Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Torture threshold. posted by Richard Seymour
How much more are we going to have to listen to? For how long do they think they can continue to insult our intelligence? "We," says President Bush, "do not torture". "Renditions", says Condoleeza Rice, "take terrorists out of action and save lives." And worst of all, the weasel words of Jack Straw: "all European countries fully share the determination expressed here by the US to protect our citizens from the threat of terrorism, clearly while operating within international law and our treaty obligations ... Secretary Rice's reply makes clear that US policy is to comply with the UN convention against torture".Forget, for a second, that the United States does in fact torture as a matter of daily course, and that most European states have in fact done so and probably continue to employ all kinds of brutality themselves: we are being asked to consider the peculiar matter of renditions, and whether or not the US would allow the people it has unlawfully abducted to be harmed in any way by any of the nasty non-Western states to which the captives are being rendered. Condoleeza Rice insists that the US does not condone torture, and abides by its laws and treaty obligations. Further, "It is important that all of us that are fighting the war on terrorism remind ourselves and our publics that we have an obligation to protect ourselves and our people".
You would think, would you not, that self-awareness would intrude at some point. The Bush administration has just gone to enormous efforts to persuade the Senate to exempt the CIA from a bill outlawing "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment" (torture, in other words). Meanwhile, the CIA keeps prisoners in "dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them". There, they use "enhanced" interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, near-freezing, sleep-deprivation and physical abuse. Add to this the illegal abductions, 'black' sites, 'invisible' flights, indefinite detention without trial or evidence, and isn't it jaw-droppingly obvious that the US government considers its law, and those of the UN, with about as much contempt as it does the bulk of humanity? How about its contemptous response to the torture in Abu Ghraib, or Rumsfeld's disgusting remarks about the people being imprisoned without evidence or trial in Guantanamo?
Okay, well think about this. Remember this guy:

His name is Manadel al-Jamadi, and he's dead now, because he was tortured to death by a CIA agent named Mark Swanner. He was tortured by a method known as Palestinian hanging, known as such because Israel often does this to Palestinians. Your hands are bound behind your back, and then you are hung from the binds. Al-Jamadi's ribs snapped, and his chest was crushed as he dangled in that fashion in a shower room. When the restraints were released, witness Sgt. Jeffery Frost said that blood gushed from his mouth "as if a faucet had been turned on". And I guess you understand the sense of triumph and joy on the face of Spc Sabrina Harman there as she gives the thumbs up: it's quite an achievement to watch a man be tortured to death, and then be able to crouch over his iced body like that. The entire operation in Abu Ghraib was conducted by military intelligence, on the basis of a Pentagon plan.
And Washington dispatches Condoleeza Rice to ask the world to "trust" that the US does not permit human rights abuses. The denial is so feeble, and Rice's silence about the secret European prisons so conspicuous, that I suspect what is really happening is that the US government is sending a very potent and very pungent message to the world.