In a memo dated January 26, 2002, Powell also warned that such behavior by the US would "undermine public support among critical allies [and] reverse over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our own troops." But Powell was a day late and a penny short with these latter warnings. And it is altogether likely that then-national security adviser Rice, at the prompting of the cabal, never showed the president Powell's January 26 memorandum. As for the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Bush-shy Powell, he confined himself to sending memos to the president's lawyer.
And so, on February 7, 2002, Bush signed the watershed memorandum telling our armed forces "to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva." Therein lies the gaping loophole that largely accounts for the widespread practice of torture of the kind so graphically represented in the photos from Abu Ghraib. It was not a "few bad apples" at the bottom. The bad apples were at the very top of the barrel.
But Who Wrote the January 25 Memorandum?
Bypassing the "Six Blind Mice"
What is new is the willingness of patriotic officials within the government to put their country before their career and go to the media to blow the whistle on the various indignities and crimes they have witnessed. Those officials, initially cowed by the object lesson served up by White House retaliation against former ambassador Joseph Wilson, have become increasingly scandalized at the jettisoning of long accepted practices like those that used to govern interrogations. And so, officials with first-hand knowledge have now begun to come forward and tell what has been going on, in hopes of getting the country back on track. Cheney no longer has Libby to keep his finger in the dike to prevent leaks that are fast becoming a flood, and Karl Rove is preoccupied with his own efforts to avoid indictment.
Most important, Cheney's formidable power has been deeply dented by the indictment of his closest aide Libby, and the vice president's unabashed support of torture has prompted old friends and colleagues like Gen. Brent Scowcroft to say, "I don't know Dick Cheney." Absolute power may still corrupt absolutely even when it is deeply dented, but then it is not as threatening to those with the courage to confront it.
It is no surprise that patriotic truth-tellers within the government have chosen to go to the fourth estate rather than to a Congress controlled by the president's party. Their choice reflects a realization that little but trouble can be expected in seeking recourse from those who have become known as "the six blind mice" - Senators Pat Roberts, John Warner, and Richard Lugar, who chair the committees with jurisdiction in the Senate; and Congressmen Pete Hoekstra, Duncan Hunter, and Henry Hyde in the House.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an analyst with the CIA for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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