BULLY FOR YOU

WHETHER THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE applies to the Bush Administration approach to torture may be for courts international and Federal to decide.  Whether we must strip all dignity from our prisoners and hope our enemies do not do the same, only the future can tell.  But who is representing us in these affairs now does come to light.  With Scooter Libby gone as Cheney’s chief of staff, the secretive and more secret loving David S. Addington now takes his place .   Addington now fights for the administration for allowing the CIA to torture prisoners.  He is the chief opponent of John McCain’s campaign for decency to treat prisoners with dignity and fairness [NY Times story]

A central player in the fight over the directive is David S. Addington, who was the vice president's counsel until he was named on Monday to succeed I. Lewis Libby Jr. as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff. According to several officials, Mr. Addington verbally assailed a Pentagon aide who was called to brief him and Mr. Libby on the draft, objecting to its use of language drawn from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

"He left bruised and bloody," one Defense Department official said of the Pentagon aide, Matthew C. Waxman, Mr. Rumsfeld's chief adviser on detainee issues. "He tried to champion Article 3, and Addington just ate him for lunch."

Despite his vehemence, Mr. Addington did not necessarily win the argument, officials said. They predicted that it would be settled by Mr. Rumsfeld after consultation with other agencies.

THE FEDERAL BUREACRACY RETAINS a touch of the boys club,  the tension of a school yard playground where harsh words and aggression would seek to win the fight, but look pathetic in another less fawning light , when seen by others who are not quaking onlookers.  Bruised, bloodied . . . Addington just ate him for lunch.  And probably took his lunch money.  But . . . did not necessarily win the argument. 

ADDINGTON IS A BULLY nothing more and nothing less.  Working for your government, Addison is in effect a bully for you.  You would think more sharp minds would skewer his brutal arguments for the affronts they are to all things decent in the human spirit, but all these changes came about immediately after September Eleventh.  September Eleventh changed everything.

But while advocates of change within the administration have prevailed in a few skirmishes, some of those officials acknowledged privately that proponents of the status quo still dominate the issue - partly because of the bureaucratic difficulty of overturning policies that have been in place for several years and, in some cases, were either approved by Justice Department lawyers or upheld by the federal courts.

"A lot of the decisions that have been made are now difficult to get out of," one senior administration official said.

SAVAGE CRUELTY AND BUREAUCRACY possess an evil inertia. Once bad policy is in place, great effort must be exerted to root its rot out.  September Eleventh did change everything.  It gave bullies like David Addison a hall pass to wreak a moral havoc in the hallways of power.

PREVIOUS RELATED HERETIK POSTS [The Black Sea]  [Cheney’s Cheney]

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING AND FURTHER DISCUSSION
[Tom Dispatch] Here is the key passage in Senator John McCain's anti-torture amendment to the 2006 Defense Appropriations Bill (which the Bush administration has threatened to veto if it arrives so amended): "No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."

THE HERETIK NOTES ADDINGTON AND OTHERS like Cambone work the maximum to make sure we don’t have to obey the minimum.  Their logic itself is tortured.  [NY Times]

Common Article 3, as the provision is known, sets out minimum standards for the treatment of captured fighters and others in "armed conflicts not of an international character." Although President Bush determined in February 2002 that the article was not relevant to Al Qaeda or the Taliban because of its international focus, the Sept. 11 panel noted that it "was specifically designed for those cases in which the usual laws of war did not apply."

The draft Pentagon directive adopted the language of Common Article 3 "as a matter of policy rather than law," one defense official said. Even so, the Geneva reference was opposed by two senior Pentagon officials, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, and, William J. Haynes, the department's general counsel, defense officials said.

THOSE LOOKING FOR THE HYPOCRISY  of government officials need look no further than Cambone, who as previously noted loudly claimed the Department of Defense would have no further hand in torture and would not allow the CIA to do so on DOD properties.  What is proclaimed in public can later be fought and deleted in private.  The exemption Cheney seeks for the CIA will now be decided by a joint House Senate Committee considering the latest Defense spending bill.  Military and moral capital are forever linked.

[Tom Dispatch] According to the New York Times, here is the (tortured) wording of the exemption the Vice President was pushing:

"[The measure] shall not apply with respect to clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States, that are carried out by an element of the United States government other than the Department of Defense and are consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and treaties to which the United States is a party, if the president determines that such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack."

"As for Mr. Cheney," the Washington Post editorial page commented astringently, "[h]e will be remembered as the vice president who campaigned for torture."

Last week, by the way, the ACLU released "an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions… The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and ‘OGA' (Other Governmental Agency) -- a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA." Evidently, this is just everyday life in the world created by Dick Cheney and John Yoo.

THE HERETIK SEES bullies persistent in their desire to rule by the fist.  Are we not better than that.

MORE RECOMMENDED READING
[WaPo] Addington's influence -- like Cheney's overall -- extends throughout the government in his bid to expand executive power. He goes through every page of the federal budget in search of riders that could restrict executive authority. He meets daily with White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and often raises objections to requests for information from Congress or the public, officials say. He also routinely works to defeat proposals from the State Department, where the pervasive internationalist philosophy is at odds with Cheney's neoconservatism.