Abuse of power: Impunity and its limits

By Max Castro

Another week in the life of the Bush administration brings a fresh set of revelations illustrating how this administration has abused, and continues to abuse, the power of the state, while in the process displaying extraordinary vindictiveness against those who have tried to stand for justice and uphold American honor. At the same time, there is encouraging evidence that there are those who will follow their conscience even when surrounded by scoundrels.

The wages of integrity

The Abu Ghraib scandal was one of the most shameful episodes in recent American history representing a low point even by the sorry standards of this administration. 

 

There were many culprits: the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense, who created the mindset that made the horrors of Abu Ghraib possible; the generals who gave orders to interrogators to “take their gloves off;” the intelligence officers who told the military police to “soften up” captives;  and, finally, at the bottom of the food chain, the prison guards, the men and women of the military police who carried out their “softening up” mission with evident relish and unspeakable sadism.

Only one person emerged as a hero out of this moral disaster: Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, who investigated the scandal, thoroughly and honestly, and whose report destroyed all the rationalizations and the official story that sought to minimize the seriousness of the abuses, deny their criminal nature, and cast them as “a few isolated incidents carried out by a group of out-of-control bad apples on the night shift.” Instead, in his report, Taguba found that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees … systemic and illegal abuse.” It was an inconvenient truth.

Taguba’s courage and integrity provided, in the words of investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, whose recent article in the New Yorker magazine (June 25) is based on an exclusive interview with the general, the single “redeeming aspect” of the whole affair. And, what was Taguba’s reward for doing more than anyone else to rescue the honor and the good name of the United States and its military? As Hersh’s story makes clear, Taguba’s heroism cost him his career, caused him to be ostracized by fellow officers who had been close friends, and earned him the mockery of Donald Rumsfeld.

Thus Taguba, the only figure who deserves praise in relation to Abu Ghraib, has been punished. So have low level prison guards. The big villains have enjoyed total impunity. Taguba’s account strongly suggests that Rumsfeld probably lied in his May 2004 testimony before Congress when he professed almost complete ignorance concerning torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib. There are many high ranking officers who broke the laws, bent the rules, or looked the other way, according to Taguba’s statements. Yet they too have emerged unscathed. General Taguba, who performed his duty admirably, despite full knowledge of the risks, has suffered.

Epitome of arrogance

 

It has long been clear that Vice President Dick Cheney inhabits a separate reality. Even in an administration characterized by hubris and delusional thinking according to which infidel Westerners invading a Muslim Arab country will be greeted with flowers and colossal tax gifts to the very rich count as compassion for the poor, Cheney stands as a serial distorter of truth and the zenith of arrogance.

Cheney’s latest overreach involves the VP’s claim that the rules concerning inspections of the handling of information classified as secret does not apply to him. Cheney has acted as if he is above the law for so long that many have stopped paying attention to his many outrages. This time, however, Cheney seems to have crossed the line so flagrantly as to have aroused the watchdogs of the Fourth Estate. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times (June 23), for example, states that “Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to comply with a presidential order regulating the handling of classified information might be scary were it not so ludicrous.” The paper pointed out the hypocrisy implicit in the Vice President’s position: “Cheney has been instrumental in eroding privacy rights for all Americans — except himself.”

The LA Times editorial ably dissects the absurdity of Cheney’s position, which is, in essence, that he is neither a member of the executive branch nor of the legislative:

Cheney's inventive argument is that because the vice president also serves as president of the Senate, his is "a unique office" that is not part of but rather "attached to" the legislative branch. Yet the vice president is funded and housed by the executive branch, travels on Air Force Two, enjoys Secret Service protection and seldom appears in his (mostly symbolic) Senate office. And he has never subjected his staff to the even more restrictive Senate rules on handling classified material. Apparently, Cheney sees himself as a fourth branch of government that enjoys all the authority of the presidency but is bound by none of its rules.

The Vice President not only makes up his own rules as he goes along; he tries to destroy those who don’t accept his divine rights. Said the Los Angeles Times:

Moreover, after clashing with the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, which conducts the routine inspections, Cheney's vindictive staff reportedly tried to abolish the unit. That's like trying to disband the Internal Revenue Service for demanding a tax audit. Has the veep taken leave of his senses?

The fact is that Cheney took leave of his senses long ago, especially his sense of decency. According to a June 24 report in the Washington Post, Cheney advocated for the kind of carte blanche that led to the torture and abuse in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and elsewhere: “Convinced that the war on terror required ‘robust interrogations’ of suspects, Cheney urged White House to make exceptions to Geneva Conventions.”

Perversion of justice

 

Lawyers for “war on terror” detainees and critics of the Bush administration have long suspected that the procedures for classifying prisoners as enemy combatants are grossly unfair and arbitrary. Now there is proof. According to a story in the June 23 edition of the Washington Post, Stephen Abraham, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and a lawyer who was a member of a military unit that decided the fate of Afghanistan and Iraq detainees, has stated in a sworn affidavit that “the process of reviewing their cases was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and … the results were influenced by pressure from superiors rather than based on concrete evidence.”

Abraham’s account confirms what is evident from the results of the review process: According to the Post story, “of the 558 detainees who have been reviewed so far, 520 — or 93 percent — were judged enemy combatants who should remain in custody. That is an astounding number under the best of circumstances, but even more given the flimsy and unreliable nature of the evidence against many of the detainees. "What were purported to be specific statements of fact lacked even the most fundamental earmarks of objectively credible evidence,” according to Abraham’s affidavit.

Rather than solid evidence, such a success rate attests to the fact that the reviews were a sham meant to legitimize a preordained result. Abraham confirms this in his sworn statement, where he says that there was “considerable pressure from commanders for officers serving on the tribunals to determine that detainees were enemy fighters…” He further asserts that that “it was well known that those officers who concluded otherwise would have to explain their findings to McGarrah (director of the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants) and his top aides.”

Accountability

 

For presiding over the moral debacle described above, for perpetrating an illegal war, for selling it to a frightened and ill-formed American population based on false premises, George W. Bush deserves to be impeached. Many present and past top Bush officials should be brought before the courts of justice for willingly, and even eagerly, executing Bush’s unconscionable and illegal policies.

Political realities dictate none of this is likely to happen. The Vice President’s top aide, Scooter Libby, may serve a short prison time — for a serious offense that nevertheless pales in comparison with the acts perpetrated by his superiors. For the most part, however, it will fall upon the court of public opinion, the American people, to render an implacable judgment in 2008 against the political kin of Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Feith, and company who will be running for office in order to continue to wield power in spite of having brought their nation so much shame and tragedy.