Philippe Sands felt a rock in his shoe and couldn't let it go until he had interviewed enough people involved to be able to analyze and ultimately write a book about it. The title: Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. The conclusion an intelligent reader of his book can make is that state and military power was abused at multiple levels and on multiple fronts in how detainees captured after 9/11 in the fight against terrorism were treated in contravention/violation of Geneva Conventions. His interview here reveals the compelling arguments to be found in more detail in his book. This courageous British lawyer, married to an American and living in the US, wants all facts on the table so that due process can follow. The response, showing individual responsibility (as in doping in my previous blog in 2007) being taken by people who were in power needs to be heard. The Rices, Rumsfelds, Cheneys, Addingtons, Hayneses have a duty as former civil servants or professionals to consider how they acted in the long run and step forward in candor and a contrite spirit, come clean without a trace of spin or tactic. The appearance of Condoleeza Rice on YouTube this week was appalling. It has to end. www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05092008/transcript2.html?print
EXCERPT #1:
PHILIPPE SANDS: The story's a simple one. Back in '71, '72, the British moved as the United States has done now, to aggressive techniques of interrogation. They used pretty much the same techniques: hooding, standing, humiliation, degradation. Five techniques, they were called. [...] They went up to court, actually, and they were ruled to be illegal, in 1978 by the European Court on Human Rights. But there was a bigger problem, even beyond their illegality, in my view. And that was this: That what the use of those techniques did was to really enrage part of the Catholic community, who felt that IRA detainees alleged to be terrorists, were being abused. And it turned people who were perhaps unhappy with the situation into being deeply and violently unhappy with the situation. And if you speak to British politicians who were involved in that period, and the British military, what they'll tell you is that there is a feeling that the use of those types of techniques extended the conflict.
INCONSISTENT STANDARDS or as my Dad once called it... SO MYOPIC
Where is a fair shake and a level playing field now? Are all detainees created equal in our acutely aware, globalized world, and are they endowed with certain inalienable rights?
Indignation on whose behalf? On behalf of IRA detainees held by the British. On behalf of a "fallen brother." Hmmm. Indignation at basely carried out cruelty. Which extended a very difficult stand-off by years and years. This is a classic double standard if there are constantly dark green and light green bus passengers (shackled "air-freight" detainees flown around like hocks of ham) as you throw principles under the bus.
DEBATE SQUELCHED or A SIN OF OMISSION
Who went silent on the gross injustices in American detention practices, so myopically rationalized by one congressman who brazenly said, without knowing, or caring(?), for the truth, that "3,000 Americans died," when the victims were in fact from 90 different countries. The pain was felt inside and outside the US. The most serious blow was to the rights of the common man and the common weal internationally. London was eventually hit, Madrid was too, and so were a series of other terrorist objectives elsewhere.
THREE MINUTES
BILL MOYERS: Going back to the hearings, one member of the committee, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona, a Republican, said--and I quote--"The results of a total of three minutes of severe interrogations of three of the worst terrorists were of immeasurable benefit to the American people. A full 25 percent of the human intelligence we've received on Al-Qaeda came from just three minutes worth of rarely used interrogation tactics."PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, I remember that very well. And I appreciated very much everything that Representative Franks had to say. But I've described that to my friends in London as a sort of Monty Python moment in the hearing. Because he alleged that there had been three individuals water boarded. They had been water boarded for no more than one minute each. And they had spilled the beans. And I was sitting there watching him and thinking, well, that's new information. I've never heard that before. Where on earth does that come from? Counterintuitively, I can't imagine how a water-boarding of one minute is suddenly going to produce useful information. We don't even know if it is useful. But also, imagine the scene. You've got guys there with stopwatches. We're gonna waterboard him for one minute, and then we will stop. And in that one minute, everything will come up. I don't know where he got all that from. I thought he sounded as though he made it up on the spot...
THE POISONED WELL
I scoffed at this, and fired back in emails, even in my own family, when the party claptrap line was served up. But nobody would talk, though some may have been lurking. There was a silence hanging like a cloud over family communication.One family member near to me stated: yes, you have to torture in circumstances which help your country. I was galled and sickened.
So many in general were hoodwinked and taken in by this pushy, arrogant, mean-spirited mentality, some spreading it themselves, most chomping down on it hook, line and sinker. And, still, a sizeable portion of the US population is not visibly, palpably upset over the crimes. At the same time those not willing to talk sacrificed part of their family's otherwise intact communication, squelching debate and left those bringing up the subject "out in the cold" with the light switched off, to ensure their own, albeit momentary, political, and by extension, tax and monetary gain, and just chime in, or emotionally check out, on the difficult issue.
IT ALL COMES OUT IN THE WASH
Now, as we are being thrust further into a severe economic crisis, as my landlord says, "the correct and incorrect ones become visible in hard times." This phrase can cut both ways and has to be applied with an eye to when one day you yourself are down. In weakness, as we all have our own special weaknesses, we are exposed, and when things are going well, the ones with self-serving, illegal and selectively indignant methodology can cover up their trail with equivocation and (self)rationalizations, but time eventually brings around the reverse set of circumstances and lays bare tracks and exposes motives, which can be ferreted out by those willing to dispassionately take notice, like the man who prompted this blog post: Philippe Sands.
CLOSING ARGUMENT
EXCERPT #3:
BILL MOYERS: Do you think that people like David Addington and John Yoo and Jim Haynes, and the other lawyers you've mentioned who advised and were on the torture team, should ultimately be held responsible in court for what they did in government at this period of time?
PHILIPPE SANDS: If they were complicit in the commission of a crime, then they should be investigated. And if the facts show that there is a sufficient basis for proceeding to a prosecution, then they should be prosecuted. Lawyers are gatekeepers to legality and constitutionality. If the lawyers become complicit in a common plan to get around the law, to allow abuse, then yes, they should be liable.
