G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Tomgram: Karen Greenberg on Bush Policy Detained in Iran
By Tom Engelhardt
Created Jun 19 2007 - 8:57am
Just when you think the roiling relations between the U.S. and Iran might be
quieting down -- they heat up again. In the last week, while two U.S.
aircraft-carrier strike forces continued to patrol the Persian Gulf (after
"exercises" that took the carriers directly through the Straits of Hormuz
[1] and off Iran's coast), American accusations against the Iranians have
only escalated. Just as, last month, American officials continued to insist
that the Iranians were supplying [2] sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraqi
insurgents (who are the enemies of their Shiite allies), so, this week,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "tied Iran's government [3] to large
shipments of weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan and said Wednesday such
quantities were unlikely without Tehran's knowledge."
Similarly, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN: "[T]here's
irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this." (Forget the fact that
the Iranians have long been fierce enemies of the Taliban and that the
Afghan Defense Minister dismissed such claims [4] out of hand.) In Baghdad,
General David Petraeus, head of President Bush's surge operation, also
lashed out [5] at the Iranians. ("The Iranian influence has been very, very
harmful to Iraq. There is absolutely no question that Iranians are funding,
arming, training, and even in some cases, directing the activities of
extremists and militia elements.") And three Iranian diplomats [6] were
briefly detained and questioned by the U.S. military.
For the Bush administration, it seems, Iran has become the explanation for
everything that has gone wrong (even, last week, in the Gaza Strip), the
equivalent of Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire reduced to a regional scale.
According to Brian Ross of ABC News, the CIA has already helped launch
secret terror operations [7] inside Iran and President Bush has signed [8] a
"non-lethal presidential finding" to "mount a covert 'black' operation to
destabilize the Iranian government." In addition, the administration has
been waging a complex, partly covert, "financial war" [9] against Iran.
("The aim is to squeeze the Iranian economy so that the nation's leaders
will decide the price of developing nuclear weapons is just too high."); and
it also has a $75 million fund at its command to "promote democracy" or a
"velvet revolution" in that country.
In the meantime, Helene Cooper and David Sanger [10] of the New York Times
report that a struggle continues within the administration about whether or
not to launch an air attack against Iranian nuclear facilities before
President Bush leaves office. Vice President Cheney and his supporters, as
well as beleaguered neocons now increasingly outside the government,
continue to push for this, organizing conferences around the world -- as
reporter Jim Lobe wrote recently at his Lobelog blog [11] -- to brand Iran
"Public Enemy Number One" and call for the Bush administration to strike
now. ("Mr. President, the truth is that one of the most evil regimes in the
world as we know it is on the verge of acquiring the most powerful weapon in
the world as we know it.")
In the meantime, the Iranians, who previously captured (and then, with much
fanfare, released) a boatload [12] of British sailors, now seem to be
rounding up and imprisoning any American citizen -- in this case, four
Iranian-American scholars and activists with dual nationality -- who can be
found in Iran and, in the last week, angrily [13] linked their fate to that
of five Iranian consular officials [14] taken by American soldiers in a raid
in Iraqi Kurdistan this January and held uncharged and largely incommunicado
ever since. ("'We will make [15] the U.S. regret its repulsive illegal
action against Iran's consulate and its officials,' state-run Mehr News
quoted Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying.") All this is
happening in the context of a massive crackdown on intellectuals, activists,
union leaders, and academics, a grim, fundamentalist "cultural
revolution" -- aimed in part at the Bush administration's planning for that
"Velvet revolution." According to the Washington Post's Robin Wright [16],
the result has been:
"arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of
Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the
media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a
top Iranian official.... The move has quashed or forced underground many
independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including
women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked
society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life."
In addition, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a key military advisor to Iranian
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned [17] that, within an hour of
an American attack on the country's nuclear facilities, the Iranians would
be lobbing "dozens, maybe hundreds" of missiles into the Gulf states that
host U.S. bases (and enormous oil reserves). "The U.S.," he said ominously,
"will be as surprised with Iranian military capabilities as the Israelis
were with Hezbollah in last summer's war in Lebanon."
And this list only scratches the surface of the ever-widening set of
disputes and face-offs between the two ill-matched powers. This dangerous
dance of fundamentalist regimes remains one of the more potentially
explosive situations on the planet, whether either side actually plans to
attack the other or not. It involves heavily armed forces in at least three
countries (and at sea), endless possible flashpoints, and riven
administrations, shakily governing two hostile lands involved in ongoing
conflicts in two other lands, Afghanistan and Iraq, themselves in bloody
chaos. If that isn't a formula for disaster, what is?
