Will Bush gang be prosecuted for torture?

President Barack Obama’s order in mid-April to release four Justice Department memos, kept secret until now, has exposed sharp differences within ruling circles regarding the policies of the Bush administration.

Written in the early years of that administration, the memos provided a legal argument justifying the use of harsh interrogation techniques—that is, they provided a legal cover for torture.

For example, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay ByBee—now a federal judge appointed for life—wrote his now-famous Aug. 1, 2002, memo that provided legal excuses for the techniques known as attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap or insult slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box and the water board or simulated drowning.

In cold and calculating language, the memos pre-approved these techniques, as long as medical personnel monitored them “properly”—that is, as long as doctors and psychiatrists participated in the crime. As ByBee wrote, “We further conclude that certain acts may be cruel, inhuman, or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity to fall within Section 2340A’s proscription against torture.”

The memos suggested water boarding be limited to 12-minute sessions to avoid charges of torture. This didn’t stop the CIA interrogators from applying that technique a total of 266 times on two of their prisoners. (New York Times, April 20)

CIA officials and Republican politicians have attacked Obama from the right, charging him with compromising national security, even though George W. Bush had already revealed most if not all of what is in the memos.

No prosecutions?

Defending Obama’s decision to release the documents, Obama aide Rahm Emanuel reiterated on April 19, while speaking on several Sunday morning talk shows, that the administration would not try to prosecute either the CIA operatives who carried out the interrogations, the lawyers who justified them or the high Bush officials who ordered them.

Obama on April 21 altered that somewhat by saying that the attorney general could still decide if it was legally necessary to investigate the role of the lawyers who wrote these memos, although he preferred not to look back at these events.

Manfred Nowak, the United Nations rapporteur on torture, said that the U.S. must try those who used harsh interrogation tactics, according to the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union—which was on the verge of winning a suit forcing the government to reveal the memos—and other human-rights groups applauded the Obama administration for publishing the memos. But at the same time they criticized the government for failing to charge the top government officials who ordered the torture techniques with crimes and bring them to trial.

The Center for Constitutional Rights said on April 16, “It is one of the deepest disappointments of this [Obama] administration that it appears unwilling to uphold the law where crimes have been committed by former officials. Whether or not CIA operatives who conducted water boarding are guaranteed immunity, it is the high level officials who conceived, justified and ordered the torture program who bear the most responsibility for breaking domestic and international law, and it is they who must be prosecuted.” (www.ccrjustice.org)

The Obama administration had earlier promised to end CIA torture at Guantánamo. Regarding the hundreds of tortured detainees who have been transferred to other countries, however, the CIA has refused to allow the International Red Cross access to them. (Newsweek, April 8)

Tactical differences

The Iraqi resistance to a U.S. takeover has brought U.S. imperialism’s prestige to its lowest level. An April 18 New York Times editorial indicates sharp differences within U.S. ruling circles over how to restore U.S. standing, but not over whether U.S. world domination itself is a crime.

The Times, speaking for a sector of the imperialist ruling class, clearly differed with Obama’s argument, as put forward by Rahm Emanuel, that “this is not a time for retribution.” Its editorial called for an investigation of Justice Department memo-drafting lawyers ByBee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury.

This editorial also suggested that if the Justice Department doesn’t do it, then Congress should investigate the executive branch, including Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney; former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Many others worldwide know that U.S. use of torture, as serious as this is, was only one part of the Bush administration’s criminal conspiracy to carry out the illegal and unjustifiable invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—invasions the New York Times also supported at the time. These criminal adventures resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqis, tens of thousands of Afghans and thousands of U.S. troops.

There would be widespread support here and worldwide for prosecuting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company for their many war crimes, including the torture of prisoners.

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