buffeted by increased pressure from both sides.

Republican lawmakers and former CIA chiefs have criticized Obama’s decision, contending that revealing the limits of interrogation techniques will hamper the effectiveness of interrogators and critical U.S. relationships with foreign intelligence services.

The release also has appeared to intensify calls for further investigations of the Bush-era terrorist treatment program and for prosecutions of those responsible for any techniques that crossed the line into torture.

Obama banned all such techniques days after taking office. But members of Congress have continued to seek the release of information about the early stages of the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror under former President George W. Bush. Lawsuits have been brought, seeking the same information.

Obama said an investigation might be acceptable “outside of the typical hearing process” and with the participation of “independent participants who are above reproach.” This, he said, could help ensure that any investigation would be a tool to learn, not to provide partisan advantage to one side or another.

“That would probably be a more sensible approach to take,” Obama said. “I’m not saying that it should be done, I’m saying that if you’ve got a choice.”

The president made clear that his preference would be not to revisit the era extensively.

“As a general view, I do think we should be looking forward, not back,” Obama said. “I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations.”

By George McGovern | Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2009

President Obama holds my admiration with high hopes for his message of change in Washington. It is puzzling, however, that he has adopted most of the previous administration’s formula for dragging out the withdrawal of our troops from the mistaken war in Iraq for nearly three more years. Very little “change” here.

Three years ago, public opinion polls indicated that a majority of Americans believed our policymakers were wrong in ordering troops into Iraq. It is widely accepted that this sentiment more than any other factor in the 2006 congressional elections resulted in Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate.

Are we now going to ignore for another three years the public mandate of 2006 against this costly, preemptive war based on deceit? And how can we justify putting thousands more U.S. troops into Afghanistan? We have already exhausted our treasury. We are also close to exhausting our soldiers.

Can there be any doubt that the enormous war cost has contributed to the financial crisis here at home? The expense of waging two Middle East wars, plus the loss of revenue caused by the previous administration’s tax cuts, have skyrocketed the national debt to a record high. Do we ever consider what the interest alone is on our $10-trillion national debt — much of it paid to China?

Frankly, we cannot afford a two-war commitment year after year if we want to balance the federal budget and restore our economy. The huge bonuses that directors of failing corporations have awarded themselves and their chief executives have rightfully angered people, but those figures are peanuts compared with the $12 billion a month we have poured into Iraq and Afghanistan over the last six years.

Has either the great God above or his creatures here below designated us to run the Middle East? What do we say to the Iraqi people who have indicated overwhelmingly in several polls that they want U.S. troops out of their country now? Why would we not understand this sentiment considering that our military equipment has smashed Iraqi homes, public buildings and infrastructure, including electricity and running water?

Of course, the most painful cost of these wars is the deaths of more than 4,200 brave American troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. This is to say nothing of the decline of our political judgment and moral standing in the world.

The Obama administration recommends we leave 50,000 troops in Iraq to “police” that troubled country through 2011. There may well be flare-ups that will keep them there indefinitely, struggling to police the war-induced chaos.

In June 1950, President Truman ordered our troops into Korea, stating it would only be a brief police action that did not require a declaration of war. Three years later and after 38,000 American soldiers had been killed, the new American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of Allied forces in World War II, promptly ended our involvement in the Korean War, to the relief of our combat soldiers and the American public.

Unfortunately, Washington left 40,000 American soldiers behind to police the 38th Parallel — for a brief time. Yet, more than 50 years later, nearly 30,000 American troops are still in South Korea. So much for brief police actions.

Our policymakers in Washington contend that we must maintain U.S. troops in the Middle East to curb terrorism. I strongly believe that it is our military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East that is driving terrorism against the United States. No country that longs for national sovereignty wants a foreign army in its midst. We taught that lesson to the British Empire in 1776 when George Washington and his ragtag guerrilla army drove the British military from our shores.

My generation has lived through half a dozen wars, beginning with World War II and then Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and several smaller conflicts. The only one of those wars I really believed in and still do was the U.S. participation in World War II, in which I served as a combat bomber pilot against Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

I believe we aging veterans have an obligation to share what we have learned with the American people and with our young president, who seems open to well-meant suggestions.

In that spirit, I urge President Obama to bring our troops home from the Middle East this year. A good target date for completing an orderly withdrawal from two ill-conceived and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be Thanksgiving 2009.

For our sake and God’s sake, let’s get out of there and begin healing our own bankrupted land.

George McGovern is a former presidential candidate and senator from South Dakota.