Outside The Law
Mr Rumsfeld, like his president, does not much care for truth. Truth undermines his own portrayal of himself, his administration and his nation as victims. He apologised last week for the scenes reproduced alongside his own image on split television screens: the prisoner on a leash, the piles of naked bodies, the nude, hooded figure with wires dangling from his finger tips. He even offered to pay for the damage. He also warned that there were more, and more horrific, photos and videos still to come. Something of what he feared appears on our front page this morning. Mr Rumsfeld regretted that images like this have offended the world. Yet he knows from the same Red Cross sources that first warned of the abuses more than a year ago that torture continues under coalition direction, and he left too much unacknowledged. These images are more than merely unfortunate and embarrassing now. They are shaping the way the world sees the Iraq occupation.
Mr Rumsfeld did not apologise for the Red Cross reports of unarmed Iraqi prisoners being shot to death by military personnel in watchtowers. He said nothing of the "interrogation techniques" developed by US intelligence agencies and taught to security services the world over, including here. He expressed no regret for employing private contractors to question people who were accused of no crime, then hiding their sadistic behaviour from public scrutiny. He never mentioned how sorry he might be for turning over captives to other governments using even cruder torture methods. He showed no contrition for continuing to hide hundreds of people in Guantánamo Bay away from the law. Such leaders have placed themselves outside the bounds of international law, their own code of justice and their much-admired constitution. In doing so, they have also removed the protection of law from those who follow their orders.
George Bush started to withdraw the US from the international community at the beginning of his presidency. Earlier this year he dismissed foreign objections to his policies by insisting that the US needed no permission slip from the rest of the world to defend itself. At home, he has evaded oversight by Congress on matters of finance, intelligence operations and foreign relations. He sidestepped questioning by the press by holding fewer news conferences than any other modern president.
The Iraq revelations have given much of the world its voice back. The Washington Post reported yesterday that "profound anger" is building within the US Army against Mr Rumsfeld's rule. Now some soldiers have gone on the record calling for him to go. All this marks a quantum shift in the politics of the Iraq occupation. We need to hear now from others about how they believe the torture system - for that is what it is - came about, and what changes they propose. We need to hear from John Kerry. And we need to hear from Tony Blair too. Above all, we need to have a sign from President Bush that he understands his mistake, not the mistakes of a handful of ill-trained reservists acting out policies developed by intelligence services over many years. That sign could be given by presidential order, no permission slip needed from Congress, from coalition partners or from the United Nations. Close Guantánamo.
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