Another Reason Torture's Immoral

I start today with the P-G's Tony Norman:

Last week, video footage of four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban fighters went viral. With the exception of a handful of morally dead ideologues on the right, the reaction to the video was one of revulsion at home and fury abroad.

As Americans, we were reminded that just because we choose not to pay attention to the war in Afghanistan, we share moral complicity for wars fought in our name. The callousness of the four Marines wasn't unprecedented. Relative to the toll on civilian lives in three countries because of American drone attacks, public urination on enemy corpses pales in comparison as a war crime.

In a widely read essay in The Washington Post, war correspondent Sebastian Junger astutely pointed out that a "19-year-old Marine has a very hard time reconciling the fact that it's OK to waterboard a live Taliban fighter but not OK to urinate on a dead one."

While Tony spends more time pointing out this nation's faith-based hypocrisy:

It is a sign of how decadent much of American Christianity has become: A candidate who enthusiastically condones assassination is the same man who 150 "Christian" leaders have decided best exemplifies the Christian values they want to see at work in the White House. Where does Jesus Christ fit in this scenario?

Sebastian Junger, in that essay Tony referenced, touches more on the sociological impacts of two administrations accommodation of torture:

When the war on terror started, the Marines in that video were probably 9 or 10 years old. As children they heard adults — and political leaders — talk about our enemies in the most inhuman terms. The Internet and the news media are filled with self-important men and women referring to our enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries like Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have recently condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions — achieved through torture — will not stand up in court.

For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad — not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is okay to torture the living.

From The Geneva Conventions, Chapter 2 Article 15 on the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field:

At all times, and particularly after an engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled.

I'd say pissing on some dead enemy combatants certainly qualifies as "despoiled."

Legality aside (as if that's possible here) I want to emphasize another downside of allowing the Bush-endorsed waterboarding to go unpunished or even unprosecuted (as the Obama Administration is doing): it desensitizes us to all other "paler" war crimes.  War crimes done in our name.  Some with our grudging acquiescence.

To feel like we're protecting our safety, we despoil ourselves.

No longer the city on the hill.  No longer on the high moral ground.  Look at us.  Look at what they make you give.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum The War On Christmas Returns!

But the facts are, of course, obscured (this is the Trib, remember).  Take a look at The Trib op-ed page today:

The Obama administration surely should have second thoughts about imposing -- by executive fiat, under a 1996 federal law -- a tax on fresh-cut Christmas trees that defies logic.

Quick criticism led the Obama Agriculture Department to delay a new 15-cent tax on each Christmas tree sold by producers who sell more than 500 annually. The revenue would fund a new, image- and sales-enhancing Christmas Tree Promotion Board.

Yet, as David S. Addington writes for The Heritage Foundation blog, The Foundry, "the American Christmas tree has a great image that doesn't need any help from the government." That said, why is the government involved at all?

The National Christmas Tree Association, which wants the tax and the promotion board, says real trees overwhelmingly outsold fake trees, their only real competition, in 2010 -- 27 million, worth $976 million at retail, vs. 8.2 million, worth $530 million -- and the economy has little effect on real trees' sales.

For some reality based faced framework, let's first go to Jake Tapper at ABC and see where it leads:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to delay implementation and revisit a proposed new 15 cent fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees, sources tell ABC News. The fee, requested by the National Christmas Tree Association in 2009, was first announced in the Federal Registry yesterday and has generated criticism of President Obama from conservative media outlets.

Let's go take a look at that link. That'll be what the NCTA has to say. Take a look:

The program is designed to benefit the industry and will be funded by the growers at a rate of 15 cents per tree sold. The program will be administered by an independent 12-member board of small business owners who grow and sell farm-grown Christmas trees and they will be responsible for developing and approving promotional and research efforts to benefit the entire industry. The program is not expected to have any impact on the final price consumers pay for their Christmas tree. The funds collected after this season will be used to develop promotion and research programs for the 2012 season. [Underline/bold in original.]

And it's not exactly a "tax" in that it's not intended to raise funds for the guv'ment - the growers of the trees come up with $.15/per tree.  And  the what was supposed to happen to that money?  Here's a clue from the NCTA:

This program was developed under the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996. There are at least 18 other similar programs already in effect for various agricultural commodities. Although smaller in scope, the Christmas tree program will be similar to recognizable programs for milk, cotton and beef that have brought consumers commodity-oriented messages such as “Got Milk?” and “Beef, It’s what’s for dinner.”

