Some Drama For Obama-- Bush Must Be Charged With Torture Now

I don't have an illusions about Bush and Cheney being shipped off to the Hague for a war crimes trial-- let alone seeing them tried for their criminal regime here in America. But I was actually shocked at the inescapable implications of Eric Holder's testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. He was unequivocal about his belief-- which is in sync with the rest of humanity's-- that waterboarding is torture.

Addressing the subject of torture at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Holder told Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee chairman, “Waterboarding is torture.” It was so defined under the Spanish Inquisition and when used by the Japanese in World War II, he said, and it remains so today.

President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close the prison, a goal Mr. Holder said he shared. “There are possibly many other people who are not going to be able to be tried but who nevertheless are dangerous to this country,” he said. “We’re going to have to try to figure out what to do with them.”

Asked whether a president might have the power to immunize people against criminal charges if they employ waterboarding, which creates a drowning-like sensation, to obtain intelligence to use against terrorists, Mr. Holder answered unambiguously: “Mr. Chairman, no one is above the law.”

And the implication that I'm referring to is that Holder is now obligated, under binding treaties, to file charges against Bush as a war criminal. Obligated. Under the 1984 Torture Convention, all signatories-- and one is the United States-- are under an obligation to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law." The U.S. has agreed to take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. There are no exceptions, especially not for heads of state. I'd bet the house that Holder won't, of course. But that makes him-- even before being sworn in-- an accomplice in Bush's criminality after the fact.

The hypocrites on the Committee, particularly the trash-talking windbag, Snarlin' Arlen Specter (R-PA), would rather dredge up gossip and ignorant innuendo about President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich than delve into serious matters that could embarrass himself and his senatorial colleagues-- on both sides of the aisle-- who acquiesced to the Bush-Cheney torture regime over the past 8 years.

In Geneva, in the spring of 2006, the State Department’s top legal adviser, John B. Bellinger III, told the U.N. Committee Against Torture that there have been “relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing” by U.S. personnel, and that these isolated cases do not reflect widespread abuses. He asked the international committee to “keep a sense of proportion and perspective... Allegations about U.S. military or intelligence activities have become so hyperbolic as to be absurd," he claimed, somewhat disingenuously. "Critics will now accept virtually any speculation and rumor and circulate them as fact.”

Honey dripping from his mouth, Bellinger trumpetted the Bush Regime's "absolute commitment to upholding our national and international obligations to eradicate torture and to prevent cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment worldwide” and he claimed-- with a straight face-- that Bush has made clear that “freedom from torture is an inalienable human right.” Bush? The one who now is working overtime to excuse his own direct participation in activities that clearly violate solemn American treaty obligations to not torture prisoners?

In yesterday's NY Times Eric Etheridge speculated that after Pentagon official Susan Crawford has determined that at least one detainee, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was tortured, Obama can no longer just let bygones be bygones on this matter.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

..."For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.

The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including the Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

On Wednesday, Dahlia Lithwick and Phillipe Sands made the case at Slate that Crawford's statements are a game-changer for Obama's incoming Adminsitration, which, at all costs, wants to avoid, putting any energy into holding Bush accountable for his criminal behavior. They can "no longer hide behind parsing the language of the Geneva Conventions and the torture statute."

It is now imperative that a Special Prosecutor, someone of the stature of Patrick Fitzgerald, be appointed to do an unbiased and systematic investigation into the Bush torture policies. As Glenn Greenwald points out, it would be illegal to not prosecute Bush.



Still time to vote your feelings about Bush. So far: