Pentagon Report Allowing Torture

Yesterday (June 7), the Wall Street Journal was the first to refer to a Pentagon report outlining the framework for the use of torture. The report was requested in late 2002, after the military in Guantanamo Bay complained they were not sucessful at getting information out of their prisoners. The report was delivered in March 2003, and in a nutshell says the White House is not bound by any international treaties regulating torture, such as the Geneva Conventions or the Convention Against Torture (ratified by the U.S. in 1994). Although its not clear yet whether Bush was aware of this report, its reasonable to think that once the issue of torture, or 'abuses' came up, that the report would have been mentioned in White House circles. The report and its history, plainly demonstrate the pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib should not have come as a surprise, nor could they be dismissed as a freak occurence by a few soldiers. In not only represents common practices, but the government made sure that it had a legal defense of torture used in Guantanamo (limiting prisoners' food, denying them clothing, subjecting them to body-cavity searches, depriving them of sleep for as much as 96 hours and shackling them) and later in Iraq.

«(...) at its core is an exceptional argument that because nothing is more important than "obtaining intelligence vital to the protection of untold thousands of American citizens," normal strictures on torture might not apply. (...) Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense (...) A military official who helped prepare the report said it came after frustrated Guantanamo interrogators had begun trying unorthodox methods on recalcitrant prisoners. "We'd been at this for a year-plus and got nothing out of them" so officials concluded "we need to have a less-cramped view of what torture is and is not." The official said, "People were trying like hell how to ratchet up the pressure," and used techniques that ranged from drawing on prisoners' bodies and placing women's underwear on prisoners heads -- a practice that later reappeared in the Abu Ghraib prison -- to telling subjects, "I'm on the line with somebody in Yemen and he's in a room with your family and a grenade that's going to pop unless you talk." (...) The working-group report elaborated the Bush administration's view that the president has virtually unlimited power to wage war as he sees fit, and neither Congress, the courts nor international law can interfere. It concluded that neither the president nor anyone following his instructions was bound by the federal Torture Statute. (...) Moreover, "any effort by Congress to regulate the interrogation of unlawful combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the commander-in-chief authority in the president," the lawyers advised. Likewise, the lawyers found that "constitutional principles" make it impossible to "punish officials for aiding the president in exercising his exclusive constitutional authorities" and neither Congress nor the courts could "require or implement the prosecution of such an individual." » (WSJ June 7)

The Center for Constitutional Rights has obtained a copy of the report, which you can download from their site.