Bush Admits He Authorized Torture; Louis Wolf on CIA Torture Programs

Torture, considered a major crime against humanity, was authorized by former President George W. Bush. In a society with a sane media this would be a big deal, and there would be around the clock coverage, but agencies like ABC are far more interested in Bush's opinion of Kanye West's on-air criticism of his handling of the Katrina crisis than the fact that Bush said the buck stops with him, and that he is responsible for the crime of torture.

On Wednesday, November 3, R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post reported:

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

Bush insists that waterboarding is not torture, but that defense won't stand in court if an international criminal case against the Bush administration ever gets there. For the record, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, was waterboarded 183 times. So torture does not work, and it reflects badly on America.

The prosecution of officials of the Bush administration, including the President, is not off the table. David D. Cole, a professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University, told Democracy Now in September 2009 that under international law there must be official accountability in the United States at the highest levels of the government for authorizing torture:

It’s a legal obligation under the Convention Against Torture to investigate and refer for prosecution any person within the United States’ jurisdiction about whom there’s credible information that they’ve engaged in torture.

So, yeah, no, I think that it’s—you know, what’s very problematic about the current state of affairs is that we’re investigating only these low-level guys, and we’re not sort of focusing accountability where it needs to be focused. And in the long run, if we’re going to sort of heal this problem, if we’re going to not repeat it, we have to treat torture not as a policy option, where when we have a president who doesn’t believe in torture, we don’t torture, but when we have a president who does believe in torture, we do, but as something that is clearly and unmistakably illegal. And only official accountability will do that.

In Smith's Washington Post article, Cole remarked: "The fact that he did admit it suggests he believes he is politically immune from being held accountable. . . . But politics can change."

Former President Bush is not the only U.S. President who could be prosecuted for authorizing torture. President Obama also stands guilty. Washington's Blog had an article on January 10, 2010 called "Torture Is Continuing Under the Obama Administration, Creating More Terrorists and Further Destabilizing the Economy," documenting the many abuses by President Obama in his first year of office.

In September 2010, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an important lawsuit against a secret CIA torture program. Warren Richey of Christian Science Monitor reported:

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals voted 6 to 5 to dismiss the lawsuit filed on behalf of five individuals who charged they were seized and imprisoned without legal process, and tortured at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Evidence that torture was approved by the highest officials in the White House is cropping up everywhere. An important detail that emerged from the WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs that has been neglected by the media is what's known as "Frago 242." The Guardian unearthed a lot of information about this secret order.

On October 29, Harper's Scott Horton said that although Frago 242 is being trivialized by the Washington Post and other establishment outlets, a lack of media attention doesn't take away from the secret order's importance. Horton:

the disclosure of a Fragmentary Order (“Frago”) authorizing soldiers not to investigate cases of torture that do not involve coalition forces is extremely important. It counts as evidence of high-level policy to countenance war crimes and violations of the prohibition on torture, which requires not only investigation but also intervention. Recall this astonishing exchange that occurred between Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace at a DOD press conference in November 2005. Pace stated “it is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it…” Rumsfeld interrupted and contradicted him, but Pace stood his ground. He was reciting well anchored military doctrine. He was also overruled by Rumsfeld.

The WaPo editors think this is “nothing,” but a court or tribunal examining the matter would likely come to a starkly different conclusion.

Of course, the U.S. torture scandal is only the tip of an iceberg. Worse crimes were committed by the Bush administration: the crime of treason, and the crime of state terrorism. No one can predict the day of reckoning, but almost everyone knows there will be one.

II.

Below is a 1982 video clip of journalist Louis Wolf on the news program "Alternative Views" talking about CIA torture programs in South America, South Africa, and other places around the world.