Criminal World
By Chris Floyd
02/03/05 "Moscow Times" --
Another day, another accomplice in the construction of the Bush Regime's torture
chambers revealed. Nothing new there; the perp walk of top Bushists colluding in
torture could stretch a mile. But the remarkable thing about the latest case is
that it exposes an even greater depth of official criminality than hitherto
suspected -- no mean feat, given the rap sheet of this crew.
The new man
on the hot seat is Judge Michael Chertoff, nominated to head the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security. Chertoff was hip-deep in creating -- and covering up --
the infamous White House "torture memos": carefully detailed guidelines from the
desk of President George W. Bush that instigated a global system of documented
torture, rape and murder.
Before Bush elevated him to the federal bench,
Chertoff headed the Justice Department's criminal division, where he was
frequently consulted by the CIA and the White House on ways to weasel around the
very clear U.S. laws against torture, The New York Times reports. Bush and his
legal staff, then headed by Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales, were
openly concerned with "avoiding prosecution for war crimes" under some future
administration that might lack the Bushists' finely nuanced view of ramming
phosphorous lightsticks up a kidnapped detainee's rectum, or other enlightened
methods employed in the administration's crusade to defend civilization from
barbarity.
Throughout 2002 and 2003, the CIA sent Chertoff urgent
questions asking whether various "interrogation protocols" could get their
agents sent to the hoosegow. The questions themselves are revelatory of the
tainted mindset at CIA headquarters -- officially known as the George H.W. Bush
Center for Intelligence. Beyond methods we already know were used -- such as
"water-boarding" and "rendering" detainees to foreign torturers -- the Bush
Center boys sought legal cover for such additional refinements as "death threats
against family members" and "mind-altering drugs or psychological procedures
designed to profoundly disrupt a detainee's personality."
However,
the Justice Department could only offer advice; final approval of interrogation
techniques -- including the Bush Center's requests -- rested solely with the
Bush White House. As one senior intelligence official told The New York Times:
"Nothing that was done was not explicitly authorized" by the Oval Office. Thus
the chain of responsibility is clearly established for the reams of evidence on
torture, rape and murder in the Bush gulag -- cases documented by the FBI and
the Pentagon's own investigators, as well as the Red Cross, Amnesty
International, the Red Crescent, Human Rights Watch and others.
But
Chertoff's involvement in Bush's chamber of horrors goes beyond an advisory
capacity. He was also instrumental in the earliest cover-up of Bush's torture
system: the trial of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" captured in
Afghanistan, the Nation reports. In June 2002, Lindh was due to testify about
the methods used to extract his confession of terrorist collusion: days of
beating, drugging, denial of medical treatment, and other abuses. These were of
course standard procedures used -- by presidential order -- from the very
beginning of the "war on terror." To stop Lindh from exposing this wide-ranging
criminal regimen, Chertoff, overseeing the prosecution, suddenly offered Lindh a
deal: The feds would drop all the most serious charges in exchange for a lighter
sentence -- and a gag order preventing Lindh from telling anyone about his
brutal treatment. Lindh, facing life imprisonment or execution, took the deal.
Once again, Bush skirts were kept clean. And the torture system was kept safe
for its expansion into Iraq, where thousands of innocent people fell into its
maw.
This memo was crafted by Jay Bybee, a long-time Bush Family factotum
who originally served as White House aide to George Bush Senior. There, Bybee
played a key role in quashing the investigation into BNL, the shady bank used by
George I to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam Hussein for weapons
purchases, including WMD materials supplied by Bush-backed arms merchants. When
the scandal broke, Bush I appointed lawyers from these same arms dealers to top
Justice Department posts, where they supervised the "investigation" into their
former companies. Meanwhile, Bybee pressured local prosecutors to restrict their
probe of the bank's dirty dealings to -- you guessed it -- a few low-ranking
"bad apples." Once again, Bush skirts were kept clean -- while Bush blood money
kept flowing to Saddam. For his faithful family services, Bybee, like Chertoff,
was made a federal judge by Bush II.
