Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Bush Stands up for Torture and Undermining the Rule of Law
... McCain and two other Republicans on the Armed Services Committee, Senators John Warner and Lindsey Graham, drafted an amendment making two simple changes. First, US policy was defined as the interrogation procedures authorized by the US Army Field Manual, which specifically prohibits cruel, degrading, or inhumane treatment. Second, all detainees held by the United States, in whatever invented category, must be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
This is not about who ''they" are, McCain has said repeatedly. It's about who we are. ''We are Americans," he told the Senate, ''and we hold ourselves to humane standards of treatment of people no matter how terrible they may be. To do otherwise undermines our security, but it also undermines our greatness as a nation."
And what did Bush do? He threatened to veto the entire defense appropriations bill if the McCain amendment were included, and dispatched Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney to twist GOP arms.
Since then, dozens of retired generals, admirals, and other ranking officials have signed letters supporting the McCain amendment. Retired Brigadier General James Cullen, former chief judge of the US Army Court of Appeals, told a conference on national security policy in Washington last Monday that the legal experts of the military's own criminal system had been systematically excluded from the setting of interrogation and detention policy after 9/11.
Speaking at the same conference, Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and former president of the American Society of International Law, declared that ''these policies make a mockery of our claim to stand for the rule of law." Americans, she added, should be marching on Washington to reject inhumane techniques carried out in our name.
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