In the midst of this, at the moment, are those four American citizens, under
arrest in Iran and, tragically, pawns in a far larger struggle. Karen J.
Greenberg, co-editor of The Torture Papers [18], executive director of the
Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, and Tomdispatch regular
[19] explores the particular dilemma the Bush administration finds itself in
when demanding their release -- one that gives the old phrase, "hoist by
one's own petard," new meaning.
-- Tom
Blowback, Detainee-style: The Plight of American Prisoners in Iran
By Karen J. Greenberg
For Americans, it should be startling to see the word "detainee" suddenly
appear in a different country, on a different continent, and referring not
to alleged jihadi terrorists but to a group of Americans. After all,
"detainee" is the word the Bush administration coined to deal with suspected
terrorist captives who, they argued, should be subjected to extra-legal
treatment as part of the Global War on Terrorism. Now, that terminology is,
as critics long predicted might happen, being turned against American
citizens. I am referring to the current detention of Americans in Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government currently holds in custody Haleh
Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American
scholars and activists accused of being spies and/or employees of the U.S.
government intent on fomenting dissent and disruption within Iran. (A fifth
American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent engaged in business of an
unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8th.) The four are apparently
behind bars at Tehran's Evin prison, notorious for its special wing for
political prisoners and, among human rights activists, for being the
location of the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian journalist in 2003.
Evin and other Iranian prisons are cited by Human Rights Watch [20] for
frequent torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian dissidents.
The Iranian government has said that the detained are threats to "national
security," despite protests that they were visiting their families and/or
engaged in purely peaceful work. The U.S. Government has been denied
information on their treatment and the possible accusations against them.
The Bush administration is naturally incensed over the incarceration of
these Americans. As well its officials should be. "It is absolutely
incredible to us,"
said State Department deputy spokesman [21] Tom Casey, "to think that there
could be any possible doubt in the Iranians' minds that these individuals
are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including
family visits." President Bush himself has insisted [22] that "their
presence in Iran poses no threat." The Associated Press reported that Bush
was also "'disturbed' by the fact that Iran has still not provided any
information about the welfare and whereabouts" of the missing Levinson and
has condemned Iran for being "defiant as to the demands of the free world."
President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice
and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that
these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and
scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly
without respect for international rights.
But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In
numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very
principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President
Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a
trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years
after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security
strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the
Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now
seek to claim in relation to Iran.
The new American prisoners in Iran belong, in part, to a broader diplomatic
game of chicken now raging between the two governments that began with the
U.S. capture in January of five Iranian officials in Irbil in Iraqi
Kurdistan, prisoners the U.S. continues to hold somewhere in Iraq without
charges. The more telling context, however, is that of Bush administration
detention policy from the moment in 2002 when it set up its prison in
Guantanamo, Cuba, offshore from American justice, to this day.
At the inception of the war on terror, the Bush administration broke the
very rules it now accuses the Iranians of breaking. As part of a high-stakes
stand-off with countries associated with Islamic fundamentalism, it was the
Bush administration that first collected individuals, some guilty of crimes,
some simply swept up in the chaos -- initially off the Afghan battlefield
and then off the global one. Often, they did so with very little knowledge
of, or care about, whom they were rounding up. They incarcerated these
prisoners for long periods without releasing their names or, often, their
whereabouts; they refused to give them the established rights of prisoners
of war; they defied the united protests of allies around the world; and they
sought to justify this whole policy with the term "detainee."
In fact, uncomfortable parallels between notorious Guantanamo and grim Evin
abound. At Gitmo, as at Evin, information about "detainees" has often been
difficult to obtain. At Gitmo, as at Evin, the government has been a
champion of denying prisoners access to lawyers. At Gitmo, as at Evin,
"national security" concerns invariably trump the need to produce evidence
or to indict prisoners. At Gitmo, as at Evin, there have been repeated
reports of coercive interrogations and the mistreatment, as well as torture,
of prisoners.
At Gitmo, as at Evin, authorities deny such accusations despite obvious
evidence to the contrary. One year ago, journalists were invited to assess
conditions at Evin for themselves. Allowed to see only the women's section
of the prison, they were shown the medical facilities and told about the
excellent food the prison serves -- self-evident proof of the fair treatment
of prisoners. So, too, media tours of Guantanamo stress the quality of the
food and the superior medical treatment available in the prison complex. At
Gitmo, suicide is an ever-present threat. At Evin, according to a BBC
journalist [23] on the tour, authorities boasted of only one suicide in six
months -- as if that were a record to be proud of. Iranian authorities
refused to discuss "political prisoners" because "Iran does not recognize
this as a category." So, too, the most suitable term for those held at
Gitmo, "prisoner of war," has been forbidden on the premises.
