3-03-05, 8:41 am

From Granma

Bush was warned that he could be accused of war crimes

In January, 2002, when US President George W. Bush suspended the Geneva Convention’s application to his troops, legal counsel from the State Department urged White House counsel to alert the president that he could eventually be prosecuted for “war crimes.”

Now that the UN Human Rights Commission is meeting in Geneva, the news has taken on a particular resonance.  

In an article entitled Outsourcing Torture by US journalist, Jane Mayer, published in the New Yorker magazine, she explains how, in overriding international agreements regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, including the UN’s Convention against Torture, the White House has given the green light to all the atrocities that took place in the Pentagon’s interrogation camps.

In a memorandum dated January 11, 2002, and directed to John C. Yoo, President George W. Bush’s legal counsel on this subject, State Department counsel William Taft IV urged Yoo and Alberto González, the current Attorney General, to warn the President that by suspending the application of the Geneva Convention to its troops’ treatment of prisoners, “he would be seen as a war criminal by the rest of the world.”

Bush had announced his decision three days before.

In the previously unreleased 40-page memo, Taft argued that Yoo’s analysis relative to this subject was “seriously flawed.”

Taft told Yoo that his contention that the President could disregard the Geneva Convention was “untenable,” “incorrect” and “confused.” Taft also rejected the argument that Afghanistan was a “failed State” and for that reason, was not covered by the treaties.   

State Department counsel afterwards warned Yoo “that if the United States took the war on terrorism outside the Geneva Conventions, not only could U.S. soldiers be denied the protections of the Conventions - and therefore be prosecuted for crimes, including murder - but President Bush himself could be accused of a ‘grave breach’ (of those Conventions) by other countries and be accused of war crimes.”

Taft sent a copy of his letter to Alberto González to make sure that Bush was informed.

Taft’s advice had no influence on Bush, who maintained his position.

According to the New York journalist, White House counsel opinions on the subject of torture were always redacted leaving gaps.

In February 2002, Bush issued a written directive stating that, even though he had determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war on terror, all detainees must be treated in a “humane” fashion.

However, a careful reading of the document reveals that it is only referred to military interrogators - not to CIA officials, which enabled the agency’s interrogators to continue using a wide range of abusive interrogation tactics. In August, Yoo himself issued an opinion in which torture was defined as the intent to inflict suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. “ Another confidential memorandum redacted by Bush’s attorneys later authorized the CIA to use “new” torture methods including “water-boarding” in which the suspect is bound and afterwards submerged in water so as to create the sensation of drowning. 

According to Yoo, the US Constitution grants the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Geneva Convention against Torture.

According to White House counsel, Congress lacks the power to tie the President’s hands in regards to torture and interrogation techniques. “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They cannot prevent the President from ordering torture,” affirmed Bush’s legal counsel.

Jane Mayer’s very extensive article focuses on the use of  “rendition” procedures that have enabled the CIA to hand over an unknown number of prisoners to countries where it is known that they were going to be tortured, letting others do the dirty work while still obtaining information. 

Mayer cites the case of Ibn-al-Sheikh al-Libi, an alleged high-ranking leader of the Al Qaeda, captured in Pakistan and turned over to the CIA. Libi supposedly had been in charge of running a training camp for the extremist group in Khamden, Afghanistan.

While the FBI was reportedly satisfied with Libi’s cooperation during interrogations, the CIA did not share this opinion. Libi “disappeared” from the agency and was handed over to another “friendly” country’s interrogators…and the FBI lost track of him.

He reappeared months later in the Guantánamo interrogation camp.

In the meantime, Colin Powell had used his “confessions” obtained under torture before the Security Council in February 2003, to “demonstrate” that Iraq possessed “chemical and biological weapons” and to justify the invasion and occupation of that nation.

Of course, as has been confirmed to date, those “reports” obtained through maltreatment were totally false.   .

Likewise, another one of the CIA’s “disappeared,” Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen of Egyptian national origin, arrested in Pakistan in October, 2001 and handed over to the CIA also reappeared in the US Guantánamo interrogation camp.

The US authorities blindfolded him, placed him in orange jumpsuit, and boarded him on a private plane to bring him to another “friendly” country where he was handed over to interrogators.

The interrogation lasted six months, recounted Mayer.

“He said that he was beaten frequently with blunt instruments, including an object that he likened to an electric “cattle prod.” And he was told that if he didn’t confess to belonging to Al Qaeda he would be anally raped by specially trained dogs. (…) Habib said that he was shackled and forced to stand in three torture chambers: one room was filled with water up to his chin, requiring him to stand on tiptoe for hours; another chamber, filled with water up to his knees, had a ceiling so low that he was forced into a prolonged, painful stoop; in the third, he stood in water up to his ankles, and within sight of an electric switch and a generator, which his jailers said would be used to electrocute him if he didn’t confess. Habib’s lawyer said that he submitted to his interrogators’ demands and made multiple confessions, all of them false.” 

Habib, a businessman, was finally released from Guantánamo a month ago, at the insistence of the Australian government, after three years of detention and maltreatment. Without the slightest charge being brought against him.

According to Meyer’s report, since 2001, 150 individuals have been transported to their “rendition”, many in a white, 14 seated Gulfstream V light aircraft belonging to the CIA, with the identification letters N8068V. An indeterminate number of prisoners, whose identity for the most part is unknown, also remain sequestered in the network of the CIA’s secret prisons.

In Geneva, while the UN Human Rights Commission is meeting, the New York article sounds like a confession. And an accusatory act.

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