GW Bush and Torture Deaths
* What: Torture of prisoners, most of them falsely accused of terrorism, by US military, government agents, or private contractors in prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Naval Base, or in prisons in third party countries at US government request or supervision.
* The Body Count: At least 108 deaths in custody. How many were deliberate murders, manslaughter, depraved indifference, or accidents is far from clear.
* About 92% of prisoners at Guantanamo were falsely imprisoned. Only 8% were Al Qaeda or Taliban. Most were local residents or refugees. Some were aid workers or missionaries. Five were British citizens. Over 600 out of 779 prisoners have been released, but also refused entry to their home countries or the US. Instead, sixteen nations have taken them in as political refugees.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* Vice President Dick Cheney amassed the most power and influence of any Vice President in US history, using his reach mostly in intelligence. Cheney defends torture or “enhanced interrogation” to this day and maintains that it led to saving lives and prevented terrorist attacks. This is a lie. In fact, torture led to lives lost. Suspects often gave inaccurate information, telling their abusers whatever they could think of to stop the torture, leading to resources diverted to stopping attacks that were never going to happen.
* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the torture policy, specifically signing off on practices such as water boarding.
* Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez led the formulation of the legal defense of torture.
* Solicitor John Yoo specifically crafted the government memos legally defending torture.
* CIA interrogators carried out some interrogations, but more often supervised or directed the kidnapping of suspects to be tortured in third party countries, usually dictatorships with no laws against torture.
* US officers and enlisted at Baghram and Guantanamo guarded the prisoners and carried out the better known abuses such as sexual humiliation. Most of those punished were low ranking enlisted who clumsily took photographic evidence of their crimes.
* Unknown private contractors, likely former military intelligence or CIA, carried out most of the interrogations at US bases. One of the side effects of conservative control of these wars was that both torture and intelligence gathering were privatized. Some intelligence officers volunteered for Iraq or Afghanistan knowing that after a short period they could resign and then be hired by private firms to do the same work for several times the pay.
* A US public with a large segment that supports torture made it easier to be carried out and more difficult for war criminals to be tried.
* Fox News, talk radio, and Hollywood productions such as the television show 24 that endorsed torture, including films such as Iron Man that show torture as only done by the enemy, played a large role in the US public's acceptance of torture as necessary, even patriotic.
* For most of US history, the military had a relatively good record of opposing torture as inhumane, unworthy of a soldier, and inefficient since it tends to produce false information. In most wars, even when the enemy was hated, US soldiers rarely tortured the other side. Atrocities against civilians and murders of POWs, yes, but torture was not common in wars against Natives. British, Confederates, Germans, North Koreans, or Iraqis.
* The major exceptions were four. US soldiers often tortured Mexican civilians and Catholic priests in the US-Mexico War, Filipino guerillas and civilians in the US-Philippines War, and tortured or mutilated Japanese POWs in World War II. These first three practices of widespread torture were more often done for retaliation, racist hatred, or to terrorize the enemy than any intent to get information.
* As brutal as the US wartime record often was, most US soldiers, officers, and civilian leaders often maintained that the US military should maintain moral superiority. Torture was what the enemy did, and not doing so made Americans better than them. Not only that, torture was considered a heinous war crime. Japanese military who ordered the torture of Allied servicemen were executed for their atrocities.
* During the Korean War, some US servicemen were captured. North Korean torturers attempted to get soldiers to betray their country and switch sides. About 50 did, in widely reported cases of “brainwashing.” US intelligence obtained copies of North Korean interrogation, brainwashing, and torture manuals. Those same North Korean manuals were used as the model for US torture of terrorism suspects and falsely accused.
* For the public, US government torture practices were exposed by the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. CBS News got hold of photos by US soldiers guarding Iraqi prisoners. The photos showed beatings, death threats, threats with guard dogs, sexual humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, smearing prisoners with feces and urine, simulated drowning, and disorientation using loud sounds. Yet US officials, all the way up to Bush, maintained none of this was torture. The US Justice Department had redefined torture to not be torture unless it resulted in “organ failure or deaths.” One prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was water boarded over 180 times, but still gave false information.
* Yet even that torture was still not enough for some in the Bush administration. Some suspects were sent to other countries, dictatorships where there were no laws against torture. “Ghost detainees” could be tortured at will in even more extreme ways, usually with US officials present and often directing the torture. At least 54 governments carried out torture for the US including Iran and Syria. Governments that helped kidnap suspects and send them to other nations to be tortured were mostly in the Middle East or Eastern Europe.
* Many suspects and falsely accused were sent to Guantanamo Bay. A US base on Cuban soil (held for over 50 years against the wishes of Cuba) Bush sent the prisoners there for two reasons. Since this was not US soil, torture there could not be prosecuted under US laws. And by sending the prisoners there, it maintained the fiction that these were all incredibly dangerous fanatics.
* Only 8% of the prisoners at Guantanamo were actually Al Qaeda or Taliban. Nearly all the remaining prisoners were innocent, falsely accused. At least 55% of the prisoners never fought anyone. The noncombatants included refugees, missionaries, and aid workers. The most famous falsely accused were six British citizens of Pakistani descent who were in Afghanistan for a friend's wedding.
* The Bush administration used a bounty system. Afghan militias had financial incentive to claim anyone they captured and turned over to the US was a terrorism suspect. But Bush refused to admit any wrongdoing. This was beyond ideological blindness. This was simply trying to hide your incompetence and being willing to continue to torture and falsely imprison to do so.
* As of this writing, only six Guantanamo prisoners have ever been tried. Seven more still face charges over a decade after being imprisoned. The use of torture makes trials far more difficult. Instead of civilian courts, the suspects are tried by military tribunals, where many US military officers refuse to take part if possible.
* Over 600 of the 779 prisoners were released when Obama became president. Barred from the US thanks to a campaign of hysteria and fear for political gain by Republicans, instead they became refugees in sixteen nations that accepted them. And much like prisons often produce more hardened criminals, the long abuse and torture in Guantanamo turned a few of the falsely imprisoned into recruits for terrorist groups.
* Only eleven US soldiers were convicted for abusing prisoners, mostly those low level guards at Abu Ghraib who foolishly took photos of their abuse. Most of the actual torturers we do not know. As for the ones who ordered the torture, Bush, Cheney, et al, they remain at large, wanted for prosecution in other countries for their war crimes. One of the first acts of Obama was to proclaim he would not prosecute Bush and other war criminals. Indeed, the Obama administration never used the term war criminal, but did admit repeatedly that crimes were committed. Bush retired and makes huge speaking fees at events where security carefully screens out protesters.
* Alberto Gonzalez resigned in 2007, not for his role in torture nor another controversy over illegal spying, but for revelations he forced US Attorneys out of the Justice Department to replace them with Republicans. Gonzalez had trouble finding work for two years before he became a diversity recruiter at Texas Tech University over the protests of much of the faculty and student body. In 2011 he became a law professor at Belmont University. He remains under indictment by courts in Europe. John Yoo also remains under indictment in Europe as well, was banned from Russia for his role in torture, and likely cannot travel in most of the world without facing charges. The torture memo he authored was immediately repudiated by the Obama administration. Yoo is still a professor at UC Berkeley.
* Had the top Bush administration officials been punished the same as Japanese war criminals who committed the exact same war crimes, at least six Bush officials and Bush himself would have and should have faced the death penalty for torture. Only sovereign immunity protected Bush while in office, and he cannot travel in most of the world today. In both Canada and Switzerland he was forced to cancel planned speeches for fear he could be detained or tried.