09:24 am
Thought of the Day: AIG and Torture
I’m pretty outraged by the AIG bonuses, and I hope that the Obama Administration can do something to stop them.
But I sure wish that people were as outraged about the Bush Administration’s war crimes as they are about the AIG bonuses/bailout. As WaPo noted in a surprisingly good editorial this morning, we need a truth commission and we need it now:
THE ALLEGATIONS are familiar, yet some of the details are sickeningly new. Senior al-Qaeda prisoners held in secret CIA prisons were made to stand for days in painful positions and deprived of solid food for just as long. Interrogators wrapped suspects in plastic, doused them with cold water and slammed them headlong into walls. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was allegedly shackled with his arms above his head for days at a time, leaving lasting scars.
The allegations were made to the International Red Cross by the prisoners after they were transferred to the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006. The allegations are reportedly contained in an unreleased report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which labeled the treatment as torture. The report was obtained by writer Mark Danner, who quoted extensively from it in an article published this week by the New York Review of Books and in an op-ed column in the New York Times.
We do not know whether all the allegations are true. But according to Mr. Danner, the ICRC separately interviewed detainees who independently provided similar accounts of harsh treatment. It has already been confirmed that the Bush administration subjected three high-level terrorism suspects to waterboarding, the ancient practice of simulated drowning that has long been considered torture. And the judgment of the Red Cross is very important: The agency’s unique status as a monitor of prisons around the world is based on its professionalism and impartiality. If it has accused the United States of torture, the charge — which could indelibly stain the nation’s global reputation — must be taken seriously.
Prosecutions would be even better.
If you think about it, the AIG scandal and the Bush Administration’s torture and detention policies are both products a laissez-faire, do-anything Administration uninterested in legal niceties.