Legalizing Torture

Those pictures of American soldiers abusing and humiliating prisoners in Iraq, standing one of them on a pedestal shrouded in a hood and with electric wires attached to him, threatening others with fierce dogs, and leading another like a dog on a leash, have horrified the world, shamed the American public, and handed a powerful and lasting propaganda symbol to this country’s enemies. But the full story is far from told, especially the question of responsibility for the abuses all the way up the chain of command.

The Wall Street Journal disclosed in a news story last week that top Bush administration lawyers had prepared a memorandum contending that the president was not bound by the Geneva Conventions or by a federal statute prohibiting torture. The newspaper reported that the secret March 6, 2003, memo declared that the president has the authority as military commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture. That may explain in part the story yesterday in The New York Times and elsewhere that senior officers learned of the abuse last November and apparently did nothing about it. Previously, senior officers testified they did not learn of the torture until January.

The Journal quoted a military official who helped prepare the report as saying that it came after frustrated interrogators at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo, Cuba, complained about restrictions that kept them from getting useful information out of prisoners. Among techniques already being used there were drawing on prisoners’ bodies, placing women’s underwear on prisoners’ heads, and telling subjects, “I’m on the line with somebody in Yemen and he’s in a room with your family and a grenade that’s going to pop unless you talk.” The interrogators wanted a free hand to go further.

The plain facts are clear. The document is an obvious attempt to override the Geneva Convention Against Terror and the Terror Statute. The convention states that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” The federal law makes it a crime for Americans working for the government overseas to commit or attempt torture, defined as any act intended to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Despite the quibbling over the definition, torturing is torturing and the world knows it.

Administration officials seem to hope that the whole thing will blow over and that most people won’t worry over the mistreatment of terrorists, even if they are merely accused or suspected of terrorism. The line that the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad were the work of only a few enlisted soldiers and that their prosecution is coming right along may continue to persuade some, but the memo shows that the blame must go higher.

What needs to be done now is thorough investigation of this effort to bypass a federal law and an international agreement. The Pentagon clearly cannot be counted on to investigate itself. An independent commission named, say, by Congress or the American Bar Association would do better. Secret memos from Attorney General John Ashcroft should be declassified and made public at once.