Category Archives: Iraq Atrocities

Crooked Timber: Pop Quiz:

From the Guardian, a sample from the test administered to recruits to the Iraqi Police Force:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person is: a) torture; b) interview techniques; c) nterrogation techniques; d) informative and reliable.

How sad that the United States now has an Attorney General who would get this question wrong.

Yesterday the Senate confirmed Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney General of the US. That is the same man who both commissioned and approved the torture memos. Who could not bring himself to say torture is always wrong when quizzed live by a Senator. Who probably committed obstruction of justice in sabotaging the investigation into the Plame affair. Who may have lied to Congress about his shielding the boss in the Texas jury affair.

Yet all the Republicans — including POW torture victim John McCain — and six Democrats (including the quisling-like Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and, sadly, our own Bill Nelson from Florida) voted to confirm. The final vote showed only 36 against, too few to sustain the filibuster which was thus not attempted, a tactical decision that I will not second guess.

A vote for Bush, I said before the election, is a vote for torture. We reap now the bitter fruits of what our fellow citizens then sowed.

May they (and the rest of us too) not get what they deserve.

Neil Lewis reports that A.C.L.U. Presents Accusations of Serious Abuse of Iraqi Civilians. But this isn't about the Abu Ghraib:

The new accusations generally concern the behavior of American Special Forces, as opposed to prison guards or interrogators, who have been accused at Abu Ghraib.

Rather, it's yet another sign of a pattern and practice.

The American Civil Liberties Union released documents on Monday describing complaints of serious abuse of Iraqi civilians, including reports of electric shocks and forced sodomy, and accused the military of not thoroughly investigating the cases.

The documents list dozens of allegations of abuse at American detention centers – the use of cigarettes to burn prisoners, aggressive dogs, electric shocks, sexual humiliation and beatings – that began at about the same time such acts were occurring at Abu Ghraib prison.

But it is not always clear whether every case described is a new incident.

Based only on the public evidence to date, how much is the ordinary carnage and inhumanity of war, and how much is something that trickled down from above, may be hard to say in a way that would satisfy the 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard. But there seems to be the makings of at the very least a very strong case that is more than circumstantial. If a prosecutor were to tackle this with the aggressiveness with which we pursue Mafia cases, I think we'd see something. But there's no sign yet of any desire to go after general officers, or even mid-level officers, much less ranking civilians.

I am very reluctantly coming to believe that there's about a 50% chance that a senior administration official will face a war crime trial either for ordering or condoning torture, or for the excessive bombing and civilian casualties in Iraq. I think it's most likely to happen after the official leaves office. It might be in absentia. It could be in Belgium, or in Germany, or (least likely) an international ad hoc tribunal. Already, SecDef Rumsfeld has had to cancel a trip to Germany to avoid the risk of prosecution.

Belgium recently changed its law to make it very difficult to launch war crimes prosecutions against foreign officials, and the supreme court there recently dismissed an attempted lawsuit against Bush. But meanwhile, a significant segment of Belgian public opinion appears to subscribe to the sentiment symbolized by this Wanted poster issued by a Belgian activist group:

Recall that the International Criminal Court agreement (.pdf) (to which the US is not a party) would prohibit these sorts of trials against our officials so long as we set our own house in order. But we are not doing that.

I wonder how long it will take the new Iraqi government to join the ICC? Joining would give the ICC jurisdiction over all actions on Iraqi soil dating after the accession. Regardless of whether they were committed by Iraqis. Then again, joining the ICC without agreeing to exclude jurisdiction against US forces would run Iraq into retaliation from the US: the US has halted military assistance to several nations that have refused to sign 'Article 98 agreements' by which they promise not to surrender US nationals to the ICC.

Update: If I had to bet right now, I'd bet it's the wanton harm to civilians (which I suspect is vastly underreported in the US) that would be most likely to trigger a trial, not the prisoner abuse. But should these allegations of systematic rape in captivity, coupled with claims that the Pentagon is stonewalling by trying to avoid inquiries prove to be true, that might alter the odds.

PS. As noted in the comments, my intent in this particular post was to be positive, not normative. Under what circumstances if any a foreign war crimes trial of a former US President or Cabinet official could ever be be a good thing is very hard for me to think coherently about, as I so passionately want the US to act in a way that makes the whole question absurd.