on september eleventh terrorist tried to change america forever well they succeeded second there are many more photographs and indeed some videos the congress and the american people in the rest of the world need to know is in addition the photos give these incidents a vividness for in the eyes of the world to date the majority of the abuse cases indicate the underlying cause has been too full an individual failure to adhere to basic standards of discipline training and army values and leadership by years to provide oversight and or standards this is not a training issue but one of character and values our army values of loyalty duty service honor and taggerty and personal courage are taught to our soldiers from the moment that they enter the trying to bash there's no question that potential consequences are sure yes but must not forget that these are a few among among that great many others who are serving with great honor and sacrifice it's also important for the people of iraq to know that in a democracy everything is not perfect that mistakes are made but in a democracy as well those mistakes will be investigated and people will be brought to justice a number of soldiers from the three twentieth military police battalion face court martial proceedings for their actions  the idea that the abu ghraib scandal was just a few bad apples is pretty laughable i think for people who were there because there were so many other incidents that took place and there were other incentives taking place elsewhere in iraq like in nasiriyah where i was stationed for the first six months over the guards and what were their instructions to the guards people who have the responsibility for managing the detention process they are not interrogators the military intelligence people as general smith has indicated were the people who were in charge of the interrogation very simple straightforward question well as chief of staff the army can tell you that you guards are trained to guard people they're not trained to interrogate they're not and they're in stuck struct to in the case of iraq here to the geneva convention so the guards were instructed to treat the prisoners under some kind of changing authority as i understand it according to geneva conventions absolutely general miller was sent to visit iraq by secretary rumsfeld and under secretary cambone and they came general miller came to visit from guantanamo bay he was the commander of detention operations ek one time obey cuba and he was sent to assist the military intelligence interrogators with enhancing their techniques general miller's techniques were then approved by general sanchez who was the commander in chief of u s forces in iraq and of course who was the commander of private england specialist graner and specialist harman and the other little bad apples down here who thought they very similar reports came from prisoners in abu ghraib that came from as as the ones that came out of guantanamo bay and so we have a transfer of interrogation techniques and policies they call it a migration from general miller said his first observation was that they were not they were being too nice to them they were not being aggressive enough him he used the example at guantanamo bay that the prisoners there when they're brought in  that they're handled by two military policeman they're escorted everywhere they go belly chains leg irons hand irons and he said you have to treat them like  dogs that would lead me to say yes it is a deliberate a c r the so called torture memos the most controversial of which is the august two thousand and two memo which was commissioned by our now attorney general he was then counsel to the white house and in that particular memo it very narrowly define torture much more narrowly than the laws that we have signed on to so that the torturer would have to almost kill or kill the person or create some kind of serious organ damage in order to be guilty of torture under the federal torture statute and the other thing that leads me to believe that this was a deliberate policy was that in that memo the advice presumably to the president was that there were certain defenses which would relieve him and his high officials of liability under the war crimes act or under the torture statute and those defenses which are not lawful defenses self defense necessity and cetera lead me to believe that they were anticipating that what they were involved in could be characterized as a war crime or is torture alberto gonzales who was the white house legal advisor who is now attorney general asked the justice department for a memo that would essentially exonerate the americans from the geneva conventions which we wrote after world war two gonzales asked the justice department for a memo the justice department provided that memo j s bybee who has since been rewarded with a seat on the u s court of appeals in our ninth district provided the memo that said no we are not our troops are not subject to the geneva conventions which is outrageous since we wrote the geneva conventions after world war two to prevent the very sort of thing that's happening at abu the justice department more than went to the pentagon where rumsfeld signed off on it and agreed to these enhanced interrogation techniques which is a marvelous euphemism for torture or to go and sell us said well we have a new paradigm that's the war on terrorism and that renders the geneva provisions of the geneva convention quaint and he advised that bush could actually have the power under his commander in chief responsibility to suspend the geneva conventions and that is not true no one no president has the power to suspend a treaty that we've ratified but we did not want to go forward to people who did not enjoy certain protections those protection and the geneva conventions should not apply to terrorists like al qaida but you can't or you will catch the meaning of the geneva convention  terrorists who are being detained for acts of or against our country and that is why i differ with well this whole concept of unlawful enemy combatants is one that the international committee of the red cross ha said does not exist in international law this is a figment of the imagination of the united states government the geneva conventions as i have said require humane treatment whether you're going into the third geneva convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war w you're going into the fourth geneva convention that protect civilians in time of war whether you're going under common article three it requires humane treatment and therefore you cannot if you are president bush or any of his his  inferiors classify someone as an unlawful enemy combatant and then decide the geneva conventions don't apply to them that just cannot happen in international law any way you look at it these things violate the law the things that we've seen our government engage in violate the law and we do more than three thousand suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries many others are many different things but it  to summary execution as sasa nation violates international law violates another treaty that's been ratified by the united states and therefore is part of the supreme law of our land it's called the international covenant on civil and political right have made it very clear that impermissible acts not just under standards of international law and the much disputed geneva conventions number three and number four in the treatment of of soldiers and also the combatants and also of civilians but also by any common definition of human decency we violated them in our treatment of the prisoners the administration believes it can sell american people on anything it wants whether it's enhanced interrogation techniques whether it's on a war against a country that had nothing to do with nine eleven whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction destruction found in the country that allegedly had them and that was the cause for war so i don't think the administration sets out to to torture people it simply sets out with the idea we are an exceptional nation that can do anything it wants we're not subject to domestic law to constitutional restraints and we're not subject to international restraints we have rules written by american ju on war that's what we did after world war two we decided we'd never have another war like this and we wrote rules they