In all these ways, but especially by wielding their chosen term "detainee,"
and by defining "detainees" as essentially without rights as Americans would
understand them, the Bush administration has stripped the United States of
its traditional standing as the foremost champion of human rights. It has
relinquished its bona fides to express the kind of moral outrage that could
indeed buttress international support and legal due process for Americans
who have been illegally imprisoned. Even more surprising, when
administration officials, including the President, denounce the Iranians,
they are tin-eared. The hypocrisy in their own words just doesn't register.
When George W. Bush shows his outrage at the imprisonment of Americans
without cause, evidence, or due process, it's as if he has no sense that, in
much of the rest of the world, these are exactly the charges that ring out
against his own administration.
Essentially, a frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but
stubbornly defended policy has finally blown back on America's own citizens.
This was something former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- who last
weekend called for the closing of Guantanamo [24] -- predicted in January
2002 [25] might well happen to captive U.S. troops, if not citizens, if the
United States refused to classify its detainees in the Global War on Terror
as prisoners of war.
Whether or not President Bush hears the hypocrisy in his own pleas, the fact
remains that his detainee policy has deprived the government of a means of
defending its own citizens on the international stage. It has, in effect,
amputated the very legs it would need to stand on to protest against the
Iranian detentions.
Try as they might, Bush administration officials can only cry foul by
calling attention to their own systematic violations of justice and the law.
In their mouths, the appeal to fundamental rights rings hollow indeed,
depriving Americans of the protections afforded by once-accepted standards
of decency and justice. Here, as on so many other fronts, the President's
fierce "national security" policy has created an ever more insecure future
for this country.
Karen J. Greenberg, the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security
at the NYU School of Law, the co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to
Abu Ghraib [26], and the editor of The Torture Debate in America [27]. She
recently took a Pentagon-guided tour [28] of Guantanamo.
Copyright 2007 Karen J. Greenberg
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Tom Engelhardt
Created Jun 19 2007 - 8:57am
Just when you think the roiling relations between the U.S. and Iran might be
quieting down -- they heat up again. In the last week, while two U.S.
aircraft-carrier strike forces continued to patrol the Persian Gulf (after
"exercises" that took the carriers directly through the Straits of Hormuz
[1] and off Iran's coast), American accusations against the Iranians have
only escalated. Just as, last month, American officials continued to insist
that the Iranians were supplying [2] sophisticated roadside bombs to Iraqi
insurgents (who are the enemies of their Shiite allies), so, this week,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates "tied Iran's government [3] to large
shipments of weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan and said Wednesday such
quantities were unlikely without Tehran's knowledge."
Similarly, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN: "[T]here's
irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this." (Forget the fact that
the Iranians have long been fierce enemies of the Taliban and that the
Afghan Defense Minister dismissed such claims [4] out of hand.) In Baghdad,
General David Petraeus, head of President Bush's surge operation, also
lashed out [5] at the Iranians. ("The Iranian influence has been very, very
harmful to Iraq. There is absolutely no question that Iranians are funding,
arming, training, and even in some cases, directing the activities of
extremists and militia elements.") And three Iranian diplomats [6] were
briefly detained and questioned by the U.S. military.
For the Bush administration, it seems, Iran has become the explanation for
everything that has gone wrong (even, last week, in the Gaza Strip), the
equivalent of Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire reduced to a regional scale.
According to Brian Ross of ABC News, the CIA has already helped launch
secret terror operations [7] inside Iran and President Bush has signed [8] a
"non-lethal presidential finding" to "mount a covert 'black' operation to
destabilize the Iranian government." In addition, the administration has
been waging a complex, partly covert, "financial war" [9] against Iran.
("The aim is to squeeze the Iranian economy so that the nation's leaders
will decide the price of developing nuclear weapons is just too high."); and
it also has a $75 million fund at its command to "promote democracy" or a
"velvet revolution" in that country.
