Triumph of the Beast

The torture of Iraqi detainees by US military forces is undeniable. We now know the Bush administration condoned torture even before Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched upon Afghanistan and Iraq, in this post-9/11 hysteria of terrorist infiltration on American soil.

Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA), a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, was horrified after he viewed Abu Ghraib prison photos released by the Department of Defense. Meehan remarked emerging from the darkened committee room, "I was obviously shocked and horrified to discover that the new photos were even more gruesome than those we have seen in the media. What went on there is indefensible and inexcusable."

During a recent trip to Panama, President Bush pontificated that Americans "do not torture"—his deployment of executive authority to keep Congress from imposing rules on prisoner treatment notwithstanding. With the implementation of the Patriot Act of 2001, President Bush was given express power to declare anyone suspected of having a connection to terrorists or terrorism an "enemy combatant" and thereby suspend his right to habeas corpus. The Senate diligently voted to cast innocent people into pain and darkness without recourse or rights. American citizens declared "enemy combatants"should not be denied the constitution; but a formable squawk about rights and habeas corpus forced a compromise of allowing a post-conviction appeal – for people who had been arbitrarily seized and held in isolation for years without charges, which had been tortured, humiliated and driven to madness, some committing suicide before facing a kangaroo court. Such was the deal cobbled together for Bush to present as a triumph of human spirit and the American way.