Lest We Forget

Before watching the Presidents address last night I watched the DVD "Taxi To the Dark Side."  It is a brutal documentary about the torture of prisoners held during the Bush administration.  It is not one to watch if you are sensitive to unspeakable cruelty. The bestial treatment of the prisoners is painful to watch.   Torture and homicide were well documented and not one single officer has been charged.  A few low level GI's were found guilty, but they obviously had to take their orders from the chain of command.

After it was over I sat there dumbfounded wondering why Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonazales, John Woo, and George W. Bush were not in the dock at the Hague right now for crimes against humanity.  There is no denying that they approved of the brutal and inhumane treatment of the prisoners.   They had condemned themselves with statements made on public TV.

The tragic fact is that they never got any useful information after authorizing torture.   This is a classic example of ideology run amok.  Contrary to all evidence of the lessons that should have  been learned from history, they believed that a person would give valuable information when tortured.  Of course, all they got was what they wanted to hear.  It never served any purpose and it isn't as if they weren't told that it was counter-productive.  They knew, but ignored the sage advice of some of their military commanders.  

I am sure that you remember that 'the then'  President Bush pardoned all of them, including himself, before leaving office.  I am not familiar with international law, but I wonder if that pardon extends beyond our shores.  And I do wonder if it is legal for anyone, even a president, to pardon himself. 

You may be wondering why I am bringing this old painful subject up when we have more pressing problems to write about.  I decided to write about it for two reasons.  1).  An editorial in this mornings New York Times relates to this story.  I am including excerpts from it.   2).  It relates to how ideology causes people to make terrible errors in judgment; specifically, I am thinking of gun control.

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A Case for Accountability

A court hearing this month in Manhattan turned on a subject that has mostly been missing in the legal response to former President George W. Bush’s abusive detention policies: some measure of accountability.

The focus of the hearing before Judge Alvin Hellerstein of Federal District Court was not torture itself but the Central Intelligence Agency’s deliberate destruction in 2005 of dozens of videotapes made three years earlier showing the brutal interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects, including the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. At the time, the agency had been ordered by Judge Hellerstein to preserve the tapes.

They were part of the evidence being sought in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act seeking details of prisoner mistreatment. Their destruction was seen as so egregious that the Bush administration felt compelled to order a special investigation when it was disclosed. 

In November, the special prosecutor handling that investigation, John Durham, decided against bringing criminal charges against any C.I.A. official. No details of his decision were provided, leaving it unclear why those involved were not charged with any crime. 

The C.I.A.’s decision to destroy the tapes — rather than submit them to the judge for a decision on whether to order their public release — was a serious affront to the court and the rule of law.  

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Thinking about this gross miscarriage of justice led me to ruminating on how ideology twists minds into erroneous beliefs while ignoring facts.   I see the same thing happening now with Arizona's governor and many others of like mind on gun control.  Their ideology makes them believe the flawed perception that more guns in the hands of more people make them safer.   The story line goes something like this:  "If the students and teachers in the Columbine school had been armed the perpetrators would have been taken down and lives would have been saved."  The reality is, it happened so fast the the victims were shot before they would have had time to react.  Or the danger of some frightened teacher shooting wildly and hitting innocent kids could have resulted. 

No matter how you think it could have played out, the statistcs of factual real life dramas have proven that if you have a gun you are more likely to get shot.  I think some people like Ronald Reagan (sorry - I couldn't resist) confuse movies and TV with real life.  Statistics be damned; the NRA is determined to sell more guns and more ammunition for their backers with flawed information until we are all targets.  

My grandmother used to preach to me that justice triumphs and the good wins over evil.  Sorry, Grandma, but after living more years than I want to count I do not see it happening.   I will continue to fight for right, but I am getting tired of seeing the bad guys win.