SALON

Thursday, Sep 21, 2006 11:10 AM UTC

Where torture got him

Bush's effort to gut the Geneva Conventions has antagonized the military, split Republicans, and undercut his war on terror.

By

Topics: Torture, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, R-Ariz.,

Where torture got him

President Bush’s torture policy has provoked perhaps the greatest schism between a president and the military in American history, deeper, broader and more fundamental than those of previous presidents with individual generals. Seen from the outside, this battle royal over his abrogation of the Geneva Conventions appears as a shadow war. But since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in June, which decided that Bush’s kangaroo court commissions for detainees “violate both the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] and the four Geneva Conventions,” especially Article 3 forbidding torture, the struggle has been forced more into the open.

After Hamdan, Bush could have simply allowed the Geneva Conventions to stand. Rather, he sought legislation to reinstate his commissions, permitting hearsay — that is, uncorroborated information gathered by torture — and denying the accused the right to know the charges brought against them, or even that they are being tried or being held for life without trial.

On Sept. 6 he made his case for torture, offering as justification the interrogation under what he called an “alternative set of procedures” of an al-Qaida operator named Abu Zubaydah. Bush claimed he was a “senior terrorist leader” who “ran a terrorist camp,” had identified a member of the Hamburg cell, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and provided accurate information about planned terrorist attacks. In fact, Zubaydah was an al-Qaida travel agent (literally, a travel agent), who did not finger al-Shibh (already known), and under torture spun wild scenarios of terrorism to gratify interrogators that proved bogus. Zubaydah, it turns out, is a psychotic with multiple personalities and the intelligence of a child. “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality,” said Dan Coleman, an FBI agent assigned to the bureau’s al-Qaida task force.

Bush’s argument for torture is partly based on the unstated premise that the more sadism, the more intelligence. While he referenced Zubaydah, he did not mention Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, described by the FBI, according to the New Yorker, as “arguably the United States’ most valuable informant on al Qaeda,” and who is wined, dined and housed by the Federal Witness Protection Program.

On the same day that Bush made this speech, Lt. Gen. John F. Kimmons, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, presented the Army’s new field manual on interrogation, which pointedly encoded the Geneva Conventions. Kimmons went out of his way to say, “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive interrogation practices.”

On Sept. 15, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved an alternative to Bush’s proposal, a bill affirming the Geneva Conventions, sponsored by three Republicans with a military background: John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush’s “good soldier,” released a letter denouncing Bush’s version. “The world,” he wrote, “is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” and Bush’s bill “would add to those doubts.” That sentiment was underlined in another letter signed by 38 retired generals and admirals and Powell’s State Department legal counsel, William Taft IV. Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, former commander of the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, appeared on CNN to scourge the administration’s policy as “unlawful,” “wrong” and responsible for Abu Ghraib.

Before the committee vote, the administration had tried to coerce the military’s top lawyers, the judge advocates general, into signing a statement of uncritical support, which they refused to do. The Republican senators opposing Bush’s torture policy had first learned about the military’s profound opposition from the JAGs. For years, the administration has considered the JAGs subversive and tried to eliminate them as a separate corps and substitute neoconservative political appointees.

In the summer of 2004, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Fiscus, the top Air Force JAG and one of the most aggressive opponents of the torture policy, privately informed senators that the administration’s assertion that the JAGs backed Bush on torture was utterly false. Suspicion instantly fell upon Fiscus as the senators’ source. Military investigators were assigned to comb through his e-mails and phone calls, and within weeks he was drummed out under a cloud of anonymous allegations by Pentagon officials of “improper relations” with women. The accusations and his discharge were trumpeted in the press, but his role in the torture debate remained unknown.

Bush had intended to use his post-Hamdan bill to taint Democrats, but instead he has split his own party and further antagonized the military. His standoff on torture threatens to leave no policy whatsoever — and threatens to leave his war on terror in a twilight zone beyond the rule of law.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton, writes a column for Salon and the Guardian of London. His new book is titled "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime." He is a senior fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. More Sidney Blumenthal.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 22 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
383 points384 points | 411 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills -- radical cuts destroy economies and lives, and the honest numbers and economics keep proving it
189 points190 points | 27 comments
vote
Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain wants to send women to jail who don't report their miscarriages to the police
143 points144 points | 21 comments
vote
Corporate greed is poisoning America — literally
109 points110 points | 15 comments
vote
Facebook “like” on trial in Virginia
26 points27 points | 6 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations