Blood Meridian: Bush's High Crimes of Torture and War

Wednesday, 10 January 2007

If you want to see the depravity and filth that festers in the core of the Bush Administration made plain, read the story below. The regimen of torture and suffering being inflicted on captives in Bush's War of Terror is not some sort of aberrant overreaction to concerns about national security and public safety: these specifically designed, deliberately induced tortures are the expression of the President's deepest desires and clearly stated wishes. Just as the war of aggression in Iraq is his war, these crimes against humanity are his crimes. They are happening because he wants them to.

The only possible response of a sane society to the depredations of this man is his impeachment and removal from power. There is no other course of action for any responsible, patriotic member of Congress to take. Unfortunately, the American Establishment has clearly gone insane -- so deranged from decades of bloated power and privilege that it can no longer act even to save itself from the general ruin that Bush is bringing upon the country. Unfortunately, there are very, very few responsible, patriotic members of Congress.

Witness the empty bluster behind the latest Democratic "opposition": in the face of Bush's imminent escalation of the war -- with a "surge" that cannot possibly succeed in doing anything but increasing the bloodshed and hatred in the other nation he has ruined -- they are offering a "series of symbolic votes" that "would do nothing in practical terms" to stop or even hinder this insane course, as the NY Times reports. The ever-hapless hairpiece hero, Joe Biden, believes this witless flapping of arms will "demonstrate to the president that he's on his own" -- a realization that will somehow "spark real change."

But Bush already believes he is on his own -- and he likes that way. He has already asserted that he will continue his course in Iraq even if he is deserted by everyone but his wife and dog. And his little mouthpiece, Tony Snow, has just announced that the President is an autocrat who cannot be restrained by any action of Congress whatsoever: "The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way." (Via Cenk Uygur by way of Steve Gilliard.)"

Symbolic votes" won't stop Bush. Even substantive actions -- such as cutting off funding -- will not stop him. He will clearly provoke a constitutional crisis and continue the war (and the tortures in his gulag) by any means necessary. He is probably willing to attempt to overthrow the government altogether with a military coup if he feels he is being thwarted in his "sacred duty as Commander-in-Chief to protect the nation," which, in his mind, means waging aggressive war, torturing people, spying on us all and looting the treasury on behalf of his cronies. The only possible way to derail his destructive and criminal course is impeachment.

But how will that happen with the weak reeds and blathering hairpieces now in charge of Congress? What will it take to light a fire under them and force them to do what they are legally and morally bound to do -- uphold the Constitution? Will they really let Bush go on and on, in slaughter and torture, escalating the war crime in Iraq and very likely launching a new war against Iran?

If the past five years is any indication, the answer is yes, they will. Consider that most leading Democrats are even more hawkish in their saber-rattling at Iran than the Bush Administration, which is even now methodically preparing for war with Tehran, either via a direct U.S. strike or else in reaction to the inevitable Iranian response to an attack by Israel. How can the bellicose Democrats object when Bush puts blood and iron to their rhetoric? A strike on Iran would be the perfect way to "restore bipartisan unity on the Hill."

Yet we live in hope and die in despair, as Brother Edsel always says. So keep pounding the drum: impeach, impeach, impeach. Make it so loud that one day it might even pierce the hairpiece of Joe Biden, and convince the cowardly lions of Congress to do their duty. The alternative is too ghastly to contemplate -- although that grim reality may well be thrust upon us. But for God's sake, let's not go down without a fight.


Guantánamo's Lost Souls (Guardian). By American lawyer George Brent Mickum.Excerpts: The day after tomorrow marks the confluence of two ignominious anniversaries. The first is the five-year anniversary of the opening of the notorious prison camps run by the US at the Guantánamo naval air station in Cuba. In the five years since the US started shipping prisoners from around the world to Guantánamo, approximately 99% have never been charged with any transgression, much less a crime. Approximately 400 prisoners, characterised by the Bush administration as "the worst of the worst", have been released without charge, many directly to their families. That any prisoners have been released is due almost entirely to the outrage of the civilised world.

Thursday is also the start of my clients' fifth year of captivity around the world: Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna...Bisher and Jamil have withstood various forms of physical torture during their five years as prisoners. Both have suffered numerous beatings (Bisher suffered broken ribs and perhaps a broken foot because of beatings by guards, though both injuries went untreated - despite Bisher's requests for medical assistance), stress positions, temperature extremes, extreme sleep deprivation, death threats, threats to family and, at various times, starvation and being denied water that was fit to drink.

It pains me to report that, at the start of his fifth year in prison, the once healthy and extremely articulate Bisher is failing. He is no longer able to withstand the most insidious form of torture being used by the US military: prolonged isolation combined with environmental manipulation that includes constant exposure to temperature extremes and sleep deprivation...

What the British government knows and the British public needs to know is that Bisher's treatment is designed to achieve a single objective: causing an individual to lose his psychological balance and, ultimately, his mind. Every aspect of Bisher's prison environment is controlled and manipulated to create constant mental instability. The damage to Bisher's psyche is not unexpected. The ravages of extended isolation and sensory deprivation leave no marks, but they destroy the mind...

Chris Floyd