Wrong and right

Newsweek's story also follows the publication last month of a report by Human Rights Watch, "Getting Away With Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees." The report discusses at length why "shocked" FBI agents have been ordered not to be present at torture sessions conducted by CIA agents and military interrogators:

"There is growing evidence that detainees at Guantánamo have suffered torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Reports by FBI agents who witnessed detainee abuse -- including the forcing of chained detainees to sit in their own excrement -- have recently emerged, adding to the statements of former detainees describing the use of painful stress positions, extended solitary confinement, use of military dogs to threaten them, threats of torture and death, and prolonged exposure to extremes of heat, cold and noise."

The Human Rights Watch report provides more irrefutable detail: "In particular, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation express their shock at techniques used on detainees. In one e-mail, an FBI agent wrote: Here is a brief summary of what I observed at GTMO. On a couple of occassions [sic], I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they had urinated or defacated [sic] on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occassion [sic], the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. When I asked the [military police] what was going on, I was told that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On another occassion [sic], the A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The 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. On another occassion [sic], not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. Another FBI agent reported seeing a detainee 'sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played and a strobe light flashing.'"

The Newsweek item was published just days after the travesty that has been the trial of Spc. Lynddie England. The learning-disabled National Guardsman from rural Appalachia was tried for the various humiliations visited upon prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq. She was depicted in infamous photographs gleefully posing next to piled bodies of naked Iraqis, leading a prisoner by a leash, and engaging in other cruelties. Her lawyer arranged a plea bargain for a reduced sentence in exchange for an admission of guilt. But the former lover of the pliable England, Spc. Charles Graner, convicted in January of nine counts of abuse at Abu Ghraib, a seductive and abusive character, testified that the photographs of the naked pyramid were intended to train other guards. The military judge promptly threw out England's plea bargain, entered a plea of not guilty, and ordered a new trial. "You can't have a one-person conspiracy," said the judge.

The Pentagon, however, has ruled that the torture policy as a criminal matter is confined to a conspiracy among the likes of England and Graner -- and one-star Gen. Janice Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib and who was cited on May 5 (as Newsweek was going to press) for dereliction of duty and shoplifting (for good measure). "I believe I was a convenient scapegoat," she remarked. At the same time, everyone else up the chain of command was exonerated, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, whose decisions facilitated the torture policy. Nor was Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commandant at Guantánamo, held culpable, though it was he who, upon Pentagon orders, arranged the export of torture techniques from Guantánamo to prisons in Iraq.

Nor was anyone who devised the torture policy exempting the United States from the Geneva Conventions ever rebuked -- perhaps because President Bush signed the order. White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, who had called the Geneva Conventions "quaint" in a memo to the president, was rewarded by being named attorney general.

Nor was there any setback for Jay Bybee, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote the key torture memo, arguing that the president as commander in chief was not bound by existing law and that approved torture could be defined as "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death." Bybee was awarded a judgeship on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Nor was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who bears responsibility for his department, ever held to account. Rumsfeld, who has made hand notations on memos urging particular techniques of "stress and duress," makes a point of demonstrating his lack of accountability and even knowledge. When asked if he had read the report by Gen. Antonio Taguba on torture at Abu Ghraib, he answered, "Whether I have read every page, no. There is a lot of references and documentation to laws and conventions and procedures and requirements, but I have certainly read the conclusions and other aspects of it."

Nor was Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the officer sent from Guantánamo to Iraq to "Gitmo-ize" its prisons, removed from his position as assistant to the undersecretary of intelligence in the Pentagon. In 2003, Boykin, in uniform, gave a notorious PowerPoint presentation to a church group in which he explained that our enemy in the war on terrorism is "Satan"; that "they're after us because we're a Christian nation"; that compared to a Muslim believer, "my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol"; and that Bush was divinely ordained as president: "Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." Boykin was very quietly chastised for his remarks, but he kept his post, where he remains to this day. The refusal to remove Boykin is widely seen in the Muslim world as proof that the United States is officially engaged in a religious crusade against Islam.

Next Page: The Tipton Three

• View blog reactions