In the meantime, Helene Cooper and David Sanger [10] of the New York Times
report that a struggle continues within the administration about whether or
not to launch an air attack against Iranian nuclear facilities before
President Bush leaves office. Vice President Cheney and his supporters, as
well as beleaguered neocons now increasingly outside the government,
continue to push for this, organizing conferences around the world -- as
reporter Jim Lobe wrote recently at his Lobelog blog [11] -- to brand Iran
"Public Enemy Number One" and call for the Bush administration to strike
now. ("Mr. President, the truth is that one of the most evil regimes in the
world as we know it is on the verge of acquiring the most powerful weapon in
the world as we know it.")
In the meantime, the Iranians, who previously captured (and then, with much
fanfare, released) a boatload [12] of British sailors, now seem to be
rounding up and imprisoning any American citizen -- in this case, four
Iranian-American scholars and activists with dual nationality -- who can be
found in Iran and, in the last week, angrily [13] linked their fate to that
of five Iranian consular officials [14] taken by American soldiers in a raid
in Iraqi Kurdistan this January and held uncharged and largely incommunicado
ever since. ("'We will make [15] the U.S. regret its repulsive illegal
action against Iran's consulate and its officials,' state-run Mehr News
quoted Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying.") All this is
happening in the context of a massive crackdown on intellectuals, activists,
union leaders, and academics, a grim, fundamentalist "cultural
revolution" -- aimed in part at the Bush administration's planning for that
"Velvet revolution." According to the Washington Post's Robin Wright [16],
the result has been:
"arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of
Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the
media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a
top Iranian official.... The move has quashed or forced underground many
independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including
women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked
society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life."
In addition, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a key military advisor to Iranian
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned [17] that, within an hour of
an American attack on the country's nuclear facilities, the Iranians would
be lobbing "dozens, maybe hundreds" of missiles into the Gulf states that
host U.S. bases (and enormous oil reserves). "The U.S.," he said ominously,
"will be as surprised with Iranian military capabilities as the Israelis
were with Hezbollah in last summer's war in Lebanon."
And this list only scratches the surface of the ever-widening set of
disputes and face-offs between the two ill-matched powers. This dangerous
dance of fundamentalist regimes remains one of the more potentially
explosive situations on the planet, whether either side actually plans to
attack the other or not. It involves heavily armed forces in at least three
countries (and at sea), endless possible flashpoints, and riven
administrations, shakily governing two hostile lands involved in ongoing
conflicts in two other lands, Afghanistan and Iraq, themselves in bloody
chaos. If that isn't a formula for disaster, what is?
In the midst of this, at the moment, are those four American citizens, under
arrest in Iran and, tragically, pawns in a far larger struggle. Karen J.
Greenberg, co-editor of The Torture Papers [18], executive director of the
Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, and Tomdispatch regular
[19] explores the particular dilemma the Bush administration finds itself in
when demanding their release -- one that gives the old phrase, "hoist by
one's own petard," new meaning.
-- Tom
Blowback, Detainee-style: The Plight of American Prisoners in Iran
By Karen J. Greenberg
For Americans, it should be startling to see the word "detainee" suddenly
appear in a different country, on a different continent, and referring not
to alleged jihadi terrorists but to a group of Americans. After all,
"detainee" is the word the Bush administration coined to deal with suspected
terrorist captives who, they argued, should be subjected to extra-legal
treatment as part of the Global War on Terrorism. Now, that terminology is,
as critics long predicted might happen, being turned against American
citizens. I am referring to the current detention of Americans in Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government currently holds in custody Haleh
Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American
scholars and activists accused of being spies and/or employees of the U.S.
government intent on fomenting dissent and disruption within Iran. (A fifth
American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent engaged in business of an
unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8th.) The four are apparently
behind bars at Tehran's Evin prison, notorious for its special wing for
political prisoners and, among human rights activists, for being the
location of the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian journalist in 2003.
Evin and other Iranian prisons are cited by Human Rights Watch [20] for
frequent torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian dissidents.
The Iranian government has said that the detained are threats to "national
security," despite protests that they were visiting their families and/or
engaged in purely peaceful work. The U.S. Government has been denied
information on their treatment and the possible accusations against them.
The Bush administration is naturally incensed over the incarceration of
these Americans. As well its officials should be. "It is absolutely
incredible to us,"
said State Department deputy spokesman [21] Tom Casey, "to think that there
could be any possible doubt in the Iranians' minds that these individuals
are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including
family visits." President Bush himself has insisted [22] that "their
presence in Iran poses no threat." The Associated Press reported that Bush
was also "'disturbed' by the fact that Iran has still not provided any
information about the welfare and whereabouts" of the missing Levinson and
has condemned Iran for being "defiant as to the demands of the free world."
