Washington 'Addicted' to Torture and Terror

Calling Washington's anti-terror tactics an attempt to establish a 'new political-judicial order' which disregards international law and focuses on the use of 'State Terror,' this op-ed article from Mexico's La Jornada says that the CIA, the Pentagon and top U.S. officials are 'addicted' to torture and secrecy.

By John Saxe-Fernandez

Translated By Carly Gatzert

December 9, 2005

Original Article (Spanish)

"I cannot comment on specific aspects of our intelligence activities."  During her official visit to Germany, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used these words in an attempt to divert the onslaught of questions from the European press regarding the existence of locally operated antiterrorist intelligence centers financed by the CIA. Specializing in the detention, interrogation and elimination of Islamist suspects, the camps that the George Bush Government has installed in Europe, Iraq, and around the world reflect an attempt to establish a "new political-judicial order" which disregards international law and focuses on the systematic use of State terror.

As a result, foreign governments are finding themselves increasingly at odds with the public opinion of their citizens. For instance, the application of torture and the clandestine use of runways in Germany for the transport, torment, and elimination of presumed terrorists has become a hot topic.


Angela Merkel: On Dangerous Ground

It is an especially thorny issue for Germans, who have both suffered and been shamed by World War II extermination camps and Nazi terror. Given Germany’s history and current public sentiment, the psycho-political impact of a scheme such as the one driven by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumvirate is profound, and it surfaced when Rice visited Chancellor Merkel’s government, which is currently striving to improve relations with the U.S.

The potential political backlash for Merkel if she is suspected of even the slightest collaboration with Washington with regard to secret interrogation and extermination centers could be devastating, and she knows it. Her conservative government operates in the midst of German public opinion, whose opposition to the war in Iraq persists, along with a growing sense of indignant irritation over "clandestine" U.S. operations, including the systematic use of torture, a practice to which the triumvirate, the CIA, and the Pentagon now appear to be addicted.  U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney vehemently defends the Gestapoesque methods that they use because, as he attests, "they are useful in combating terrorism."


Is Bush 'Triumvirate' Running Amock?

The general opinion of experts and others who are knowledgeable about interrogation methods clash with Cheney’s rationale; they argue, rather, that the information acquired by using physical and mental abuse or by means of sexual or religious humiliation serves no purpose whatsoever.

The deterioration of America's image could not be greater. Not too long ago, Admiral Stanfield Turner, ex-Director of the CIA, labeled Dick Cheney as "vice-president for torture."  Meanwhile, the number of "disappearing" Muslim detainees continues to increase. This can be inferred from documents coming from the Red Cross, the FBI, the U.S. Army, and other official documents.  These documents also show that the Pentagon has approximately 54,000 soldiers instructed to carry out clandestine operations, including infiltration, destruction, sabotage, and the surreptitious capture of suspects, all of which prompted Rice’s recent visit to Germany.

The use of systematic terror in exchange for Iraqi oil makes use of a variety of tactics, including the bombing of civilians, recurrent captures and exterminations, the use of forbidden weapons, the application of torture, and the establishment of interrogation and detention centers in more than forty countries, with the objective of inflicting pain, torment and anguish in true Hitler fashion.

Recently, it was exposed in the United States that "at least" 1,100 torture centers exist in Iraq, some of which are contracted by United States businesses.  Furthermore, it is known that similar practices take place on warships and aircraft. These torture centers comprise a vast scheme in which, according to recent reports, "American agents, soldiers, and private contractors" participate, (Mark Danner, Torture and Terror: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror," New York Review of Books, 2004, cited by W. Pfaff, in his notable What We’ve Lost, Harpers, November 2005.)

For Latin America, the systematic use of torture is nothing new: pawns of the "government," millions of families have suffered from terror and torture, as the following example illustrates.

The U.S.-run School of the Americas has trained tens of thousands of Latin American officials in tactics that, according to the Department of Defense, include the scolding, frisking, and hand-cuffing of suspects, as well as the interrogation of prisoners and the control of the populace. However, these claims have consistently contradicted the facts.

Rather, today, systematic torture is part of America's interventionist policy, which considers the Geneva Conventions "obsolete," that is at odds with the International Criminal Court, and that protects the implicated U.S. officials from exposure to the U.S. Federal War Crimes Act of 1996, which carries the death penalty.

Bush, the "Commander-in-Chief," is at the forefront of those involved, which helps explain why his Administration has chosen to employ the term "enemy combatants" as a linguistic mechanism to evade harsh punishment.  But, as Pfaff claims, the White House has conveyed to American troops that "not only are international and national norms of lawful conduct suspended (or crucially limited) in the war against terror, but commonly accepted religious and secular norms of civilized conduct no longer apply."(p.55)

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