Torturing Our Allies

Let's talk about torture again. As I read today's news papers and the many articles about the subject of 'rendition' I found it impossible to avoid the subject of torture. I have listened to numerous administration 'officials' including Ms. Rice, the Vice President, the President as well as many former CIA officials and one thing burns through quite clearly that no one seems to want to say out loud. The act of rendition is intended to simply remove a suspect from a country where laws prohibit the acts which they intend to do to the suspect. That's pretty straightforward. Simply put they want to take the person somewhere where they can torture them and get away with it. They can spin it any way they choose but it adds up to the same thing. I do not understand why the many news organizations don't use plain language when discussing this subject. I do understand why administration officials use vague language or twisted logic and tell ridiculous stories about an environment more suitable to interrogation. This is all ludicrous. The double talk is ludicrous. The simple truth is that they believe in torture. They want to torture terrorist suspects to extract information from them that they think will be useful. First of all information extracted by torture is suspect and most likely not accurate. Secondly, when suspects are put in prisons which are not under U.S. control the information that is received from them, whether accurate or not, is compromised. Additionally, and certainly not of consequence to this administration, the suspect in virtually every case is subject to years of imprisonment where they will not be subjected to the rule of law and their guilt or innocence may never be determined. This is an obviously flawed process.

What the Bush administration apparently fails to understand is that these acts create and untenable situation. Furthermore they fail to understand the damage they are doing through these acts of deceit and flagrant violation of international law and or custom to our international reputation and in general to international cooperation. They fail to see the long term permanent damage they are doing to combating terrorism. The nations of the world grow more wary and less trusting of the United States with each passing day. This administration is wreaking havoc on the world community at every turn. With the exception of perhaps the British this administration speaks of virtually all of our traditional allies with disdain. Why do they speak of our allies this way, because most of our traditional allies saw the folly of the war in Iraq and refused to support it? When President Bush gave his axis of evil speech he caught our allies completely by surprise. After 9/11 the world was with the United States. When we went to war in Afghanistan they were with us because they new that the perpetrators of 9/11 were in Afghanistan and being protected by the Taliban government. They did not sign on to a war in Iraq and they understood that Iraq had nothing to do with harboring Al Qaeda terrorist and nothing to do with 9/11.

It is imperative that the Bush administration immediately cease the practice of rendition and torture and seek to consult with the world community on establishing a uniform and fair way of dealing with the terrorist suspects that takes in consideration of international law and norms of humane treatment of prisoners. We cannot have some bastardized blend of POW/Terrorist/Criminal/Illegal Combatant treatment of these suspects and citizens of other countries. We must have some standard of international law that applies and is recognized by a majority of the nations of the world. The answer may be some version of a Geneva Accords style agreement but it must be an international norm and not a convoluted and bastardized Bushism.

Those Are The Sergeant Majors Thoughts On That.