:: Govind Talwalkar

Darkness at noon in the land of liberty

Govind Talwalkar

April.28 : Hitherto classified memos on America’s "enhanced interrogation techniques" for suspected terrorists released reveal that George W. Bush brought darkness at noon in the land of liberty.

If read along with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on how 14 detainees were tortured by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in various special prisons, spread from Afghanistan, Poland to the US, one mentally enters a horror chamber.

The Red Cross, after a great deal of perseverance, was permitted to interview 14 of the "high-value detainees". The report was delivered to the US government in February 2007, but the Bush administration refused to declassify the original memos of the justice department or the ICRC report. They were released after the federal appeals court ordered to do so. The Obama administration has taken this bold step that the previous administration did everything to stall.

Post-9/11, Mr Bush declared war on terror and first went after the Taliban and the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and then after Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Several suspected terrorists and participants who resisted the US and its allied forces were captured, many of them brought to the US and detained in the special prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The US also built such facilities in countries like Poland, Afghanistan and Romania etc. The Bush administration had some legal consuls who maintained that the President has the primary responsibility to defend the country and has the constitutional authority, above the law and congressional oversight.

The treatment of the war prisoners is governed by the Geneva Conventions. But Mr Bush declared that as the war on terror was not against any country, the prisoners were not war criminals but enemy combatants. That was why the Geneva Convention rules did not apply to them and they were handed over to the CIA. The US justice department then prepared several memos authorising enhanced interrogation techniques.

The CIA interrogators were specially trained in techniques to get information about terrorist networks, their plans etc. How these detainees were treated was kept a secret and Mr Bush and then vice-president Dick Cheney refused to give any information in the name of national security.

One must admit that not all but several detainees were involved in terrorist activities and were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians in various countries. Though many of them and their organisations do not deserve any sympathy, no government has the right to indulge in torture. Though Mr Bush and Mr Cheney brazenly declared that the US did not use torture, the ICRC report and the justice department’s memos can nail that as a lie.

Mark Danner, in his article in the New York Review of Books quotes the Senate Arms Services Committee report, which states, "The techniques used in SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape) school were based in part on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War".

They also took a leaf from the Soviet Union as well as Libya. So Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, who posed as the great champions of democracy, followed in the footsteps of those who the US fought for a long time.

Out of the 14 detainees, nine were arrested in Pakistan between 2003 and 2005. Among them, three were Pakistani citizens, two each from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Malaysia, and one each from Palestine, Tanzania, Libya and Somalia. This is one more example of how Pakistan is a terrorist safe haven.

The detainees were blindfolded and transported to airports. In the plane they were shackled. The journey ranged from 1-24 hours. They were not allowed to use toilets and had to defecate and urinate in their diapers. On some occasions they were ordered to lie on the floor of the plane with hands cuffed and tied behind their backs. Few of them were detained in the CIA camps for 16 months to four-and-a-half years. All of them were kept in solitary confinement.

One of the torture methods used was suffocation. Water was poured on a cloth tied around the nose and mouth. After some time the cloth would saturate and block air. The person would then be strapped to a tilting bed. This bed, at times, would be tilted vertical and the person strapped on it would be held in that position for quite a while.

Needless to say, the stress is unimaginable — to stand naked while your arms are extended and your head is chained. Such treatment could go on for two or three months intermittently. In one case, a detainee was kept in a narrow box with insects in it. One of them said it was worse than Kabul where he was tied and smacked against a pillar. People lost their teeth in that.

US officials would enforce nudity in extremely cold cells and that went on for weeks and months. They would also occasionally throw cold water on them. They would deprive them of sleep and solid food and it would vary from days to months of how long they kept them that way. It wasn’t the guards who used such methods; physicians assisted them too. Mr Bush appointed the man who signed the memos — a judge of a federal court with lifetime tenure. The counsel who drafted and defended the extra-constitutional powers of the former President is a professor in California.

Mr Cheney has recently claimed that these powers and the methods used against the detainees were extremely useful to keep America safe from another terrorist attack. He then asked critics to think more on the lines of security and not about the rights of the criminals.

Mr Obama is currently facing criticism from conservatives. According to them, the President has exposed his country to worldwide condemnation and at the same time made it vulnerable. But Mr Obama has done the right thing. He has assured that those who were involved will be prosecuted. One cannot still solely blame Mr Bush or his administration because the administration did share this information with the top leaders of the Democratic Party in both Houses of Congress.