The Bush-Bybee torture
authorization was in force until January 2005, when it was ostentatiously
replaced by a somewhat broader definition of torture just before Gonzales'
confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate. But another Bybee-penned memo,
detailing specific, Bush-approved "coercive methods," remains classified. Is it
still in force? Nobody knows.
In any event, the Bushists' PR shuffle on
torture is meaningless. Gonzales has already declared to the Senate that
interrogators in the CIA's secret gulag aren't bound by the new "restrictions"
anyway. What's more, he's also asserted -- again openly, to the Senate -- that
Bush has the right to break any law or restriction he pleases "while acting in
his capacity as commander-in-chief." Thus whatever the Leader orders -- even
torture and murder -- cannot be a crime.
This is no hypothetical case, as
Gonzales pretended to the Senate. In a series of executive orders beginning in
October 2001, Bush has declared his peremptory right to capture, imprison,
indefinitely detain or even assassinate anyone in the world whom he arbitrarily
and secretly designates an "enemy" -- without any legal process at all, the
Washington Post reports. Thousands of such "enemies" have been plunged into the
CIA's unrestricted prisons, The Guardian reports; and as Bush himself bragged in
his 2003 State of the Union speech, "many others have met a different fate.
Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem." They were simply killed,
in secret, at Bush's order.
This is thug law, a death-cult of blood and
domination -- the true religion of the Bushists and their mirror-image
crimelords in al-Qaida.
Annotations
Chertoff and Torture
The Nation, Feb. 3,
2005
Bush Security Nominee Gave Advice to CIA on Torture
New York Times, Jan. 29, 2004
Gonzales Excludes CIA from Rules on Prisoners
New York Times, Jan. 20, 2005
Alberto
Gonzales' Tortured Arguments for Reigning Above the Law
LA
Weekly, Jan. 14-20, 2005
Torture Treaty Doesn't Bar `Cruel, Inhuman' Tactics, Gonzales
Says
Knight-Ridder, Jan. 26, 2005
The Secret World of US Jails
The Observer, June
13, 2004
The Torture Memos: A Legal Narrative
CounterPunch, Feb. 2, 2005
President Delivers State of the Union
The White
House, Jan. 28, 2003
White House Fought New Curbs on Interrogations, Officials
Say
New York Times, Jan. 13, 2005
A U.S.
License to Kill
Village Voice, Feb. 21,
2003
Lawyers Decided Torture Bans Didn't Bind Bush
New York Times, June 8, 2004
CIA Takes on Major
Military Role: 'We're Killing People!'
Boston Globe, Jan.
20, 2002
Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003
CIA Weighs 'Targeted
Killing' Missions
Washington Post, Oct. 27,
2001
The Emergence of the Homeland Security State
TomDispatch, Jan. 29, 2005
The Emergence
of the Homeland Security State, Part II
TomDispatch, Jan.
31, 2005
Fresh
Horrors at Guantanamo
Inter Press Service, Jan. 11,
2005
My Nightmare of Torture and Assault
The
Independent, Jan. 30, 2005
The War Party's Atrocity Porn
The New American,
24 January 2005
Rumsfeld Knew: Iraq Prison Abuse Part of Pentagon Black Ops
Program
Democracy Now, May 17, 2004
Bush Team Knew of Abuse at Guantanamo
The
Guardian, Sept. 13, 2004
Memo Regarding Presidential Executive Order on
Interrogations
Federal Bureau of Investigation, May 22,
2004
Records Released in Response to Torture FOIA Request
American Civil Liberties Union, Dec. 20, 2004
New Papers Suggest Detainee Abuse was Widespread
Washington Post, Dec. 21, 2004
President Authorized Interrogation
Washington
Times, Dec. 20, 2004
Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002
US Can Target American Al-Qaida Agents
Associated Press, Dec. 3, 2002
2001 Memo
Reveals Push for Broader Presidential Powers
Newsweek,
Dec. 18, 2004
Copyright: Moscow Times
