Torture

WASHINGTON -- Treatment of the torture issue during the second Republican presidential debate illustrates what's great and what can go terribly wrong with these presidential face-offs. Fox News' Brit Hume spelled out a hypothetical scenario worthy of Fox TV's Jack Bauer thriller, 24. His plot involved suicide bombers simultaneously attacking shopping malls, captured suspects being taken to the military's detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and U.S. intelligence agents believing that there are plans for an even larger attack.

What is it about torture that the Bush administration finds so attractive? Consider the lengths to which the president's men have gone in order to preserve their right to inflict physical pain upon their enemies: In 2002, John Yoo, then a deputy assistant attorney general, wrote a Justice Department opinion validating the use of torture within broad limits, despite laws and treaties forbidding it. In 2004, his successor, a conservative who believes in...

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives voted yesterday to prevent the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods that already are banned from use by the U.S. military. The bill, which would fund and set policies for U.S. intelligence agencies, passed 222-199. It now goes to the Senate, where it faces strong Republican opposition. Even if the Senate approves the bill, the White House said in a statement that the president's advisers recommend that he veto it. The White House objects to the interrogation provision and other sections that would increase congressional oversight.

MOSCOW -- Terrifying in its brutality, often indifferent to guilt or innocence, Russia's legal system has organized itself around an unspoken bargain: Policemen are free to torture criminal suspects as much as they like, as long as they make arrests, get confessions and keep their victims quiet.This dark assessment emerges from a two-year investigation carried out by Human Rights Watch into police methods and legal practices across Russia. The 196-page report, "Confessions at Any Cost, Police Torture in Russia," is being published today.

PEC, Yugoslavia -- NATO troops "by the hour" are uncovering evidence of wartime atrocities -- mass murder, rapes and torture -- carried out against ethnic Albanian civilians by Serbian soldiers and police in Kosovo, British officials said yesterday. They estimated that more than 10,000 Kosovars were killed in at least 100 separate massacres.As ethnic Albanian refugees who left Kosovo in Europe's largest human displacement since World War II stream back to their towns, their worst fears are coming true.

NEW HOLLAND, Pa. - They are paraded through the auction ring at New Holland Sales Stables in Lancaster County: Amish buggy horses, racing thoroughbreds, petting-zoo ponies.The ones that can ride or work fetch a decent price.The rest, young and old, go to the "killers." That's what horse people call the slaughterhouses.The doomed animals are loaded onto trailers, sometimes double-deckers - "torture trailers," critics call them, because the low ceilings and slick floors are designed for cattle and hogs, not equines.

The Central Intelligence Agency released yesterday more than 200 pages of heavily censored, previously classified material about its collaboration with a Honduran military unit that kidnapped, tortured and murdered suspected leftists during the 1980s -- but the documents were denounced as meaningless by Honduras' human rights investigator."

HOUSTON -- It is disturbing in the extreme to discover not only that Israel practices torture on prisoners -- ''moderate physical pressure,'' by its own admission -- but has been found by the U.N. to have violated the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, to which Israel is a party.It does no good to say that its Arab neighbors do as much and ZTC worse. Of course they do. We have come to expect such treatment in lands little inclined to respect for human dignity.

These are the facts: On Dec. 26, 1996, someone in Boulder, Colo., murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey. Her parents, John and Patricia Ramsey, initially refused to talk to police after the child's body was found in the basement of the family home. Police have not charged anyone with the crime.During the parents' months of silence, broken two weeks ago when they were interviewed by police, the public's sympathy for the Ramseys' loss was replaced with a growing suspicion of their culpability.

WASHINGTON -- An internal report criticized the Defense Department yesterday for failing to respond properly to the discovery in 1992 that Americans had instructed Latin American military officers in the use of torture, threats, bribery and blackmail.The Pentagon's inspector general charged that a 1992 memorandum, intended to prevent a repeat of the improper training, "had little impact" on those it was intended to reach because it was not given as a direct order.The report recommended that this be done now.The inspector general reported that use of the materials stemmed from "many mistakes" made in several organizations in Panama, Georgia and Washington.

