by Nat Hentoff
Torture as Foreign Policy
The House Republican leadership authorizes torture in our war against
terrorism
October 22nd, 2004 6:15 PM

“Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country.
We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never
order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not
a part of our soul and our being.” George W. Bush, June 22, 2004, after
the photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were made public

“Republicans in the House apparently think that torture done quietly
for us by others is something that not only shouldn't be challenged,
but actually should be encouraged as long as it's done discreetly.”
óCongressman Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, The Boston
Globe, October 6, 2004

There has been much talk of values during the presidential campaign,
and from the president, the doctrine that exporting the ideals and
practice of constitutional freedom can bring liberty to parts of the
world afflicted by tyrannical regimes.

However, on October 8, the House Republican leadershipówith Speaker
Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay in chargeórolled over the
Democrats to pass the 9-11 Recommendations Implementation Act, H.R. 10,
ostensibly to enact recommendations by the bipartisan, independent 9-11
Commission to actually make our intelligence apparatus live up to its
name.

As draftedówith no input at all from the Democratsósection 3032 of the
bill empowers the secretary of homeland security to remove "certain
aliens," including those on American soil, from the protections of the
international Covenant Against Torture (which the U.S. signed) when the
secretary finds those "aliens" a danger to the U.S.

Thenódig thisósection 3033 gives this imperious secretary of homeland
security the right to deport an "alien" to "any country whose
government will accept the alien into that country"óregardless of
whether the foreign person is a citizen of that country or has ever
been there.

This means, as debate in the House conclusively confirmed, that this
person detained by us can be sent to countries that torture their
prisoners, so that the torturers can extract information from them that
our interrogators can't. And some of these detainees have no U.S.
charges against them.

As noted here before, these "extraordinary renditions," as they're
known in the torture trade, have already been conducted secretly by the
CIA. On October 6, 2004, Shaun Waterman of United Press International
noted that "at present, the procedure is carried out in a covert,
extra-legal fashion by CIA operatives in chartered Gulfstream jets . .
.

"U.S. law [until now] explicitly prohibits the deportation or removal
of people from the United States to countries . . . where there is a
reasonable expectation they might be tortured . . . " (Emphasis added.)

While the House approved violating that rule of law, the Senate passed
a 9-11 recommendations act without a torture provision. As of this
writing, a House-Senate conference committee will decide whether
torture stays in the final bill. If it does, America will tell the
world that torture is a weapon we righteously use against terrorism.

Americans have been repelled by Al Qaeda's beheading of its captives
in Iraq, but the House Republican leadership does not flinch at sending
our captives to be torturedóthough presumably not beheaded, since they
have to be sent back to us with their "confessions."

In the House, the opposition leader against this official, brutal
revision of what the president called our "values, "our soul," "our
being" has been Edward Markey. Markey had previously introduced a bill,
hardly noticed by the media, that would have forbidden any rendition of
anybody under American control to countries that torture.

Now, Markey said on the floor of the House (October 7) during the
debate on the torture sections of H.R. 10: "It's outrageous that these
provisions have been snuck into the 9-11 bill behind closed doors when
the 9-11 Commission specifically called for the United States to 'offer
an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people
humanely, abide by the law . . . ' Nothing could be farther from the
9-11 Commission's intent."

It should also be noted that in addition to violating the
international convention against torture, Bush's leader in the House
broke our own law, section 2242 of the 1998 Foreign Affairs Reform and
Restructuring Act, which says the policy of the United States is "not
to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any
person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for
believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture,
regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United
States"óor had been captured by the CIA in another country.

Among others opposing American involvement in torture are the American
Civil Liberties Union, the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, members of
the 9-11 Commission itself, the American Bar Association, Human Rights
First, Freedom House, and Amnesty International. A joint statement
signed by some of these groups emphasizes that the torture provisions
"undermine the credibility of U.S. efforts to promote human rights and
democracy in the Arab world, which President Bush has identified as a
key element in the Administration's long-term strategy to combat
terrorism . . . "

Before the vote on October 8, John Ashcroft's Justice Department
supported the torture provisions, but the White House said the
president did not. However, Bush gave no indication that he would veto
H.R. 10 if the torture sections remained. Next week: a last-minute
Republican trick in the House to get the president off the hook with an
amendment that allows the permanent imprisonment of detainees here
without due processóor the sending of them to countries that torture,
if we get assurance they won't be tortured there. The first part is
unconstitutional; the second part is fraudulent.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0443/hentoff.php

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