On February 7, 2002, George W. Bush declared in an executive order that he could suspend the Geneva Conventions, which require that war prisoners receive humane treatment. Myriad news reports during the past month suggest that government interrogators took full advantage of that order to extract information from prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in… Read more »
Trying to quell the growing firestorm last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters, “My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe, technically, is different from torture.” Rumsfeld said he hadn’t had a chance to finish reading Army Major General Antonio Taguba’s report, which was completed two and… Read more »
U.S. soldiers who fought in Vietnam were trained to think of the North Vietnamese as “gooks.” The objectification of the non-white enemy made it more palatable to kill and abuse them. American troops and mercenaries in Iraq likewise objectified their Iraqi prisoners when they sexually abused and sadistically humiliated them in the Abu Ghraib prison… Read more »
The “capture” of Saddam Hussein is being hailed as a great victory for President Bush. After all, who needs to worry about the missing weapons of mass destruction or the lack of ties between Hussein and the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, now that we’ve caught the “Butcher of Baghdad”? Bush is likely to… Read more »
In a striking example of double-talk, President George W. Bush has announced that the United States will apply the Geneva Convention to the captured Taliban fighters in Guantanamo, but won’t classify them as prisoners of war. This is like being half pregnant. The Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War spells out… Read more »
The government of Israel faces a serious dilemma. Its population lives in legitimate fear of terrorist suicide bombers. But its reprisals against the Palestinian civilian population have been so heavy-handed that they are creating dissension within the ranks of Israel’s own army. Indeed, a February 4 editorial in The New York Times, a long-time supporter… Read more »