"How Fascism Starts"

Molly Ivins, Creators Syndicate

AUSTIN, Texas — It's pretty easy to get to the point where
you don't want to hear any more about Abu Ghraib prison and
what went on there. But there are some really good reasons
why Americans should take a look at why this happened.

I suspect the division here is not between liberals and
conservatives (except for a few inane comments made by some
trying to be flippant), but between those who are following
the story closely and those who are not. I particularly
recommend both Sy Hersh's follow-up piece in the current
issue of The New Yorker and the investigative piece in the
current issue of Newsweek. What seems to me more important
than the "Oh ugh" factor is just how easy it is for standards
of law and behavior of slip into bestiality.The problems go all the way back to the administration's
refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions. President Bush,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John
Ashcroft "signed off on a secret system of detention and
interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an
approach that they adopted in order to sidestep the
historical safeguards of the Geneva Convention, which protect
the rights of detainees and prisoners of war," according to
Newsweek.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and the military's lawyers
objected. You may recall the military's objections
(broadcast, as usual, by retired officers) were on the
excellent grounds that if we didn't observe the Geneva
Conventions neither would our enemies — the very reason they
were signed in the first place.

The Pentagon still insists that "suspected Al Qaeda
followers" have no rights under Geneva III, as they are
"enemy combatants" rather than POWs. Geneva III also has
procedures for what to do if the status of a detainee is in
doubt — full Geneva rights apply until "a competent
tribunal" decides. We have been holding 595 prisoners at
Guantanamo for two and half years, not counting those we have
already let go, in conditions in violation of Geneva. Only
now are a few of these prisoners being assigned lawyers, and
the lawyers are raising hell about the whole process.

The legal rationale came from White House counsel Alberto
Gonzales, including the line, "In my judgment, this new
paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on
questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its
provisions."

According to Newsweek, Bush first signed a secret order
granting new powers to the CIA, a directive authorizing it to
set up secret detention facilities outside the United States
and to question those held in them with unprecedented
harshness. The agency also schlepped suspected terrorists off
to other countries known to practice torture.

In addition to the fact that torture is morally repulsive, it
also doesn't work. Of course you can torture information out
of people. What you can't do is torture accurate information
out of people who don't have it. The Defense Department's
JAGs were so concerned they finally went to a New York lawyer
who specializes in international human rights law and told
him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of
legal ambiguity" about how Geneva should be applied.

These military lawyers named Assistant Secretary Douglas
Feith and the Pentagon's general counsel William Haynes,
since nominated for an appeals court judgeship by Bush.

Meanwhile, Gitmo had been taken over by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey
Miller, under whose loving care the "72-point matrix for
stress and duress" was developed, laying out as ugly a set of
rules for of-course-it-is-torture-stupid as anyone could
dream up.

You may recall Rumsfeld testifying before Congress that
Miller had been sent to "inspect" Abu Ghraib in September
2003, as though that had been some step toward responsible
oversight. In fact, Miller told the general then running the
prison the place should be turned over to military
intelligence.

Normally something like Abu Ghraib can be blamed in part on
the Downward Communication Exaggeration Spiral, which
afflicts most organizations. Someone at the top makes a mild
suggestion, and by the time it reaches the troops, it's iron-
clad law. This appears to be a rare case of a reverse spiral,
with the orders coming from the very top and questions being
raised about them all the way down, until finally Army Spc.
Joseph Darby spoke out and set off the Taguba investigation.

In this case, there is more than sufficient evidence pointing
to the culpability of those at the top. But at the same time,
the Pentagon is putting out the word that it was "only a few
bad apples," six low-level soldiers who have already been
charged, with no one else involved. This just stinks of
cover-up. Damned if I think these six low-level soldiers
should be hung out there to take the blame for a set of
explicitly written and signed policies made by people wearing
expensive suits, getting paid big bucks and bearing some of
the highest titles in the land.

You can read all the memos and documents for yourself. It's
important to know how fascism starts.