[Mb-civic] The Normalization of Torture and Contempt for the Rule of Law

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

https://www.zmag.org/sustainers/forums

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-03/18herman.cfm

==================================

ZNet Commentary
The Normalization of Torture, Death Squads and Contempt for the Rule 
of Law 

March 19, 2005 By Edward Herman 

The U.S. political establishment keeps reaching new levels of hypocrisy,
deception (including self-deception), and open immorality as the empire
expands in the pursuit of "freedom," militarism and war become more
institutionalized, and rightwing political power is consolidated. The
appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney-General is the most dramatic
illustration of these developments, as he epitomizes the
institutionalization of a regime of torture on the U.S.'s own Devil's
Island (Guantanamo), at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Kabul (the "pit") and
elsewhere in the empire, along with the official contempt for law. (Human
Rights First lists some 44 disclosed and 13 suspected detention centers in
the gulag: see, Ending Secret Detentions, Deborah Pearlstein et al., Human
Rights First, June, 2004:

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/rpt_disclose_intro.htm
[Media Material]

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/PDF/EndingSecretDetentions_web.p
df
[Complete Report]).

Gonzalez' appointment was an announcement that the United States under
Bush is now openly and proudly an outlaw regime in which torture is
acceptable and a feature of state policy, and was to be used further (as
it has been), despite its illegality in a host of international agreements
(and U.S. law) and the widespread view that it is deeply immoral. As
Amnesty International noted in its 1974 Report on Torture, "One of the
shared values of the humanist tradition was the abolition of torture. This
principle found its way into the post-war declarations on human rights and
laws of war without any dissent of debate" (p. 30). In elevating Gonzales,
the Bush administration has officially rejected that humanist tradition
and associated human rights and laws of war principles, not without
dissent but with little or no debate. 

It should be emphasized that U.S. involvement in torture is far from new.
In the frontispiece to The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism,
published back in 1979, Noam Chomsky and I showed that 26 of the 35
countries that used torture on an administrative basis in the mid-to-late
1970s were clients of the United States, and there was solid evidence that
torture technology and training flowed out from the "sun" to all its
"planets." But this was not overt and openly defended in important
segments of the media (as it is with Limbaugh, O'Reilly et al. today), and
it was done largely by proxies working over their indigenous dissidents
and labor organizers. With the usual cooperation of the mainstream media,
the U.S. public was spared knowledge of these activities. 

Today the United States is heavily into torture directly as well as via
"renditions" and proxy operations (e.g., the U.S.-employed Iraqis are now
torturing with great zeal: see Human Rights Watch,, The New Iraq? Torture
and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody). And Gonzales, the
principal legal apologist for this torture outburst, is rewarded with
appointment as the highest law enforcement official in the United States.
Could there be a more brazen statement of a country's leadership's
contempt for basic morality and the rule of law?

Of course, another brazen statement was the invasion of Iraq itself, a
clear case of aggression in violation of the most fundamental principle of
the UN Charter and declared at Nuremberg to be the "supreme crime." Even
though this was based on Big Lies in the Goebbels style, the establishment
media and moralists have never considered this supreme criminality a point
worth mentioning, let alone the basis of moral condemnation. 

Aggression by Saddam against Kuwait in 1990 and alleged efforts to create
a "Greater Serbia" by Milosevic - which I consider unadulterated baloney
[see Diana Johnstone, Fools Crusade, pp. 32-40] - caused great indignation
and harsh sanctions and military responses by the Great Powers, but a
really major aggression based on lies by the Godfather, although it
received a plaintive wee protest about "illegality" from Kofi Annan, was
swallowed and the aggressor's further pacification and takeover of Iraqi
affairs was even sanctioned by Kofi Annan and the Security Council (UN
Security Council Resolution 1546 [2004], adopted unanimously, gives the
"multinational force in Iraq" the authority to "take all necessary
measures to contribute to the maintenance [sic] of security and stability
in Iraq," and it "welcomes" the "security partnership between the
sovereign Government of Iraq [i.e., the U.S.-appointed Allawi government]
and the multinational forceÂ
"). 

The Bush government's contempt for basic morality and the rule of law is
also displayed in the appointment of John Negroponte to be chief of the
new intelligence bureaucracy. Negroponte was part of the war management
apparatus during the Vietnam War, and helped organize the killing of
millions and destruction of that country in that failed attempt to save it
for a minority government under our control. 

He played a sinister role in the war against Nicaragua as Ambassador to
Honduras from 1981 to 1985, maintaining warm relations with and bribing a
military-dominated government that allowed the contras to work from
Honduran bases in their terrorist activities, tolerating and almost
certainly giving sub rosa support to the murder of hundreds of dissidents
at the El Aguacate air base and by the CIA-trained death squad Battalion
3-16. Negroponte's predecessor Jack Binns claimed that 30 Salvadoran nuns
who fled El Salvador to Honduras in 1981 were savagely tortured by the
Honduran police and later thrown out of helicopters to their death.

