©2005 UrbisMedia
So now the guy who deserves an executive producer credit for those wonderful photos from Abu Ghraib will likely rise to the chair of Attorney General, or should we make that, Grand Inquisitor. Well, one supposes that it fits the logic of an administration that conducts international policy on the principle that the end justifies the means. We were attacked, and now we are so traumatized that human rights, due process and all the other stuff that we have been harping about to countries from China to, yes, Saddam’s Iraq, is suspended. If you’re a suspect “enemy combatant” you can forget about seeing your lawyer, your family, or even being charged with anything, while you languish in Guantanamo or some other joint. Sure, they got some real rotten dudes in these places, but to the guys from capitol of capital punishment, you just might have to screw of few innocent guys in the process, especially if they “look” like the bad ones.
In his Senate hearing Alberto will doubtless be asked about his infamous memos to the Prez. Especially the memo that included his opinion that laws prohibiting torture do “not apply to the President’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.” It further puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include “injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions—in order to constitute torture.”
In another memo Gonzales said “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war” and “this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.” The memo argues that al Qaeda and Taliban detainees could be exempt from the Geneva Conventions’ provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The administration has insisted that prisoners at Guantanamo are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Not only do these opinions and practices undermine military protocols and endanger our troops if they are captured, but it places any American traveling and working abroad in greater danger. But how should these compare with the concerns woman from a Midwestern state who was interviewed on one of the national news networks last night. She was being interviewed because her son, an American soldier, had been killed in Iraq. With a breaking voice she said we had to invade Iraq and her son had died because [not exactly verbatim] “they would have overwhelmed us” and “I would be wearing a burka” if it wasn’t for his sacrifice.
Hey, it was about that level of hysteria that got the last Inquisition started.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 1.5.2005)