But is any of that true?  Yes, it is - from the Federal Register:

This rule establishes an industry-funded promotion, research, and information program for fresh cut Christmas trees. The Christmas Tree Promotion, Research, and Information Order (Order), was submitted to the Department of Agriculture (Department) by the Christmas Tree Checkoff Task Force (Task Force), an industry wide group of producers and importers that support this program. Under the Order, producers and importers of fresh cut Christmas trees will pay an initial assessment of $0.15 cents per tree, which would be paid to the Christmas Tree Promotion Board (Board). This Board will be responsible for administration and operation of the Order. Producers and importers that produce or import less than 500 Christmas trees annually will be exempt from the assessment. The program is authorized under the Commodity Promotion, Research, and Information Act of 1996 (1996 Act).

An industry funded promotional board that isn't expected to raise the price of a Christmas Tree to fund a promotional campaign along the lines of those "Got Milk?" ads.  OF COURSE it's because Obama hates America and he wants his heartless bureaucrats to raise taxes on everyone - AT CHRISTMASTIME.

There are two points to this op-ed that I haven't raised yet.  Did you see where the initial report came from?

David S Addington at the Heritage Foundation.

The same Heritage Foundation that's taken tens of millions in Scaife money.  But that's not the big point.  You remember David Addington, don't you?

• Approver of Torture by memo
• Approver of Torture after observing it
• Denier of Geneva Conventions
• Supporter of Illegal Domestic Surveillance

Yea, that David Addington.

Good to see they got him writing about Christmas Trees because when he's written about stuff that matters, he shreds democracy.

Why Hasn't Cheney Been Arrested?

From Realclearpolitics:

[NBC's Jamie] Gangel: "A conservative hero the his fans, Darth Vader to his critics, Cheney 's book is an unapologetic defense to his Vice Presidency and the controversial programs he's championed after 9/11. In your view, we should still be using enhanced interrogation?"

Cheney: "Yes."

Gangel: "Should we still be waterboarding terror suspects?

Cheney: "I would strongly support using it again if we had a high-value detainee, that was the only way we could get him to talk."

Gangel: "People call it torture. you think it should still be a tool?"

Cheney: "Yes."

Ok, ok, ok. Let me stop the "unbiased" Gangel right there. People don't call waterboarding torture. The Law calls waterboarding torture. US and International Law:

• United States Code Title 18, §2340(2)
• The UN Conventions Against Torture
• The Geneva Convention Relative To The Treatment of Prisoners Of War

In fact what Cheney said goes directly against the UN Conventions:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. [emphasis added.]

Ah, the joys of an "unbiased" interviewer! By putting it in "People call it..." rather than "The law says..." frame, she gets Cheney is off at least one rhetorical hook. Why couldn't she just say it was illegal (not to mention immoral and counterproductive)?

And that being the case, why isn't Dick Cheney in jail?

For that, I guess, we have our disappointing President to thank.

Doesn't change the fact that waterboarding is torture and torture is a war crime and George Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals.

More On Bush's War Crimes

From Truthout.org:

On January 25, 2002, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised George W. Bush in a memo to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protections under the Geneva Conventions because doing so would "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" and "provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated February 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention. That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to "considering aggressive techniques," which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.

And we all know what happened after that.

By the way from the same article, a few paragraphs later:

The Supreme Court held in 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the prisoners were entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

So I guess AG Gonzales was...wrong?

Prosecute the war crimes.

More Republicans Repudiate The Bush Doctrine

From the Washington Post today.

Let's set up the authors' conservative bona fides, shall we? This is the piece's first sentence:

One of us was appointed commandant of the Marine Corps by President Ronald Reagan; the other served as a lawyer in the Reagan White House and has vigorously defended the constitutionality of warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps, presidential signing statements and many other controversial aspects of the war on terrorism.

I'm not much of a fan of those last points, but I don't have to be. The first sentence settles these two as anything but your run of the mill Democrats. It's the second sentence of the piece that I found most intriguing:

But we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come.

Intruiging because of what that decision was.

Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to "interpret" Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Convention] with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program "fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3," provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency."

Sounds kinda complicated, so the authors of this piece sum things up.

In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse."

So you can add "war crimes" to the long list of dubya's presidential sins (it's been on my list since the first civilian casualty in the so-called "Shock and Awe" phase of the his bloody war) as well as "rogue nation."

Wasn't this the crowd that was going to restore dignity to the White House? Weren't they going to restore law and order to a formerly lawless (or so they said) White House?

Guess again.