Each day the evidence piles up - highlighted by the unconvincing (and self-incriminating) rants of Dick Cheney.
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said, "the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 -- well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion -- its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida." [Washington Note, May 13, 2009]
Journalist Paul Krugman said of the mounting evidence: "Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.
"There's a word for this: it's evil." [Paul Krugman Blog, May 14, 2009]
Is there something more painful for Americans than hearing that illegal CIA methods caused the deaths of dozens upon dozens of detainees, inflicted pain on hundreds of others, and that this brutality that had nothing to do with national security?
Yes -- learning it was done to validate one of the leading lies that sent us to war. First British Intelligence's “Downing Street Memo” to Prime Minister Tony Blair revealed, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [Bush] policy.”
Now Sen. Carl Levin's 263-page Armed Services Committee report (approved by pro-Iraq War Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) fills in more blanks. Levin says our top political officials were “driven” to install this torture program.
“They'd say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq,” Levin told columnist Frank Rich. [New York Times, April 26, 2009]
Sure, al-Qaeda glorifies martyrdom and plays by no known rules. But our authorizing torture and accepting its lies is about us. It is about Americans who went along with “kick some ass,” “bring 'em on,” and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Under orders from top officials our CIA water boarded one man 183 times and another 83 [hardly proof that it works!]. It sent mentally ill Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to a foreign prison where he was tortured and locked in a small box for 17 hours until he expanded on his earlier coerced claims of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
By 2004, al-Libi had recanted his statement and the CIA had acknowledged that it was false. But not before Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2003 used his words -- “a senior terrorist operative” divulged “how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda” -- to justify the Iraq invasion to the UN Security Council and the world.
The recently released “torture memos” providing legal cover for "harsh interrogations" were written during al-Libi’s his ordeal. [This month, Libi died suddenly in his Libyan prison "an apparent suicide.”]
First, we have to admit that torture worked (albeit not in the way that Dick Cheney asserts). It produced a narrative used to frighten Americans and justify a war of aggression that President Bush wanted to wage.
It also worked in other ways. It recruited untold numbers into the ranks of al-Qaeda, made a mockery of U.S. claims to moral leadership, and now places U.S. soldiers and civilians in danger.
The program's “bad apples” were not the few U.S. jailers who have served prison time for the Abu Ghraib abuses, but our top leaders. They’re the ones who discussed, issued or signed off on illegal orders and ignored dissenting lawyers.
Waterboarding is torture, a crime that violates international and U.S. laws. Crimes are more than mistakes. Americans who violate traffic laws face the wheels of justice. What about those who violate human rights?
Gaza disowned- “Gaza is not on the Pope’s itinerary, nor will it be. There will be no change in these plans. But I’ll say it very clearly, the Pope is absolutely not going to Gaza.”
Such were the astounding comments made by the Pope’s spokesman in Israel, Wadie Abunasser, prior to Pope Benedict XVI visiting Palestine and Israel.
As if there was no massacre in Gaza, no families entirely slaughtered, no human rights violated to match the record of the most grisly of crimes in modern history. As if Gaza were a mere irritant in the annals of human suffering. More, as if there were no Catholic flock in Gaza. To clarify, there are actually nearly 2,000 Catholics in Gaza, apparently not important enough for the ‘cut’.
Now, there are a lot of important religious sites to see around the Holy Land, lots of old churches, stones, ruins and the like…sites of much more significance, such as the Western Wall, the Holy Sepulcher and so on… far more important than visiting the site of a fresh massacre, where the stench of rotting bodies - laid to rest beneath a tomb consisting of the rubble of their own homes - has just faded. Such sites are apparently of little import to the Holy See. Rather, there are memorials to victims of greater standing, in shrines of superior grandeur, such as Yad Vashem…now, that’s something to see.
On a trip that was apparently dedicated to promoting “reconciliation”, it is baffling that Pope Benedict made little mention of the Israeli occupation of Palestine as a source of discord. Imagine that. But what he did say was, “Allow me to make this appeal to all the peoples of these lands: No more bloodshed! No more fighting! No more terrorism! No more war! Instead let us break the viscous circle of violence.”
As if he was imploring two nations with common grievances, with mutually strong armies and nuclear arsenals. As if he were exhorting two peoples, both of which have access to clean water, both of which are properly nourished and educated. Or to put it another way, as if both peoples face the daily threat of their house being toppled while they are held up inside by an occupying army, as if both peoples face the daily threat of arrest, extra-judicial execution, the humiliation of curfews and checkpoints.
The Vatican needs some serious introspection. It ought to replace its highly politicized and, frankly, questionable apologies, with an earnest apology to oppressed people, who might have little political worth. The Pope should apologize to Palestinians and to Gazans in particular for failing to appreciate the seriousness of their plight, for cozying up to the very Israeli leaders who champion the suffering in Gaza, and fail to console the very victim of their onslaught.
More, as an institution that has garnered the reputation of advocating social justice throughout the world in recent years, the Catholic Church must abandon its current course, cowering before Israeli leaders, its Holy Father imparting such smug condescension on a nation that has endured a slow and gradual process of genocide for the past six decades.
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