Reaping What We Sow

‘IF Britain finds itself in a difficult position regarding the eight prisoners currently being held by Iran, it has its American ally largely to thank.

Another day in Bush’s America

The Times publishes a picture of one of the men blindfolded and reading out a ‘confession’ on TV after straying into Iranian territorial waters on Monday morning.

And, although it says the use of blindfolds is not expressly forbidden by the Geneva Convention, the paper does remind the captors that Article 3 prohibits prisoners being subjected to ‘humiliating and degrading treatment’.

However, that’s hardly likely to cut much ice after the flagrant breaches of the convention by the United States at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prison.

And the Guardian says prisoners in Afghanistan have also been routinely tortured and humiliated as part of the interrogation process in the same way they were in Iraq.

The paper has discovered that five detainees have died in custody, three of them in suspicious circumstances, and survivors have told stories of beatings, strippings, hoodings and sleep deprivation.

The White House insists that it didn’t authorise the use of torture, and yesterday released documents outlining its internal deliberations on the subject.

However, the legal anomaly that is Guantanamo is itself an affront to what is left of the good name of America.

And, as Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says, ‘these abuses were part of a wider pattern stemming from a White House attitude that ‘anything goes’ in the war against terrorism, even if it crosses the line of illegality’.

After all, if you start by stealing an election at home, then it’s clear that the line between legality and illegality is a merely academic one.’

Posted: 23rd, June 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink