The defenders of torture
Guest Opinion
By Paul Craig Roberts
|  The
spectacle of an American Secretary of State being sent
to Europe to reassure America's allies that the US does
not torture prisoners has brought an end to America's
moral grandeur. America stands revealed before the world
as just another unaccountable police state.
|
Condi Rice's declaration that the Bush administration is
too morally pure to engage in torture was just another transparent
Bush administration deception. What is the point of Bush's
rendition policy that Rice was sent to Europe to defend if
the purpose is not torture? Why else do CIA agents kidnap
foreign nationals in foreign countries and fly them to secret
prisons in other foreign countries?
The Bush administration defends its policy of "extraordinary
rendition." Everyone who has survived the policy has
testified to experiencing brutal torture. Just read the account
in the December 11 Sunday Observer (UK) of the Ethiopian student
that the CIA kidnapped and tortured in Morocco.
The student, who speaks no Arabic, was brutally tortured
for 18 months until he was forced to confess to conspiring
with top al Qaeda chiefs and plotting with Padilla. While
one American hand was forcing the tortured student to incriminate
himself in the "Padilla plot," the other American
hand was dropping plot charges against Padilla!
The "Padilla plot" was nothing but a fantasy made
up by American officials to justify their police state policies.
Unlike the hapless Ethiopian student, Padilla is an American
citizen. After suffering three years of illegal detention
by the Bush administration, the law finally gave Padilla some
protection, and the false charges that he intended to set
off a radioactive bomb in an American city and blow up apartment
houses were dropped.
Some Americans, horrified at what the Bush administration
has done to their country, took hope in Europe's uproar over
Bush's rendition/torture policy. Alas, European governments
were shedding crocodile tears for show purposes only.
On December 11 the Telegraph (UK) reported on a European
Union document in its possession that summarizes an EU-US
meeting in Athens Greece on January 22, 2003 in which the
EU agreed to "co-operation in removals." The Telegraph
reports that "EU officials confirmed that a full account
was circulated to all member governments."
So we have the entire Western world complicit in kidnapping
and torture. The entire non-Western world surely notices the
unbridgeable gap between the Bush administration's immoral
practices and Bush's moral posturing about "freedom and
democracy." The prestige of the Western world is gone
forever.
People will say anything under torture, which is why the
practice and the "evidence" it provides were ruled
inadmissible centuries ago. The great English jurist, William
Blackstone, declared that torture determined guilt by the
hardness of a man's constitution and the sensibility of his
nerves. Blackstone proudly declared that there was no place
for the rack among the laws of England.
Everyone knows that confessions obtained under torture are
worthless. By having them tortured, Stalin was able to get
the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution to declare that they
were guilty of striving to overthrow the communist revolution!
Why then do we have the disgusting spectacle of the president
and vice president of the US and their neoconservative apologists,
such as Charles Krauthammer, defending torture?
In his defense of torture as a "moral duty," Krauthammer
assumes that the person being tortured is guilty and will
reveal the truth under torture. There is no basis whatsoever
for Krauthammer's assumptions.
The reason that the Bush administration and the neocons defend
torture is that, having launched an illegal invasion and created
an American police state, they are desperate for "evidence"
of the terrorist threat in order to justify their illegal
and unconstitutional policies.
The only way to obtain this "evidence" is to torture
people until they confess to the plots that are invented for
them. A steady stream of confessed "terrorists"
serves to justify the police state that has been created.
Bush revealed the ploy when he asserted on December 10 that
terrorist violence will be the result if Congress does not
renew the Orwellian-named "Patriot Act" by December
31: "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without
that vital law for a single moment."
What Bush declares to be a "vital law" is, in fact,
the greatest assault on civil liberties in the history of
our country.
Do Americans really want to give up the civil liberties granted
to them by the US Constitution merely in order that the Bush
administration can lord it over the Middle East, establish
puppet governments over Muslim peoples, protect Israel from
retribution for its crimes against Palestinians, and steal
oil from Arabs and Persians?
If Americans do, what remains of their virtue?
Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments
and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He
served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. His graduate economics education was at the
University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley,
and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good
Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
|
