Ron Bath & Beyond

From The Sunday Times
February 8, 2009
Miliband wriggles in the Guantanamo net
The foreign secretary wants to draw a line under the torture row but more truth will out

by Andrew Sullivan (Conservative)
Every now and again I find myself having a daydream. It’s 2002 again and the United States is picking up the first terror suspects in Afghanistan. They are taken to Guantanamo Bay, where the Geneva conventions apply. Even without all the protections of full PoW status, the prisoners are given baseline article 3 protections against abuse or degrading treatment. Torture, of course, is unthinkable.
Fair military trials are set up to ensure that those captured are the right people. After a reasonable period, innocent prisoners are set free and those suspected of being guilty are moved towards serious interrogation and eventually Nuremberg-style prosecutions, where the evil of Al-Qaeda could be demonstrated for all the world to see and where western notions of justice could be shown to be preferable to the vile barbarism of 9/11.
Here’s the kicker: this almost happened. A book by investigative reporter Karen Greenberg has unearthed the real history of Guantanamo’s first days and tells the story that I – and so many others – had assumed was going on. Thanks to The Least Worst Place we now know that the first soldiers to arrive in Cuba to revamp the prison were given the order to “kinda sorta” apply Geneva (along the lines of George Bush’s now-infamous memo).
The marines decided that in the military there are no “kinda sorta” rules. There are simply rules and in the absence of any new clear ones, they applied the old. Marine Brigadier General Michael Lehnert, the man in charge, set up humane holding cells, proper medical treatment, basic concern for religious strictures (such as undergarments to shower in to respect Muslim sensibilities) and contacted the Red Cross to establish quick Geneva compliance.
All this was ended by Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who wanted to use torture and abuse to secure what they believed would be valuable intelligence. In retrospect, the selection of the site should have given away the real intentions – to find a place beyond the rule of law. But existing institutions and deeply held practices – the United States, after all, created the Geneva system – were America’s default mode of operation. It took real effort and real determination from Bush and Cheney to upend two centuries of American practice and turn Guantanamo into a torture camp.
Their public story – that they were forced into torture by soldiers and interrogators on the ground – simply doesn’t hold up as more and more evidence emerges. Rumsfeld started by setting up a rival command to Lehnert’s, pushed out the FBI, rewrote interrogation guidelines and concocted torture methods pioneered by the communist Chinese. Instead of prisoners being allowed to keep undergarments on while showering, Bush ordered that many be stripped naked indefinitely to exploit such cultural quirks. He ordered that prisoners also be chained to walls and floors, frozen to hypothermia, prevented from sleeping for weeks on end, terrified by dogs (more Muslim-specific abuse) and subject to many of the “stress positions” we saw in graphic detail in the photographs from Abu Ghraib.
At the end of all this we have a mere two successful prosecutions of minor functionaries in Al-Qaeda, hundreds of released detainees whose hatred of the West, if it was not there when they entered, is certainly present today, and the portrayal of some serious bad guys not as the theofascist mass murderers they are but as victims and martyrs of western torture.
Binyam Mohamed was almost certainly one of those bad guys, although we do not know to what extent and probably never will. His case shows how an illegal policy of torture, perpetrated by the leading power of the West, always, always, poisons everything. Once initiated, let alone persisted in for seven years, the policy’s tentacles spread far and wide, corrupting alliances, undermining the rule of law, incriminating those who are forced to maintain cover-ups for the sake of national security. Even now that Barack Obama has pledged to end torture, he has to take responsibility for prisoners under his custody and legal atrocities that occurred before him.
At least Obama can claim he had nothing to do with the original suppression of evidence of torture and obviously was not complicit in any way. That may not be the case with the British government, which cooperated with Bush and Cheney for years. A promising politician like David Miliband, the foreign secretary, might be leery of being dragged into that tightening net. But dragged he is. When the law lords complained that they’d been barred from publishing redacted evidence of Mohamed being tortured by the US and other governments at American behest, Miliband denied any impropriety.
He’s right in one respect. It’s true and valid that governments should not betray confidential intelligence shared with allies that could undermine national security. It is not true or valid that governments should suppress material that does not undermine security but does reveal government malfeasance and illegality. Secrecy is there to protect the public, not the crimes of foreign governments.
Then there’s the inevitable misleading statement. Here’s part of what Miliband told the Commons last week: “For the record, the United States authorities did not threaten to ‘break off’ intelligence cooperation with the UK. What the United States said, and it appears in the open, public documents of this case, is that the disclosure of these documents by order of our courts would be ‘likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence information-sharing between our two governments’.”
Channel 4, however, revealed what one State Department letter actually said: “Ordering the disclosure of the US intelligence information now would have . . .[the effect of] serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence sharing relationship, and thus the national security of the UK.”
I don’t see how that isn’t a threat to hurt the national security of Britain if the British government did not cooperate in covering up the war crimes of the Bush administration. Yes, it’s veiled. But unmistakable.
Miliband has not violated Mohamed’s legal case and allegations of torture have indeed been referred to the attorney-general. But that suggests more details will emerge, as they will have to as more Guantanamo prisoners gain freedom and some cases wind their way through the legal system. Cheney and Bush somehow believed this would never happen. For some crazy reason they believed they could torture hundreds of prisoners and no one would know and everyone would agree to sign up to their absurd redefinition of torture, despite centuries of legal precedent rebuking it.
We cannot fully know what, if any, serious intelligence we gained from the torture of so many prisoners. It’s possible that some shards of truth made their way through the avalanche of false leads and lies that torture always generates. But there is no longer any doubt that it occurred – even Susan Crawford, Bush’s own chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, admitted as much last month. And that’s all that matters in one critical respect.
If we live under a rule of law, these cases will surface. There is no way to stop them without further polluting and politicising the justice system. Like a rising water table, evidence will appear on the surface in places we don’t yet expect. Obama can say he doesn’t want the trauma of prosecution; Gordon Brown and Miliband may hope to turn the page. But the legal system will churn on and the facts will either have to be released and dealt with or the cover-up will have to spread.
Miliband has already been caught in a fib. If he wants to avoid entanglement in a web of other people’s war crimes, he should understand that the Bush administration is over. And act accordingly.

Maurene's Amaryllis burst in to bloom just in time.

The Central URC ad hoc choir bursts in to song and raises funds for Christian Aid as they delight passing tourists

The sanctuary is filled with the glow of candlelight in anticipation of the Service of Lessons and Carols

Maurene excitedly closes her eyes as she and Jessica prepare to tuck in to Christmas Dinner. Please note the consummate British vegetables on their plates -Brussels Sprouts and Roasted Parsnips

As our food digested we gathered around the television to hear the annual Christmas Day Queen's Speech. This was our first year to listen to Her Majesty as nationalised British subjects. If George Bush were given a "1" and Barack Obama a "10" I would give the Queen a "6 "for her rhetorical skills.
A few Christmas photos

These are in chronological order starting from the top. Well, actually, the Amaryllis didn't bloom until Christmas Eve.