Bush and Torture
    Le Monde | Editorial

    Monday 25 September 2006

    The pressure George Bush has exerted the last several weeks to obtain a law from Congress validating the decisions he has taken in the name of his "war against terror" is about to bear fruit. The Republican senators who resisted the White House assert that they have imposed a compromise on it that respects human rights. The truth is that this apparent victory hides a capitulation on an essential point: the president of the United States sees recognized the right to authorize the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to employ methods of interrogation that respect neither American legislation nor international law as codified by the Geneva Conventions. Clearly stated, the agency will be able to resort to torture, as it very probably has already for four or five years in the secret detention sites situated outside the United States.

    Certainly, the affair is not over, since the vigilance of the American press has touched off a controversy that obliges the senators to re-examine their position. Their leader, John McCain, former prisoner of war in Vietnam and until now unquestioned defender of international law, asserted on Sunday, September 24, on the CBS television station that Congress would have the power to reject any presidential directive it deemed not to be in conformity with the spirit of the law. On top of that, another part of the text, which eliminates the right of habeas corpus for "war against terror" detainees - mainly the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay naval base - is disputed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican attached to human rights' defense.

    Nonetheless, there is little chance that the disposition that allows the president of the United States to enact rules that constitute an outrage to common law will be challenged during the vote that is to take place soon in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Democrats are timorous - six weeks away from the mid-term elections that could allow them to regain the majority in the House, lost by them in 1994. For his part, Mr. McCain, potential Republican presidential candidate in 2008, is concerned not to alienate the party's right wing, which made him lose the 2000 primaries.

    At the moment when a report from the "intelligence community," divulged by the New York Times, deems that the occupation of Iraq has not weakened the terrorist threat, but rather, on the contrary, aggravated it, Mr. Bush plays his customary card: to push fear of terrorism at the expense of any reflection about the means of combating it. If the United States inscribes a law authorizing the use of torture into its legislation, its enemies will have chalked up a victory.