Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Torture R Us
For many years the International committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has walked a fine line. In exchange for keeping its mouth shut all sorts of governments, evil and benign, have agreed to allow the Red Cross to visit prisoners, refugees in crowded camps and other detainees. The ICRC has certainly heard countless grisly stories relating to genocide, torture, organized rape and other atrocities. By being known for its steadfast discretion even horrible human rights abusers have trusted the ICRC to provide medical care to people it has criminally mistreated. It has been and will continue to be a very difficult moral quandary for the ICRC to not speak up when it is aware of these crimes. The reason that they have continued to agree to confidentiality is in order to avoid what they see would be a worse scenario; total isolation of these populations.
The US government may now force the ICRC to change its policies. The Pentagon has been countering accusations of detainee torture at Guantanamo by frequently representing the fact that we allow Red Cross access to these detainees as proof that we must not be mistreating them. The Pentagon has been making these statements knowing that the ICRC has agreed to keep its mouth shut. The ICRC does agree to keep information gleaned from visiting such facilities to itself but the organization does report its findings at detention centers and refugee camps to the government hosting these facilities. It seems that some of these reports related to Guantanamo have been leaked. The picture is not pretty.
To me, Bush administration violation of the spirit of this confidentiality agreement morally frees the ICRC to publicly reveal all it knows about Guantanamo. This departure from long established policy would be a very difficult and painful decision for them to make. To avoid jeopardizing the ICRC's ability to do its job in the future there needs to be an official investigation including the subpoena of these Red Cross documents by Congress. If crimes are being committed in our name they must be stopped and those responsible need to be indicted as War criminals. The safety of our own troops is at stake.
It is pretty clear by now that the Bush administration has embraced torture as a legitimate method of interrogation and one of the chief architects of the legal justifications for this shameful policy change, Alberto Gonzalez, will soon be the nation's top law enforcement official. Before the Senate gives its assent to this nominee we must get to the bottom of these accusations.
For many years the International committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has walked a fine line. In exchange for keeping its mouth shut all sorts of governments, evil and benign, have agreed to allow the Red Cross to visit prisoners, refugees in crowded camps and other detainees. The ICRC has certainly heard countless grisly stories relating to genocide, torture, organized rape and other atrocities. By being known for its steadfast discretion even horrible human rights abusers have trusted the ICRC to provide medical care to people it has criminally mistreated. It has been and will continue to be a very difficult moral quandary for the ICRC to not speak up when it is aware of these crimes. The reason that they have continued to agree to confidentiality is in order to avoid what they see would be a worse scenario; total isolation of these populations.
The US government may now force the ICRC to change its policies. The Pentagon has been countering accusations of detainee torture at Guantanamo by frequently representing the fact that we allow Red Cross access to these detainees as proof that we must not be mistreating them. The Pentagon has been making these statements knowing that the ICRC has agreed to keep its mouth shut. The ICRC does agree to keep information gleaned from visiting such facilities to itself but the organization does report its findings at detention centers and refugee camps to the government hosting these facilities. It seems that some of these reports related to Guantanamo have been leaked. The picture is not pretty.
To me, Bush administration violation of the spirit of this confidentiality agreement morally frees the ICRC to publicly reveal all it knows about Guantanamo. This departure from long established policy would be a very difficult and painful decision for them to make. To avoid jeopardizing the ICRC's ability to do its job in the future there needs to be an official investigation including the subpoena of these Red Cross documents by Congress. If crimes are being committed in our name they must be stopped and those responsible need to be indicted as War criminals. The safety of our own troops is at stake.
It is pretty clear by now that the Bush administration has embraced torture as a legitimate method of interrogation and one of the chief architects of the legal justifications for this shameful policy change, Alberto Gonzalez, will soon be the nation's top law enforcement official. Before the Senate gives its assent to this nominee we must get to the bottom of these accusations.
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