Torture – new reflections from
the U.S. and Canada
[12-29-05]
The Nation has gathered a number of very good articles on torture, in
its December 26, 2005 issue.
Go to the page for that
issue, and scroll down the right column on the page to link to any of
the articles listed below.
Articles include
The Torture Administration
Anthony Lewis | Despite what we know of history, it comes as a shock to
discover that American leaders would open the way for torture of prisoners,
that the President would fight legislation prohibiting inhumane treatment,
and that Congress would barely react. A moment of historical reckoning has
come: It is time to establish an independent commission with a special
prosecutor and bring executors of abuse to justice.
Brass Tacks
Tara McKelvey | "Do what has to be done" is the motto of the
investigative arm of the US military. But when the understaffed institution
regularly loses evidence and delays autopsies, it does too little. When it
attempts to protect evidence by detaining witnesses, it does too much. A
look at the inherently flawed investigations of detainees.
Seeds of Abu Ghraib
Sasha Abramsky | Americans wondered how Army Specialist Charles Graner
could torture detainees in the gruesome Abu Ghraib scandal. In war, people
do things that would otherwise be unthinkable. But this former corrections
officer with a record of spousal abuse has always been at war.
The Silence of the Doctors
Jonathan H. Marks | The overlooked players in the torture scandal are the
medical personnel who supervise--and often participate in--acts of torture.
Military medical professionals have reportedly tailored torture sessions to
the personalities of detainees, at a time when their professional conscience
should have told them to take an ethical stand. Though they're not the usual
suspects, they should be investigated as well.
Torture Tree
Peter Ahlberg & Steve Brodner | The new torture complex cannot be
attributed to just a few rotten apples. Rooted in the White House and
Pentagon, its branches extend to the Justice Department, political leaders,
academics, medical professionals, media and ordinary soldiers.
Disco Inferno
Moustafa Bayoumi | Military detainees have been subjected to starvation,
sleep deprivation and now Metallica and Britney Spears. Blasted at high
volume, torture music has become a weapon of war, used to destroy the minds
of Muslim detainees. It's time for musicians to speak up.
Rogue Scholars
Tara McKelvey | Defenders of torture dwell not only in the White House
and Pentagon, but in the halls of academia. When prominent law professors
and academics cite the fantastic "ticking-bomb theory," they not only spread
misinformation and foster a perpetual state of fear, but they use their
credentials to legitimize a culture of torture.
Pop Torture
Richard Kim | Pop culture does more than validate the claim that torture
could help foil bombs seconds before detonation. In shows like 24, where
scenes of sensory deprivation are mixed with family melodrama, torture is so
routine that it seems one more plot device to create intimacy in characters.
The reality is that torture isolates its victims from any sense of intimacy.
Secrets and Lies
Karen J. Greenberg | By the time the first prisoners were taken in Iraq,
a green light to abuse had been issued in writing. Now torture is cloaked in
a veil of secrecy, with obscured statistics, dismissal of human rights
reports and outright denial. Torture has proved to be a window into the Bush
Administration's pursuit of the war on terror.
An Army of Lawyers
Lisa Hajjar | Human rights organizations have coordinated an
investigation into torture and an extensive defense of detainees, organizing
lawyers who represent clients from nonprofits to oil and gas companies. But
the issue of torture needs to transcend the legal world.
And the
view from Canada –
Robin Matthews, writing on the website ViveleCanada, lays
out some of the differing views of U.S. use of torture (and perhaps now
rejection of it) from two Canadians and two U.S. students of the issue.
The two sides of the argument in Canada are reflected in
the writing of Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and
International Law at the University of B.C. in Vancouver, and Michael
Ignatieff, recently nominated federal Liberal candidate for Etobicoke-Lakeshore
in Toronto. He was, just before that, Director of the Carr Centre for Human
Rights Policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Ignatieff is a proponent of what might be called "careful
torture" or "soft torture," while Byers rejects torture out of hand, being,
perhaps, more deeply aware than Ignatieff of the hard and long-fought
struggle to reach the world’s present shaky respect for human rights and
international justice.
And from the U.S. there are also differing views: Naomi
Klein, writing in The Nation,
urges that the idea of a recent U.S. "descent" into torture be rejected. She
writes of "the notorious [U.S.] School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984 …
that, if it had a motto, [it] might have been ‘we do torture’." She goes on
to write: "It was there in Panama – and later, at the school’s new location
at Fort Benning, Georgia – where the roots of the current torture scandals
can be found.
Klein is challenged by U.S. writer Alfred McCoy, author of the recent book,
A Question of Torture. He argues that "the roots of the current
[U.S.] torture scandals" are located in Canada. In a CBC interview in the
week of December 17, 2005, McCoy argued that CIA-financed studies in sensory
deprivation at McGill University in the early 1950s provided the definitive
groundwork for present U.S. torture. It is, apparently, a no-touch torture,
the purpose of which is to free torturers from the charge of physical abuse.
For his Canadian audience he concludes:
While some Canadians praise the U.S. population for
rising after much provocation to inhibit the worst elements of U.S.
aggression, time passes and U.S. behaviour in the world continues its
lawless way. Even Canadians – as we have seen here – are divided about the
acceptability of U.S. brutality in the world. Michael Byers and Michael
Ignatieff nicely characterize the division. If uncontained lawlessness is
not to be set loose among nations, Canadians are going to have to return –
at all levels of government and administration – to the best codes of
behaviour. They are going to have to return, that is, to international law
and covenants controlling the conduct of war and the definitions of
torture. And they are going to have to speak loudly for those codes and
covenants wherever they can – in alliances, in public forums, and in any
legislation to which Canada is a party.
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