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Bush's 'War Crimes' & Misdemeanors
by Robert Parry
Facing a tough reelection fight in 2004, George W. Bush expressed outrage over leaked photos showing U.S. military police at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison abusing detainees, who were paraded naked before female guards, threatened by attack dogs, chained in “stress positions” and forced to wear ladies underpants on their heads.
President Bush assured the American people that he “shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” Other administration officials pinned the blame on a “few bad apples” and dismissed the prison guards’ claim that they were told to “soften up” the detainees for interrogation.
Now, a report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General reveals that months before those abuses at Abu Ghraib, nearly identical tactics were used against “war on terror” detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at CIA prisons – and that FBI complaints about the tactics went up the chain of command back to Washington.
FBI agents at Guantanamo even opened a file that they labeled
“war crimes” to document the systematic violations of the Geneva
Conventions and laws against torture that they witnessed – before being
told by superiors to close the file.
According to the Inspector
General’s report, the FBI protests reached the White House but went
unheeded. Instead, the prisoner abuses spread to Iraq where the Abu
Ghraib prison was “Gitmo-ized” with the same harsh and bizarre tactics
applied to Iraqi detainees.
So, the new Inspector General’s
report adds to the growing body of evidence that – in the months before
Election 2004 – Bush only feigned shock about what was being done to
detainees in American custody.
The evidence is now overwhelming
that Bush knew of – and approved of – those violations of the rules of
war and basic human decency, that the “war crimes” catalogued by the
FBI agents could be traced to him.
In April 2008, ABC News
reported, citing unnamed sources, that during the early days of the
“war on terror,” senior Bush aides met in what was called the
Principals Committee to calibrate the level of harsh techniques that
would be used against detainees.
At the time, the Principals
Committee included Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary
of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General
John Ashcroft.
“The high-level discussions about these ‘enhanced
interrogation techniques’ were so detailed, these sources said, some of
the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed – down to the
number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic,” ABC News
reported, adding:
“These top advisers signed off on how the CIA
would interrogate top al-Qaeda suspects – whether they would be
slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning,
called waterboarding, sources told ABC News.”
Asked about his
subordinates setting these interrogation rules, Bush told ABC News
correspondent Martha Raddatz that “yes, I'm aware our national security
team met on this issue. And I approved." [ABC News, April 11, 2008]
Moral Leader?
Yet,
in 2004, by dismissing the grotesque scenes at Abu Ghraib as an
aberration, Bush portrayed himself as a moral leader who was furious
that some low-level American soldiers would misbehave in such a fashion.
After
the photos became public, Army Sgt. Sam Provance was the only uniformed
military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib to support the guards’
claim that the prisoner abuse was part of the “alternative
interrogation techniques” that had made their way from Guantanamo to
Abu Ghraib.
Provance, however, was punished for his candor and
pushed out of the U.S. military. The Bush administration then went
ahead and pinned the blame on the MPs. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.”]
Eventually, 11 enlisted soldiers were
convicted in courts martial. Cpl. Charles Graner Jr. received the
harshest sentence – 10 years in prison – while Lynndie England, a
22-year-old single mother who was photographed holding an Iraqi on a
leash and pointing at a detainee’s penis, was sentenced to three years
in prison.
Protected from the scandal’s fallout, Bush was
rewarded with a second term in the White House. Later, he began to
treat the Abu Ghraib case like some freak accident that the media had
blown out of proportion.
At a press conference on May 25, 2006, Bush complained, “We’ve been paying for that for a long period of time.”
However,
it’s now clear the President didn’t pay much of a personal price at
all. The more complete record now available indicates that Bush was a
knowledgeable participant in the sadistic treatment of detainees, not
an innocent bystander.
Indeed, on Feb. 7, 2002, Bush signed the
key memo that cleared the way for the abuses, asserting that the Geneva
Conventions’ prohibitions against the degrading treatment of prisoners
did not apply to “unlawful combatants,” including al-Qaeda and the
Taliban, the militant Islamists who had ruled Afghanistan at the time
of the 9/11 attacks.
Many casual readers missed the import of
Bush’s phrasing, which stressed that captives would be treated
“humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military
necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.”
The
operative phrase in the memo turned out to be “to the extent
appropriate and consistent with military necessity.” In the Bush
administration’s view, that was a loophole you could drive a truck full
of abusive tactics through. [For more on Bush’s theories of
presidential power, see our book, Neck Deep.]
Fresh Evidence
The
Inspector General’s report, released May 20, 2008, also provides fresh
evidence that senior Bush aides signed off on the harsh treatment of
detainees.
In spring 2002, when FBI agents objected to the
treatment of badly wounded al-Qaeda captive Abu Zubaydah – what one
agent called “borderline torture” – they were assured by CIA personnel
“that the procedures being used on Zubaydah had been approved ‘at the
highest levels,’” the Inspector General’s report said.
