Contesting Dick Cheney's POW Policy

Prisoner Abuses Justified in Torture Memo

VP Dick Cheney used tame State Department lawyers to redefine torture almost out of existence. As a gifted writer of nonsense fiction and verse, perhaps Lewis Carroll would have admired him, if not for his eloquence, at least for his effrontery of logic. After all, Carroll penned the lines, 'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first—verdict afterwards!’ 'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly, which lead to the Queen's infamous, 'Off with her head!' Lewis Carroll was a master at constructing sorites logical arguments with several premises. He was a genius, and used his knowledge of logic to exploit its opposite, with immortal results. If only the people Cheney has tortured and killed could be so lucky.

Torture means cell walls smeared in blood, its floor littered with broken teeth, tasers, pepper spray, dogs, punches, rotten food, no medical attention, phosphoric acid, deprivations, feigned executions, knives, being urinated upon, rape, sodomy.

Bybee/Yoo Legal Definition of Torture

Jay Bybee (now a judge on the appeals court, ninth circuit), with the help of John Yoo (comfortably tenured law professor at Berkeley) was commissioned to come up with the following logic: "Unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee during an interrogation results in injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functioning, then it’s not torture."

Manadel al-Jamadi would not agree. As an invisible prisoner of the CIA in November 2003 in Iraq at Abu Grahaib prison, Saddam’s (then Bush’s) notorious torture jail in Baghdad, he had six broken ribs, was shackled from behind his back to window bars above his head. A sandbag had been placed over his head and face. After he died, his body was covered in ice and trophy photos were taken by soldiers, thumbs up. No charges were filed.

General Monsoush turned himself in after his four sons were kidnapped and imprisoned by the US. After being beaten with sledgehammer handles (5 broken ribs, contusions and bruising), he was allowed to see his son, Mohammed, 15, before they took him out of his father’s view and fired a gun.

They said they would kill his other sons, then they stuffed him into a sleeping bag head first, broken ribs and all, and sat upon him. He died. The low-ranking officer, Lt. Col. Jameel who didn’t murder him (the military claimed death by natural causes) received a reprimand and a small fine.

Nagam Sadoon Hatab was an Iraqi scooped in June 2003. He was brought to a holding camp close to Nasiriyah, savagely karate kicked while handcuffed and hooded. He became ill. Medical staff concluded he might be faking. He was dragged by the neck outside and left in the hot sun. It’s called sun punishment. He died.

Dick Cheney and the Armed Services Committee

Cheney has used his power with a maliciousness never before seen in a VP, but even he doesn’t have the power to alter the meaning of words or to change reality. A bipartisan Armed Services Committee has found 17-0 that the Bush/Cheney torture policy was established even before the convoluted logic of the Bybee/Yoo Torture Memo.

Now Cheney is admitting that he’s proud of waterboarding, which was uncontestedly considered torture during the Spanish Inquisition, when Americans did it in the Philippines, and when Japanese soldiers were rightfully convicted under the Geneva Conventions of having done it to Americans during WWII. One hundred eighty countries recently voted to consider food for children a human right. The sole dissenter? America.