Tortured Folks

By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News

05 August 14

“In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks.”

– President Barack Obama, Friday, August 1, 2014

hat long overdue moment of candor is remarkable not for what it reveals but for what it foreshadows.

Anyone with the courage to want to know has known for over a decade that the U.S., particularly under the administration of George W. Bush, was engaged in a widespread, multinational, highly coordinated campaign of illegal detentions, kidnappings, abuses, and calculated acts of unspeakable torture and murder.

It should be noted that Obama spoke in the run-up to the long awaited Senate torture report. That’s significant, because we are left wondering if the pending release of the report didn’t force Obama’s hand. It begs the question, if the report caused CIA director John Brennan to admit the agency had spied on Senate members, and Obama to admit that the U.S. had engaged in “torture,” then what’s in the report?

If you don’t like the way Obama handled the admission of torture, then you will love the way the Republican members of the Senate react. They appear ready to double down on denial … big time.

When “folks get tortured” it’s always useful to remember the folks that did the torturing.

The Architects

At the center of the Bush administration’s Geneva Convention-shredding torture mill was Dr. Stephen A. Cambone. In 2007, in the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cambone was named by George W. Bush to head the newly minted post of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, USD(I).

From that position, Cambone would marshal a campaign of systemic international kidnapping, torture, and assassination. He served directly under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and has been called Rumsfeld’s enforcer, chief henchman, and guard dog. But to say that Cambone was a just another participant in the interrogation process would badly under underestimate the zealousness of his involvement, and the commanding role that he played.

Cambone, with the mentoring of America’s foremost bible-thumping lieutenant general, William Boykin, was the architect of the gruesome acts of torture that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison/interrogation center in Iraq. The definitive overview of Cambone’s primary role in the Bush administration’s kidnapping, torture, and murder rampage is Jeffrey St. Clair’s “Rumsfeld’s Enforcer.” It’s a bone jarring account. There is without question ample evidence to indict Stephen A. Cambone on war crimes charges.

An anonymous U.S. general is reported to have told the Army Times, “If I had one round left in my revolver, I’d take out Stephen Cambone.”

Cambone’s boss was of course Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was more hands-on when it came to establishing interrogation policy than his boss George W. Bush, but less hands-on than Cambone. Rumsfeld took greater care in insulating himself from potential war crimes prosecution. Rumsfeld did, however, author a set of authorized enhanced interrogation techniques. The memo was titled, “Counter-Resistance Techniques in the War on Terrorism (S).”

In the memo, Rumsfeld lays out method after method that he feels compelled to qualify by saying, “Other nations believe detainees are entitled to POW protections,” followed by a citation. He then goes on in each instance to encourage their use and marginalize the legal consequence. It should be noted that the specific techniques Rumsfeld referred to do not include waterboarding, the use of attack dogs, sexual humiliation, or murder, which are clearly chronicled in numerous documents from those years.

The Enablers

John Yoo: The Bush administration, knowing what it intended to engage in, sought legal cover, a legal fig-leaf so to speak. The centerpiece for their legal rationale was Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo’s novel and notorious so-called Torture Memo. Yoo’s memo of March 14, 2003, preceded Rumsfeld’s memo of April 16, 2003, by roughly a month.

Yoo’s argument for why the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war on terror, specifically the war in Afghanistan, had never been made before, and they have never been made since. Nonetheless, Yoo gave Bush administration hawks a document they could waive around, and what they viewed at the time as legal protection.

Jay (now Federal Judge) Bybee: But whatever John Yoo concocted could not compare in sheer brazenness to the to the August 1, 2002, Jay Bybee Torture Memo. Also working out of the Department of Justice under Attorney General John Ashcroft, from the Office of Legal Counsel, Bybee proceeded to torture and murder the Geneva Conventions themselves. The memo is an astounding document. To describe Bybee’s arguments could only serve to legitimize them. To understand the full weight of his departure from law, you must consider his core arguments as he wrote them:

• [F]or an act to constitute torture, it must inflict pain that is difficult to endure. Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.


• For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture, it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.


• [E]ven if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith. Instead, a defendant is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his custody or physical control.


• [U]nder the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate Sections 2340A.

For the record: No, that is not what the Geneva Conventions say. That is specifically the conduct the Conventions intended to define as criminal. Congratulations, Judge Bybee, that qualifies you as a co-conspirator.

It’s interesting to note that both Bybee and Yoo authored their opinions from the DoJ. In doing so, they spoke officially on behalf of the highest law enforcement agency in the U.S. So that either insulates Bush administration officials who acted on those memos from war crimes prosecution or makes at least Bybee and Yoo willing accomplices.

Let’s see what's in the Senate Torture Report. Should be good reading.

Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.