t r u t h o u t: FOCUS | Herbert, NYT: We Can't Remain Silent

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FOCUS | Herbert, NYT: We Can't Remain Silent

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 11:35:09 -0800

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040105Y.shtml

 

We Can't Remain Silent

By Bob Herbert

The New York Times

 

Friday 01 April 2005

 

At dinner on a rainy night in Manhattan this week, I listened to a

retired admiral and a retired general speak about the pain they've

personally felt over the torture and abuse scandal that has spread

like a virus through some sectors of the military.

 

During the dinner and in follow-up interviews, Rear Adm. John

Hutson, who is now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in

Concord, N.H., and Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a lawyer in private

practice in New York, said they believed that both the war effort and

the military itself have been seriously undermined by official

policies that encouraged the abuse of prisoners.

 

Both men said they were unable to remain silent as institutions

that they served loyally for decades, and which they continue to love

without reservation, are being damaged by patterns of conduct that fly

in the face of core values that most members of the military try

mightily to uphold.

 

" At some point, " said General Cullen, " I had to say: 'Wait a

minute. We cannot go along with this.' "

 

The two retired officers have lent their support to an

extraordinary lawsuit that seeks to hold Defense Secretary Donald

Rumsfeld ultimately accountable for policies that have given rise to

torture and other forms of prisoner abuse. And last September they

were among a group of eight retired admirals and generals who wrote a

letter to President Bush urging him to create an independent 9/11-type

commission to fully investigate the problem of prisoner abuse from the

top to the bottom of the command structure.

 

Admiral Hutson, who served as the Navy's judge advocate general

from 1997 to 2000, said he felt sick the first time he saw the photos

of soldiers abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. " I felt like

somebody in my family had died, " he said.

 

Even before that, he had been concerned by the Bush

administration's decision to deny the protections of the Geneva

Conventions to some detainees, and by the way prisoners at Guantánamo

Bay were being processed and treated. He said that when the scandal at

Abu Ghraib broke, " I knew in my soul that it was going to be bigger

than that, that we had just seen the tip of the iceberg and that it

was going to get worse and worse and worse. "

 

The letter to President Bush emphasized the wide scope of the

problem, noting that there were " dozens of well-documented allegations

of torture, abuse and otherwise questionable detention practices "

involving prisoners in U.S. custody. It said:

 

" These reports have implicated both U.S. military and intelligence

agencies, ranging from junior enlisted members to senior command

officials, as well as civilian contractors. ... No fewer than a

hundred criminal, military and administrative inquiries have been

launched into apparently improper or unlawful U.S. practices related

to detention and interrogation. Given the range of individuals and

locations involved in these reports, it is simply no longer possible

to view these allegations as a few instances of an isolated problem. "

 

Admiral Hutson and General Cullen have worked closely with a New

York-based group, Human Rights First, which, along with the American

Civil Liberties Union, filed the lawsuit against Mr. Rumsfeld. A

report released this week by Human Rights First said that the number

of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan has grown to more

than 11,000, and that the level of secrecy surrounding American

detention operations has intensified.

 

Burgeoning detainee populations and increased secrecy are primary

ingredients for more, not less, prisoner abuse.

 

One of the many concerns expressed by Admiral Hutson and General

Cullen was the effect of the torture and abuse scandal on members of

the military who have had nothing to do with it. " I think it does

stain the honor of people who didn't participate in it at all, " said

Admiral Hutson. " People in the military who find that kind of behavior

abhorrent are painted with the same broad brush. "

 

General Cullen, who has served as chief judge of the Army's Court

of Criminal Appeals, spoke in terms of grief. " You feel sorrow, " he

said, " because you know there are so many servicemen and women out

there who want to do the right thing, who are doing tough jobs every

day. And to see these events blacken their names and call into

question their whole mission just makes me sad. Very, very sad. "

 

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