Torture is regrettable but necessary in today's world I'm tired of the absolute denial that I find many of my fellow Americans living in ("Torture is un-American," Aug. 25). No one is happy about torture or its use. Nor is anyone happy about war, and acts of terrorism. They are, however, a reality. One we must be prepared to handle. I believe in the United States of America and its Constitution. I believe that throughout our nation's history there have been regrettable instances, moments where we took a collective view of ourselves in a social mirror and didn't like what we saw. Slavery, Manifest Destiny, denial of civil rights - all were regrettable.

With the economy still sputtering, unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health care reform under attack, it's little wonder President Barack Obama isn't eager for a distracting debate over the Bush administration's policy on torture to extract information from suspected terrorists. But a report released Monday revealing new details of the abuses carried out by the agency shows why Mr. Obama will have to tackle the subject. Indeed, within hours of the report's release, the Justice Department announced a criminal probe of alleged detainee abuses, and the White House said it will assume direct control of interrogations of terror suspects.

From the beginning, President Barack Obama said he wanted to look forward rather than back. That's why he pledged early on to hold harmless CIA officers who engaged in torture deemed legal by the Bush administration, opposed prosecuting the Bush-era Justice Department lawyers who sanctioned the abuses, announced plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and began phasing out the military tribunals set up to try detainees. Mr. Obama took all these steps in an effort to put the mistakes of the past behind him and avoid opening a Pandora's box of bitter partisan recrimination over the policies of his predecessor that might distract from the important work of fixing the economy, health care, energy policy and foreign relations.

America is at a turning point. How we will come to terms with the government abuses unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11 is a historic test of our highest principles. Are we a nation of laws? Will we stand by our commitment to the rule of law over the tyranny of state-sanctioned brutality? Maryland's particularly powerful congressional delegation in Washington can be pivotal as the nation chooses how to proceed. And, of course, members of Congress will more likely rise to the occasion if they hear from the public they represent.

In dueling speeches given moments apart Thursday, President Barack Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney offered radically different visions of what's needed to protect the country from foreign terrorists bent on killing as many Americans as possible. One looked to chart the future, while the other sought to justify the past. About the only thing they agreed on was that any official inquiry into reports of prisoner mistreatment in the fight against terror would only distract attention from the dangerous threats that lie ahead.

Canton should stop saying no It seems Canton wants to keep the rest of the city out ("Rethink flawed Red Line proposal," May 5). They don't want to have an arena, and they don't want a light rail line that would connect them to the city and a Social Secuirity Complex on the other side of town. It seems they want a gated community with their own kind of people. They should find a place of their choice that already exists instead of trying to create one. Albert J. Novak II, Baltimore Jobless?

Our view It's been weeks since President Barack Obama slammed the door on prosecuting CIA operatives who tortured terrorist suspects in secret locations overseas and left it up to his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to decide whether to press criminal charges against the government lawyers who wrote the absurd legal memos saying war crimes are OK. Now reports have surfaced that an internal Justice Department inquiry has determined the lawyers shouldn't...

Time to move ahead with light rail line Any time a worthy project comes along, there will be NIMBYs who oppose it, just as is now the case for the Red Line ("Canton organizing to oppose transit plan," April 26). But much of this opposition is based on ignorance. Some people don't want "trains" on Boston Street. But there is an enormous difference between a light rail vehicle and a 100-car coal train. People are also concerned about noise and vibration on the streets. Well, just stand at the corner of Howard and Lexington streets.

'Coercion' is just totalitarian torture Richard Saccone pooh-poohs all this needless talk about "torture" ("Confusing coercion with torture," Commentary, April 22). He speaks dismissively of water-boarding and of keeping "a terrorist awake 15 minutes past his bedtime." Mr. Saccone is either intentionally reading the torture memos selectively or confused about the difference between democracy and totalitarianism. Consider the following chilling parallels. In Stalinist Russia, sleep deprivation was regularly deployed against political prisoners.

Last week, the Obama administration released a series of memos describing the "harsh interrogation" of suspects authorized by Bush administration officials. For the uninitiated, I would note that "torture" of suspects would be a more accurate characterization. But to quote the president, "It is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice ... that they will not be subject to prosecution." The use of torture is despicable. The U.S. should never have descended to the point where we would use tactics normally associated with totalitarian regimes, thus besmirching the country, the Constitution and the rule of law. But as with all crimes against humanity, it is the leaders, those who authorized the torture, who are the main offenders, and really need to be held accountable and brought to justice.