There is a stunning fact in Mark Danner’s gruesomely truthful article about American torture in the 9 April 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books. According a former director of the CIA (it’s hard to tell which one, presumably either Tenet or Hayden), no prisoner in CIA custody has been subjected to torture by waterboarding since 2003. That is to say that no prisoner has, since 2003, been held upside down while water is poured into his head to force his mind and body to react as though he were being violently drowned. It is a telling fact in a vital article, but we’ll get to that in a moment, first, the background.
Danner has acquired a copy of a report given to the American government in 2007 by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The report states, in no uncertain terms, that American detainees were tortured in CIA black sites (prisons which did not officially exist and at which torture could be practiced). Danner quotes extensively from the report in a podcast available at the Review’s website:
The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that in many cases the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constitutes torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Who is making these allegations? The fourteen prisoners who were ceremonially transferred from the black sites to the Guantanamo gulag in the late summer of 2006. But, a skeptical American might say, these men were high value terrorists, might they be lying or exaggerating as a way to embarrass or degrade the United States? Well, no. As Danner documents, the tortures these men describe came to light during separate, individual interviews with the Red Cross. They had been captured at different times and in different places, they had been held in isolation and had no chance to communicate with each other; yet their descriptions of American torture match up nearly perfectly. In short, they’ve got their story straight and since they had no chance to straighten it amongst themselves they must be telling the truth.
Well, says the skeptical American who’d still like to disbelieve, who are these Red Cross fellows? Might they be wobbly-kneed Eurotrash with an ax to grind against Washington and Bush the Younger? Again, no. This is the International Committee of the Red Cross, they have no political agenda, they are legally bound to monitor the treatment of prisoners and they are as neutral and apolitical as it gets. For proof of this one need look no further than last summer’s rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and fourteen other hostages in Columbia. The Columbian president had to apologize to the Red Cross when a member of their intelligence services wore a Red Cross t-shirt, against orders, during the operation. That’s how seriously the apolitical neutrality of the organization is taken; even accidentally impersonating one of their employees is a treaty violation and worthy of a public apology by a sitting (and popular) head of state. These charges cannot be dismissed as biased or unfounded.
What’s more, the ICRC aren’t the only ones who understood this to be torture. Consider two other facts; thanks to the ACLU we now know that in November of 2005 the CIA destroyed 92 video tapes totaling unknown hundreds of hours of interrogation, including torture. Second, that torture by waterboarding was discontinued as early as 2003. Now recall the political conditions in 2003 and 2005. The former was the height of the torture regime (the abuses at Abu Ghraib hadn’t even come out yet) but it was clear enough even then that what was happening was illegal. The procedure was stopped. By late 2005 the American legal system had begun to reassert itself and it was becoming apparent that punishments for law breaking were a very real possibility. That’s when the tapes were destroyed.
If you set aside the details it’s the exact same path all government abuse of power scandals follow. Crimes are committed because, hey we have authorization and we’ll never get caught anyway. Uh oh, we’d better stop doing this because we’ve done a lot of illegal stuff and there’s evidence to prove it. Oh shit, now people are asking questions, we’d better destroy the evidence to save our own skin. It goes from A to B to C as formulaic as any serial drama.
This all leaves Barack Obama and the rest of his government in a delicate condition. Torture cannot be concealed, too many facts are already known and there are likely more waiting to come to light. Torture cannot be ignored, too many laws were openly violated for everyone to simply look the other way. It has been heartening to note that between the election and now the general tenor of the conversation about this topic has shifted from “Are we going to do anything?” to “What are we going to do?” but that optimism cannot change the fact that nothing has been done yet.
In the end, and like so much else these days, it comes down to Obama himself. Referring to Bush the Younger’s speech on prisoners and torture of 6 September 2006, Danner writes:
I watched him stare straight into the camera and with fierce concentration and exaggerated emphasis intone once more: “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it-and I will not authorize it.” He had convinced himself, I thought, of the truth of what he said.
This speech, though not much noticed at the time, will stand, I believe, as George W. Bush’s most important: perhaps the only “historic” speech he ever gave. In telling his version of Abu Zubaydah’s story, and versions of the stories of Khaled Shaik Mohammed and others, the President took hold of many things that were already known but not acknowledged and, by means of the alchemical power of the leader’s voice, transformed them into acknowledged facts. He also, in his fervent defense of his government’s “alternative set of procedures” and his equally fervent denials that they constituted “torture,” set out before the country and the world the dark moral epic of the Bush administration, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still.
Obama cannot turn back the clock, but he – and only he – can acknowledge what was done and put the United States back on the path to the moral high ground. He must do this not only for the rest of the world, but for us as well. As Danner notes, torture can be a popular position because it is often portrayed, utterly fictionally, as an anguished American doing what is necessary to save lives. But that is not the reality of torture, as the ICRC report amply demonstrates; the reality is wasteful, destructive and horrifying.
The alchemical power is now Barack Obama’s, with the economy in the shape that it is and his budget, energy and health care plans in need of support it is understandable if he waits for a better moment than now to use it. But this American wound, self inflicted like so many others by Bush the Younger, will not heal until a President looks into the camera and speaks the truth about it.