 Negroponte has denied knowledge of any of these serious human rights
 violations, but the leading Honduras newspapers "carried at least 318
 stories about military abuses in 1982 alone," and he contradicted himself
 by boasting that he "personally intervened Â
to secure the release of
 politically sensitive detainees." "Instances of disappearances,
 harassment and abductions of political dissidents all escalated under
 Negroponte, yet the annual Human Rights Reports prepared by the
 ambassadorial staff Â
were masterpieces of cunning redaction or
 invention, consistently downplaying human rights abuses and denying that
 any evidence existed of systematic violations by manipulating language
 and statistics." 

There is a "huge amount of material implicating him in playing a
sedulously deceitful role after being posted to Honduras." (Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, "Negroponte: Nominee for Baghdad Embassy, a Rogue 
for
all Seasons," April 27, 2004:
http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2004/
04.20_Negro
ponte.htm.)

So Negroponte is an established liar, lying to congress as well as to the
public, willing to violate national and international law, including the
1983 Boland amendment barring military aid to groups working to overthrow
the Sandinista government, and he is a proven efficient manager of death
squads (see ibid.; also Sam Smith, Undernews, Feb. 17, 2005:
http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm; Marjorie Cohn, "Negroponte, Director of
Intelligence Manipulation," Feb. 21, 2005:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022105B.shtml)

This background of course made Negroponte a logical Bush appointment as
ambassador to Iraq, bringing knowledge of ruthless pacification policy
from Vietnam and death squad-support experience from his Honduras years.
His return to the United States as head of intelligence gives that job to
a man who is totally ruthless in serving his masters, willing to use force
and deception in all their forms, and an expert in lying in all of its
forms. 

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs calls him "an-ends-justifies-the-means
operator" and describes him as "the anti-Christ of democracy, repeatedly
dragging its noble cause through the offal." His appointment signifies an
advance over the puny tricks of a J. Edgar Hoover, with a potential for
blowing back to this country some of the uglier forms of dissident control
that Negroponte has been involved with in Vietnam, Honduras and Iraq. 

There was some sharp media criticism of the Gonzalez appointment;
virtually none of the appointment of Negroponte (see FAIR's Media
Advisory: "Media Omissions on Negroponte's Record ," Feb. 22, 2005:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2452 ). The New York Times set a
hard-to-beat standard for apologetics for criminality and human rights
violations in reporting on the Negroponte appointment. 

Under a general heading on his appointment which refers to him only as
"Longtime Diplomat," David Sanger's article "An Old Hand In New Terrain"
only reaches Negroponte's human rights record in the 16th of 20
paragraphs, where Sanger tells us that Negroponte was "immersed in" U.S.
aid to Honduras, with not one word about human rights violations or what
precisely Negroponte did there. Then, "He has spent the ensuing two
decades vigorously defending himself against allegations that he played
down human rights violations in Honduras when their exposure could have
undermined the Reagan administration's Latin American agenda." 

So, not a word of what those human rights violations charges were, no
suggestion that he might have had an active role in those violations
rather than merely playing them down, not a trace of investigative effort
seeking evidence about the truth or falsity of those charges, and an
implicit defense of anything he might have done as based on loyal support
of Reagan's program (unspecified as to ends or methods). Saddam Hussein
needs somebody like David Sanger to write up a news account of charges of
his human rights violations, exposure of which might have undermined the
reputation of the Iraqi state.

Despite some reservations on the Bush regime's policies and actions in its
aggression/occupation and torture - and as just noted there are few if any
on the appointment of death squad supervisor Negroponte--the Democrats,
mainstream media, and much of the intellectual class still identify with
this outlaw regime, and automatically side with it in its struggle to
pacify Iraq, accommodate Sharon and the Israeli occupation, and move on to
a war with Iran. Completely destroy a city (Fallujah), openly bombing one
hospital and occupying another to prevent "propaganda"? N

o problem - no suggestion of illegality, immorality, or qualification of
who are the good guys. Ditto for the use of cluster bombs, napalm and
depleted uranium in Iraq (following their use in Afghanistan and
Yugoslavia). Ditto for Abu Ghraib and its numerous affiliates and the
regular use of "extraordinary renditions" - more "errors" and regrettable
even if unremedied exceptions to alleged normally decent behavior. Support
the apartheid wall and continued illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing
on the West Bank and East Jerusalem? Continues a great tradition. Support
the claim that Iran poses a real threat and is not entitled to seek
defensive capability in the face of explicit and real U.S. and Israeli
threats, including the nuclear? What good propaganda system members ever
fail to jump on the bandwagon of any threat that their leadership
proclaims no matter how implausible or unsupported by credible evidence?
Remember the WMDs! 



-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, 
option D (up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options 
(option A - 1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - 
up to 3x/day) please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you 
this email and you want to be on our list, send an email to 
ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which option you'd like.


"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050321/07fa5841/attachment.html