President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice
and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that
these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and
scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly
without respect for international rights.
But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In
numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very
principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President
Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a
trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years
after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security
strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the
Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now
seek to claim in relation to Iran.
The new American prisoners in Iran belong, in part, to a broader diplomatic
game of chicken now raging between the two governments that began with the
U.S. capture in January of five Iranian officials in Irbil in Iraqi
Kurdistan, prisoners the U.S. continues to hold somewhere in Iraq without
charges. The more telling context, however, is that of Bush administration
detention policy from the moment in 2002 when it set up its prison in
Guantanamo, Cuba, offshore from American justice, to this day.
At the inception of the war on terror, the Bush administration broke the
very rules it now accuses the Iranians of breaking. As part of a high-stakes
stand-off with countries associated with Islamic fundamentalism, it was the
Bush administration that first collected individuals, some guilty of crimes,
some simply swept up in the chaos -- initially off the Afghan battlefield
and then off the global one. Often, they did so with very little knowledge
of, or care about, whom they were rounding up. They incarcerated these
prisoners for long periods without releasing their names or, often, their
whereabouts; they refused to give them the established rights of prisoners
of war; they defied the united protests of allies around the world; and they
sought to justify this whole policy with the term "detainee."
In fact, uncomfortable parallels between notorious Guantanamo and grim Evin
abound. At Gitmo, as at Evin, information about "detainees" has often been
difficult to obtain. At Gitmo, as at Evin, the government has been a
champion of denying prisoners access to lawyers. At Gitmo, as at Evin,
"national security" concerns invariably trump the need to produce evidence
or to indict prisoners. At Gitmo, as at Evin, there have been repeated
reports of coercive interrogations and the mistreatment, as well as torture,
of prisoners.
At Gitmo, as at Evin, authorities deny such accusations despite obvious
evidence to the contrary. One year ago, journalists were invited to assess
conditions at Evin for themselves. Allowed to see only the women's section
of the prison, they were shown the medical facilities and told about the
excellent food the prison serves -- self-evident proof of the fair treatment
of prisoners. So, too, media tours of Guantanamo stress the quality of the
food and the superior medical treatment available in the prison complex. At
Gitmo, suicide is an ever-present threat. At Evin, according to a BBC
journalist [23] on the tour, authorities boasted of only one suicide in six
months -- as if that were a record to be proud of. Iranian authorities
refused to discuss "political prisoners" because "Iran does not recognize
this as a category." So, too, the most suitable term for those held at
Gitmo, "prisoner of war," has been forbidden on the premises.
In all these ways, but especially by wielding their chosen term "detainee,"
and by defining "detainees" as essentially without rights as Americans would
understand them, the Bush administration has stripped the United States of
its traditional standing as the foremost champion of human rights. It has
relinquished its bona fides to express the kind of moral outrage that could
indeed buttress international support and legal due process for Americans
who have been illegally imprisoned. Even more surprising, when
administration officials, including the President, denounce the Iranians,
they are tin-eared. The hypocrisy in their own words just doesn't register.
When George W. Bush shows his outrage at the imprisonment of Americans
without cause, evidence, or due process, it's as if he has no sense that, in
much of the rest of the world, these are exactly the charges that ring out
against his own administration.
Essentially, a frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but
stubbornly defended policy has finally blown back on America's own citizens.
This was something former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- who last
weekend called for the closing of Guantanamo [24] -- predicted in January
2002 [25] might well happen to captive U.S. troops, if not citizens, if the
United States refused to classify its detainees in the Global War on Terror
as prisoners of war.
Whether or not President Bush hears the hypocrisy in his own pleas, the fact
remains that his detainee policy has deprived the government of a means of
defending its own citizens on the international stage. It has, in effect,
amputated the very legs it would need to stand on to protest against the
Iranian detentions.
Try as they might, Bush administration officials can only cry foul by
calling attention to their own systematic violations of justice and the law.
In their mouths, the appeal to fundamental rights rings hollow indeed,
depriving Americans of the protections afforded by once-accepted standards
of decency and justice. Here, as on so many other fronts, the President's
fierce "national security" policy has created an ever more insecure future
for this country.
Karen J. Greenberg, the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security
at the NYU School of Law, the co-editor of The Torture Papers: The Road to
Abu Ghraib [26], and the editor of The Torture Debate in America [27]. She
recently took a Pentagon-guided tour [28] of Guantanamo.
Copyright 2007 Karen J. Greenberg
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
