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Nothing but the Truth!
By Will Power
December
1, 2008 (San Diego) — When I was about five years old, my father
was a US Air Force Officer. He was involved in a Court-Martial in Wichita ,
Kansas. It seemed a considerable number of US Army blankets went missing, and
several airmen were charged with stealing the blankets and selling them off
the base. I don't even remember the disposition, though I recollect nobody
was found guilty.
President George W. Bush is considering a "Blanket Pardon" to
soldiers, private contractors, and Intelligence Officers who engaged in torture
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This blanket pardon is not only bad International Law and probably illegal
on its face, it sets a terrible precedent. Nowhere are International Leaders
given the power to permit soldiers to commit illegal acts which horrify all
civilized nations. The Nuremburg Trials proved this theory. You can't say you
were "just
following orders"- whether retroactive or standing. Torture is torture,
not "Enhanced Interrogation".
Though the Bush Administration would like the public to believe torture was
infrequent and mostly the acts of a few unsupervised guards, the fact is the
torture was studied, approved, and legally vetted at the highest levels of
the Bush Administration. Legal opinions were specially written to allow torture,
even though military lawyers disagreed and told the Bush lawyers like John
Yoo all legally sanctioned torture invites retaliatory torture. Legal torture
was specifically defined as anything short of "organ failure or death".
How ugly is that?
It's sad to say long after the Iraq War is over Abu Graib and Guantanamo will
be remembered more than the war itself. It is a measure of how well the terrorists
succeeded on 9/11 in making the US think it could unilaterally dictate a New
World Order. The best we can do is to plead temporary insanity. It’s a
lose-lose proposition.
A Blanket Pardon would just shine a new spotlight on one of the darkest chapters
in US History. It's best just to let sleeping dogs lie - along with the lawyers
and politicians. We are going to have enough of a guilty conscience about torture
without legally whitewashing it. Some laundry is so dirty it deserves to be
dumped, not washed in public.
Will Power is a retired teacher who holds a masters degree in
creative writing.
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