Pacific Views

Another warning ignored by Dubya's administration.

Not only could the torture of prisioners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo have been avoided, but it would have been avoided if the Pentagon and Dubya's administration had paid attention to the warnings of Alberto Mora in 2002 — warnings given well before the worst of the abuses had occurred.

Then the Navy's general counsel, Mora presented Pentagon officials with a a 22-page memo warning them that trying to evade international rules on torture and the treatment of detainees would lead to abuse of prisoners. He also objected to legal theories being floated in the Justice Department, which said that Dubya had the power to authorize the violation of the Geneva Conventions. More called those theories illegal and dangerous. As the new pictures showing Iraqis tortured by their US captors at Abu Ghraib [see earlier posts at Magpie here and here] reminds us, Mora's warning should have been heeded.

The current issue of the New Yorker contains an excellent article about Mora's memo by Jane Mayer, which you'll find here. Here's how Mayer frames the story:

The memo is a chronological account, submitted on July 7, 2004, to Vice Admiral Albert Church, who led a Pentagon investigation into abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It reveals that Mora's criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush's decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as "unlawful," "dangerous," and "erroneous" novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.

In important ways, Mora's memo is at odds with the official White House narrative. In 2002, President Bush declared that detainees should be treated "humanely, and to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles" of the Geneva conventions. The Administration has articulated this standard many times. Last month, on January 12th, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, responding to charges of abuse at the U.S. base in Cuba, told reporters, "What took place at Guantánamo is a matter of public record today, and the investigations turned up nothing that suggested that there was any policy in the department other than humane treatment." A week later, the White House press spokesman, Scott McClellan, was asked about a Human Rights Watch report that the Administration had made a "deliberate policy choice" to abuse detainees. He answered that the organization had hurt its credibility by making unfounded accusations. Top Administration officials have stressed that the interrogation policy was reviewed and sanctioned by government lawyers; last November, President Bush said, "Any activity we conduct is within the law. We do not torture." Mora's memo, however, shows that almost from the start of the Administration's war on terror the White House, the Justice Department, and the Department of Defense, intent upon having greater flexibility, charted a legally questionable course despite sustained objections from some of its own lawyers.

That's right: Dubya's administration not only lied about how they've treated prisoners captured in the 'war on terrorism,' but they've lied about whether anyone inside the government was advising them not to play fast and loose with the Geneva Conventions and other international law regarding the treatment of prisoners.

Go read the whole New Yorker story. Now.

And then read Mora's memo, which the New Yorker has posted here [PDF file].

Posted by Magpie at February 20, 2006 11:38 AM | War on Terrorism | TrackBack(1) | Technorati links |