Columnist Bill Press nails his comments about Bush

The Torture PresidentSeptember 21, 2006

It’s not what most presidents would choose as their claim to fame. Bill Clinton wanted to be known as “the environmental president.” George H.W. Bush, “the education president.” But George W. Bush wants history to remember him as “the torture president.” In fact, he’s already earned the title, hands down.

One thing you can say about President Bush: He has no shame. In a White House speech, the president admitted operating a network of secret prisons in torture-friendly countries around the world where CIA agents “interrogate” suspected terrorists. At the same time, he called on Congress to create an exception to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions so that CIA agents could continue torturing prisoners with impunity. And he proposed legislation setting up secret military trials where prisoners could be tried, convicted and sentenced without ever seeing the evidence against them or being given a chance to defend themselves — legislation George Bush borrowed right from the pages of the Soviet gulag.
Of course, Bush doesn’t ask outright for the authority to torture. He claims he’s just seeking “legal clarity,” so the CIA knows what’s permitted and what’s not under the Geneva Conventions. Baloney. The Geneva Conventions clearly prohibit “outrages against personal dignity” and “humiliating and degrading treatment.” What’s so fuzzy about that?
Clearly, that prohibition excludes such interrogation techniques as water-boarding; prolonged sleep deprivation; use of attack dogs; forced sexual humiliation; “long-standing,” in which prisoners are handcuffed in an uncomfortable standing position and forced to remain there for up to 40 hours; and “cold cell,” in which detainees are held naked in near-freezing temperatures and repeatedly doused with cold water. The CIA uses all of these today, under the rubric “special interrogation techniques,” even though we condemned them as torture when practiced by the Soviet KGB.

Indeed, that’s the rub with condoning torture as a means of gathering information. If it’s good enough for us, it’s good enough for Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, China or whatever other country may someday capture American prisoners of war. Here, as on so many other issues, the Golden Rule applies: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As a Christian, George Bush ought to know that.

On torture, one other rule also applies: Don’t believe anything you learn by attaching electric wires to a man’s genitals. President Bush claims the CIA, using torture, has gained valuable information that has saved lives. While he provides no evidence to back it up, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

In his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” Ron Suskind relates how Abu Zubaydah — one of the terrorist suspects recently transferred to Guantanamo Bay — was tortured by the CIA in 2002. Zubaydah soon warned of imminent attacks on American shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants and apartment buildings. John Ashcroft raised the color code. Extra police were dispatched to every mall. Nothing happened. It was all a pack of lies. CIA officers concluded Zubaydah was insane.

And then there’s the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian businessman seized by the CIA while changing planes at JFK and held for 12 days before being flown to Syria, imprisoned for 10 months and tortured — whereupon the CIA discovered they had the wrong guy. Do we need further proof that what George Bush wants is just plain wrong?
Fortunately, there’s a handful of Republican senators, led by John McCain and Lindsey Graham, willing to stand up to the president. Unfortunately, they’re a minority in their own party. Most spineless Republicans, it appears, will either rubber-stamp whatever Bush wants or try to work out a “compromise.”

What are they thinking? Surely, this is one issue where no compromise is acceptable. The United States should not have secret prisons. Period. The United States should not torture prisoners of war. Period. The United States should not hold secret trials. Period. To suggest anything else is to ignore what this country stands for.
As former Secretary of State Colin Powell warns, Bush’s call for a green light on torture carries grave consequences for the United States: “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts.”

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