"The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. The world is better off because he sits in a prison cell. Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq." -President Bush, 3 May '04
Toronto's Globe and Mail is is reporting that International Committee for the Red Cross that its officials were worried about activities at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, long before stories of mistreatment became public.
Apparently, the "isolated incidents" of torture, abuse and sexual degradation allegedly committed by American troops weren't and aren't quite as isolated as we'd all like to believe. Systematic and widespread? Hopefully not. But with the PR disaster getting worse every day, neither the president nor anyone else should content themselves by blithely saying "It's still better than Saddam" and casually lecturing Iraqis on the nature of democracy.
As the Washington Post editorial yesterday pointed out about Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld.
Beginning more than two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review. Abuses will take place in any prison system. But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has been held accountable. The lawlessness began in January 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld publicly declared that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan "do not have any rights" under the Geneva Conventions.
The president needs to take a dramatic step: fire the secretary of war. Firing Secretary Rumsfeld would send a REAL message to Iraqis about accountability and rule of law in a democratic society; a message far more powerful than reading a script on pan-Arab television. The crimes were committed by individual soldiers and they should be punished accordingly. The tone for such lawlessness and impunity was set by the secretary of war's policies. He should be punished accordingly too. By losing his job.
Do I expect this to happen? When hell freezes over. The motto of this administration is: take a decision, make "facts" fit with that decision, don't look back and never, EVER cast a critical analysis on past decisions. President Bush complained that he learned of the horrible photos via the media, rather than Secretary Rumsfeld, But the president has set the tone for his administration that made this seem normal. He's little interested in the specifics. He's not an ideas guy, he'd probably boast. It's not surprising that this style of leadership eventually burned him.
Congress is equally complicit. They stopped acting as a check on the executive shortly after 11 September. They hurriedly passed the so-called Patriot Act with little opposition and, shockingly, no Congressional hearings. They woud hold Congressional hearings if someone proposed establishing 'Apple Pie Tastes Good' Day but not for radically far-reaching Patriot Act.
After signing this blank check, the administration concluded that it could do pretty much whatever it wanted under the guise of 'the war on terror.' And it was right. Congress has been largely silent throughout.
You'd think someone in Congress might make some noise when the administration to say it'll respect the Constitution when it wants to. Or that the administration doesn't feel like complying with the Geneva Convention. Yet Congress was silent. Oversight and accountability are functionally non-existent. And some of us are left to bemoan "phantoms of lost liberties," to cite the attorney general's condescending remarks.
Now, Congress is annoyed that Secretary Rumsfeld never told them about the photos. What did they expect? They've given the administration blank checks for the last two and a half years and now they're shocked, SHOCKED, about being left out of the loop. Once the horse is let out of the barn, it's hard to get him back in.
