By Brigitte L. Nacos
If you need an actual case to categorically oppose the torture and the secret detention of what the Bush administration labels broadly as “enemy combatants, the horror story of Maher Arar will do. The Canadian citizen was falsely identified as a suspected terrorist, arrested at Kennedy Airport, and, according to the benign sounding “extraordinary rendition” practices of the CIA, sent to Syria for unspeakable torture treatment that lasted ten months. There is good reason to believe that many of the detainees who are held for years at Guantanamo Bay and other prisons abroad never had any ties to terrorists and have nevertheless suffered the same treatment as Mr. Arar. The Canadian eventually broke down and told his torturers what they wanted to hear--that he had trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan—although he had never been in that country. As today’s Washington Post editorial “Tortured by Mistake” points out, “it is well known that information they [torturous methods] produce is unreliable." Just as important, such methods are gross human rights violations.
When pollsters asked Americans last month, whether they were for or against allowing their government “the use of torture against people who are suspected of being terrorists” in efforts to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States, four of five respondents opposed torture. But late last year, when asked whether they supported the use of torture by military or intelligence personnel, if this might prevent major terrorist attacks, three of five respondents supported torture. Still earlier surveys found that Americans were split evenly on the issue of torture. This public uncertainty about the pros and cons of torture is hardly surprising in a post-9/11 climate in which this country lost its grip on firmly supporting its most esteemed values and in particular its credibility as moral voice in defense of human rights around the globe. What is one to make of the State Department’s list of countries that violate human rights, when some of these same countries receive “enemy combatants” from the CIA for the purpose of aggressive interrogation?
Torture by mistake or not, the President of the United States and his administration have consistently argued in favor of aggressive interrogation methods—meaning torture--and continue to press aggressively to have their torture policy legitimized by the Congress. While four Republican U.S. Senators (John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins) as well as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Vessey Jr. resisted the latest administration effort to have extreme interrogation legalized, they leave the broad understanding of “enemy combatants” in place that inevitably leads to detainment and torture by mistake.
Democrats should not be content to let a handful of Republicans fight the administration on this—especially not at a moment, when a compromise is likely to be worked out between White House and the Gang of Four in the Senate; they must raise their voices forcefully and regularly in this debate.
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