But one
of the FBI agents, called “Thomas” in the report, still passed on his
concerns to his superior, FBI Counterterrorism Assistant Director
Pasquale D'Amuro, who soon pulled the FBI agents out of the
interrogation.
D’Amuro, in turn, took the issue of Zubaydah’s
interrogation to FBI Director Robert Mueller; Michael Chertoff, then
Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s
Criminal Division; and other senior department officials, the report
said.
During a meeting with his superiors in summer 2002,
D’Amuro said he learned that the CIA had obtained a legal opinion from
the Justice Department opening the door for the harsh interrogations.
That
was an apparent reference to memos written by John Yoo of the Justice
Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, claiming that the President’s
commander-in-chief authority gave Bush the right to ignore laws if he
deemed that necessary to protect the nation.
“After his meeting
at Chertoff's office, [D’Amuro] met with Director Mueller and
recommended that the FBI not get involved in interviews in which
aggressive interrogation techniques were being used,” the Inspector
General’s report said.
“He stated that his exact words to
Mueller were ‘we don't do that,’ and that someday the FBI would be
called to testify and he wanted to be able to say that the FBI did not
participate in this type of activity.
“D'Amuro said that the
Director agreed with his recommendation that the FBI should not
participate in interviews in which these techniques were used.”
D’Amuro
said he objected to the harsh techniques because they were less
effective in gleaning reliable information; complicated later
prosecutions; violated moral standards; and “helped al-Qaeda in
spreading negative views of the United States.”
Up the Ladder
These FBI concerns made there way up the ladder to Bush’s National Security Council.
Mueller’s
chief of staff Daniel Levin said he attended a meeting at the NSC at
which CIA techniques were discussed and an attorney from the Office of
Legal Counsel [OLC] defended their legality.
“Levin stated that
in connection with this meeting, or immediately after it, FBI Director
Mueller decided that FBI agents would not participate in interrogations
involving techniques the FBI did not normally use in the United States,
even though OLC had determined such techniques were legal,” the
Inspector General’s report said.
FBI agents also crossed swords
with Pentagon interrogators over similar abusive techniques instituted
at Guantanamo, especially the harsh questioning of suspected 20th
hijacker Mohammed al-Qahtani between Nov. 23, 2002, and Jan. 15, 2003.
During
this period, military interrogators tied al-Qahtani to a dog leash and
made him perform dog tricks; repeatedly poured water over his head; put
him in painful stress positions; questioned him for periods of 20 hours
straight; stripped him naked in front of a woman; held him down while a
female interrogator straddled him; called his mother and sister whores;
accused him of homosexual tendencies; made him dance with a male
interrogator; ordered him to pray to an idol shrine; and subjected him
to extreme temperatures.
At one point in December 2002,
al-Qahtani was taken to a hospital suffering from low blood pressure
and low body core temperature, what one FBI agent termed hypothermia.
The
FBI’s objections to al-Qahtani’s interrogation also were brought to the
attention of senior officials in Washington, according to the Inspector
General’s report.
David Nahmias, a counsel in the Justice
Department’s Criminal Division, told the IG that he was “fairly
confident” that department officials raised the al-Qahtani issue at a
meeting of the Principals Committee.
Nahmias also said he
believed Attorney General Ashcroft spoke with someone at the NSC,
mostly likely NSC adviser Rice, about the FBI concerns regarding
al-Qahtani.
“When asked if anything ever happened as a result of
these meetings, Nahmias said that DOJ officials were continually
frustrated by their inability to get any changes or make progress with
regard to the al-Qahtani matter,” the report said.
Ashcroft, who
resigned in November 2004 shortly after Bush won a second term,
declined to be interviewed by the Inspector General.
Lack of Action
But the reason for a lack of action on the FBI complaints is now more obvious.
The
FBI’s evidence of “war crimes” went up the chain of command, all the
way to the White House, the NSC and the Principals Committee –
precisely where the abusive policies had been developed in the first
place.
Before senior FBI officials grasped this high-level
support for the mistreatment of detainees, some FBI agents were
instructed to compile the evidence for a “war crimes” file at
Guantanamo.
“At some point in 2003, however,” the Inspector
General’s report said, the FBI agents at Guantanamo “received
instructions not to maintain a separate ‘war crimes’ file, … that
investigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the FBI's mission.”
When
the ugly reality of how the United States was treating detainees
finally surfaced in spring 2004 with the Abu Ghraib photos, Bush and
his top aides pretended that they were innocent parties as shocked as
everyone else.
By laying the blame off on a “few bad apples,” Bush managed to get through the November 2004 election relatively unscathed.
And
now that the truth is finally coming to the surface, it appears to be
too late for him to be held accountable for “war crimes” and other
abuses of his presidential powers.
Some members of the Democratic-controlled Congress have expressed outrage over the latest disclosures and want hearings.
But
– if recent history suggests anything – it is that the Bush
administration will brush aside congressional inquiries, and the
Democrats, who long ago took impeachment off the table, will surrender
once again.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book,
Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written
with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at
neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History:
Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available
there. Or go to Amazon.com.
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