Did Bush Authorize Torture?

It was only December 8 that I was writing about the release of documents suggesting that Donald Rumsfeld had approved torture.

Since then, the ACLU has been given more documents, including email that suggests that President Bush may have signed an Executive Order approving torture.

The documents also document FBI agents complaining to their superiors about brutal interrogation techniques being used by military interrogators, both in Iraq and Guantanamo, including abuses after the Abu Gharib revelations.

FBI agents also reported that military investigators were posing as FBI agents, a tactic, apparently approved by Donald Rumsfeld, that would deflect blame should reports of abuse get out. (It also had the by-product of making it impossible to prosecute any of the detainees.) It appears no "intelligence of a threat neutralization nature" was gathered from these interrogations.

These are specific reports of brutality, and complaints of a military cover-up, not from some "liberal human-rights group", but from FBI agents assigned to the posts.

The June 2004 "Urgent Report" addressed to the FBI Director is heavily redacted. The legible portions of the document appear to describe an account given to the FBI’s Sacramento Field Office by an FBI agent who had "observed numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees," including "strangulation, beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings." The document states that "[redacted] was providing this account to the FBI based on his knowledge that [redacted] were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses."

The L.A. Times story has other details:

One FBI report said a Guantanamo Bay detainee in May 2002 was spat upon and then beaten when he tried to protect himself. At one point, soldiers apparently were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.

Another agent reported in August that while in Cuba he often saw detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor, "with no chair, food or water."

"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18 to 24 hours or more," the agent wrote.

Sometimes, he reported, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted detainee was shaking with cold."

Other times, he said, the air-conditioning was turned off and the temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.

He said one detainee "was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

The FBI documents also included a report of a prisoner in Cuba whose legs were injured and who said he had lied about being a terrorist out of fear that the U.S. military would otherwise have his legs amputated.

"He indicated he was injured severely and in a lot of pain," the FBI documents said, yet the prisoner constantly was being asked whether he had attended a terrorist camp in Afghanistan. The agent wrote that the prisoner "stated he wanted to receive decent medical treatment, and felt the only way to get it was to tell the Americans what they wanted to hear."

Gee, I wonder where those yahoos at Abu Gharib got the impression that their behavior was, in any way, part of American policy for detainees.

And, since it seems to be "Pile on Rumsfeld Week" in Washington, let me be among the first to suggest he lied under oath to Congress following Abu Gharib, when he said, among other things:

It's important for the American people and the world to know that while these terrible acts were perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military, they were also brought to light by the honorable and responsible actions of other military personnel.

and

We value human life. We believe in individual freedom and in the rule of law. For those beliefs, we send men and women of the armed forces abroad to protect that right for our own people and to give others who aren't Americans the hope of a future of freedom.

Part of that mission, part of what we believe in, is making sure that when wrongdoings or scandal do occur, that they're not covered up, but they're exposed, they're investigated, and the guilty are brought to justice.

Mr. Chairman, I know you join me today in saying to the world, judge us by our actions, watch how Americans, watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes and our own weaknesses.

And then, after they have seen America in action, then ask those who teach resentment and hatred of America if our behavior doesn't give a lie to the falsehood and the slander they speak about our people and about our way of life.

And as for

As secretary of defense, I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility.

What does that mean, exactly?