Seeing is believing 2: The quest for truth about the war in Iraq

resident Bush says, "We don't do torture. Its only "enhanced interrogation." The trouble is that when we wind down the Abu Graib, Guantanamo and other interrogation-cum-torture centers, more and more innocent "detainees" will have to be released onto the streets of the free world, there to report their experiences in U.S. hands, write their books, and produce movies for the eyes of the entire world. (See, for example, the case of Kurnaz, a "high value" but absolutely innocent detainee and torture victim, summarized in "It's Closing Time: Eyewitness Report from Guantanamo," in The Lakeville Journal, Feb. 7, 2008.)

With this prospect in mind, the Bush administration now has to hedge its position by claiming (falsely) that torture is "perfectly legal" if authorized (personally) by the U.S. president for the purpose of interrogation of persons he has (personally) determined are "illegal enemy combatants" - a concept that has absolutely no basis in the law.

Attorney-General Michael Mukasey, testifying before Congress, says he is unable to determine whether "waterboarding" is torture, or what constitutes torture that might "shock the conscience" - unless, of course, it happened to him. This inability continues in spite of a well-established body of international and U.S. national law defining torture and its consequences. (See "A Primer on the Law of Torture," in The Lakeville Journal, Nov. 8, 2007.)

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Further hedging their bets, the Bush administration, in the voice of Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, belatedly admitted that "three persons" have been waterboarded. Only three? (More likely three plus three plus three plus 300.) Why did the administration admit to three? One possibility is that Hayden really wants to put an end to waterboarding by the CIA. Another possibility is this: If you hear that someone got out of a U.S. detention center and claims to have been waterboarded, you would assume he must be one of the three. Clever, no?

These denials come from the same mouths of the Bush administration that denied that sexual humiliation was taking place in U.S. prison camps and interrogation centers. Inconveniently, as practically everyone in the world knows, over 200 lurid photographs of naked body pyramids and worse were leaked. You cannot convince people abroad that these obscenities were not deliberately condoned and encouraged, all the way up the U.S. chain of command. Many blame the American people for not rising up in horror nationwide.

We are told that "enhanced" interrogation techniques have yielded important information and revealed the true perpetrators of 9/11. However, to date not one single authenticated or documented case has been produced, except for claims about a few unsavory individuals whom we have known about all along.

It's high time for the Bush administration to stage a few show trials, if only for mediatic purposes, in an effort to show the efficacy (if not the morality or legality) of torture. Of course, evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in a properly constituted court of law, so we are unlikely ever to get to the truth of the matter. Truth and justice are woven in the same cloth.

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It's also high time to come clean on what the United States has really done to Iraq. Contrary to what we are assured by the White House, there is actually less water supply, less electricity and even less oil production than under Saddam Hussein before Bush's invasion. The principal reason Iraqis refuse to ratify the Iraqi oil law is not that they refuse to share resources among Sunni, Shia and Kurds, but rather that the U.S.-imposed law would open over 50 percent of Iraq's oil to foreign "privatization."

Even with our current military "surge," civilian atrocities, deaths and civil strife continue. The damage was done when Bush went into Iraq in the first place. Now we face the broken egg syndrome. The rest of us have to clean up the mess he made, and get out responsibly. Whatever happens, practically everyone in the world now blames the United States.

Americans traveling abroad for business or tourism are feeling the heat. American tourists in Rome, Italy, our ally, are being spat upon - something that didn't happen during the height of World War II. Many Americans are sewing little red maple leaves on their clothing and luggage, in an effort to appear to be Canadians. Canada and a growing number of other countries have posted official travel warnings that their citizens may be abducted and tortured by the United States. And the rate of recruitment to anti-American terrorist organizations has increased a thousand fold since Bush invaded Iraq.

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We owe all this to what certainly looks like an illegal, immoral and incompetent junta in Washington, D.C. Yet this administration continues to receive the support of all too many "neo-cons" who fail to open their eyes to what is really going on. There is among these arch conservatives an unacceptable, un-American scorn for U.S. and international law and morality. There is a reversal of cherished American values. There is a wholesale sacrifice of America's standing in the world. And they cannot see it. Or they just don't care.

Yes, the time has come for change in America. We need a leadership in Washington that tells it as it is, so Americans can hear it, see it,s believe it and trust it. We must rebuild the great nation that America once was.