were written at geneva after the nuremberg trials in which we established responsibility at the top nuremberg didn't try privates and corporals it tried generals and field marshals we're not doing that and so the bush administration just has no respect for the rule of law and this will come back to hurt us because the idea that you don't torture people that you treat prisoners under the rules rules of war is not just morally right it's not just an ethical thing to do it's a practical thing to do because your troops sunday will be caught and if you've abused the troops of the prisoners of other countries they will abuse the troops and prisoners of your country so it's a practical thing so this administration i think is simply misguided on the strength of following the rule of law we know from the experiments of philip zimbardo that if you designate some people as prisoners and some people as prison guards the prison guards soon will grow abusive he did this with people who were matched for intelligence who are part of his classroom in california an amazing polarization and an amazing capacity for abuse emerged within six days of this division between the detainee or prisoner and prison guard so strong was this this abusive tendency that dr zimbardo discontinue the experiment after six days when we're in a situation where an authority tells us we can hurt another human being we end up doing it this is what the burden of the stanley milgram experiment shows us dr milgram hired some actors to show that that tissue to pretend to be in great pain and he had people first ordinary people and then people in white coats instruct students to deliver what it seemed to them was painted using the dial and the actors acted out extreme anguish well many of the students ended up being willing to spin the dial all the way over to a fatal level of pain administered to these actors who acted out terrible anguish all on the basis of the authority from these people in white coats we have a much more established authority structure in our military and our cia structures you have this argument that that anybody can become a torture was a book by daniel gold hagen called hitler's willing executioners where he tries to show that torture in under the nazis was not just done by nazis not just by the s s but their recruits than anybody he basically argues that any german could become a torture you've heard that argument used in america there's been various experiments the milgram experiment is one example where allegedly you can you can make any buddy hurt his fellow human being if he has an incentive but first of all i don't believe that i think that torture is our special people not this is not a torture and all of this and i think that the torturing units like the s s look for those people who they know can become torture and i think the the serious work on germany by people like gordon grigg and fritz stern show that there was a huge difference between the ordinary german and  believe that for americans as well or for any any group of people but even if you argued that most people could become torturers there's always going to be somebody who won't let it be done race plays a larger role than most people would believe would want to believe that there's this idea that arabs and muslims are against the united states and therefore they're one monolithic entity that are our enemies and that's a huge motivation for people on the ground to commit these kind of offens there's an extreme weather ness to the detainees they have a different language a different cultural background a different religious background they are of different religion they have different cultural ways about them the treatment of those prisoners irrespective of whether the orders came from up high or down low or whether it was writing games or not it's the treatment really for me evidence says such a contempt a racist contempt for the people of this land for the proud people of this land there are other photos the incidence of physical violence towards prisoners acts that can only be described as blatantly suggesting cruel and inhuman placing individuals in stress positions sexual humiliation physical abuse sensory deprivation sleep deprivation sodomy with a broomstick stick or a chemical light or a metal object in my opinion would constitute torture under the definition of torture rather bored simulating drowning so that someone would think that they were going to drown electric shocks could constitute torture pulling out fingernails pushing cigarette into ears chaining someone hand and foot in a fetal position without food or water and we've humiliation of forced masturbation the terrifying by the use of dogs the beating until people cry out the effort to terrify people with dogs until they  desecrate and having the kind of bet to see who can get their prisoner to death a cake first these are some of the many things that i believe americans would turn their head away from they would not sign up for waterboarding  waterboarding is a tech is it torture technique that's known to interrogators i first heard of it when i i didn't cover the algerian war for algeria it's a technique where you tie a person to a board so he cannot move his hands are strapped to his sides in the board is tilted and dipped down into what we call water but most often is filth ex human urine and he's not drowned he's just held to the point of drowning and of course fear drowning and sometimes they d what about the concept of rendition or rendering the united states and specifically the cia sending prisoners to other countries where they have perfected torture techniques does that file at the law if we're not admitted in carrying out many of these what they call extraordinary renditions in sending people to other countries they've testified to that effect and in december of two thousand and one for example american operatives kidnapped two egyptians flew them to cairo where they were subjected to repeated torture by electric shocks from electrodes attached to their private parts many times the cia agents would go along with these prisoners who were sent to other countries to be tortured and they would just like they were in the john walker lindh situation they would be present while these torturers in other countries were doing the torturing and then then the cia agents would come in and do the interrogating after they'd been so called softened up and this is highly illegal and it's one of the most important practices that the bush administration has engaged in when we're talking about torture is extremely important to recognize the human aspects of what is taking place for the individual victim while they're being tortured they have extreme pain or suffering humiliation fear and we also have to recognize the long term consequences but the physiological consequences of torture and the psychological consequences of torture of course there will be physical bruising there may be pain suffering long term loss of vision loss of hearing depending upon what type of abuse was committed but we also have to recognize the psychological consequence of torture fear humiliation i suicidal tendencies tendencies post traumatic stress disorder and finally it's important to consider the consequences of torture on the family members on the friends of the victims while torture may happen for a short period of time in a hidden location its long term consequences will felt by the victim while the torture is occurring the results include having a lot of shame poured on the family for having a member who was tortured  sometimes the family member who tortured is incapable of having sexual relations or social relations with other people ever again sometimes the children and even the grandchildren are  stigmatized as we who are not manly enough or not human not fully human as we as we reflect on the abuses that have been committed over the past three years in the war on terror we need to recognize that many of the abuses have taken place because the u s has isolated detainees from public awareness many of the abuses that have taken place of occurred in facilities far away from the united states individuals without access to counsel without access to any type of oversight have been abused and why is that happening because people believe that it's easier to committed busa is when the light of day is not shined on those detention centers and the responsibility of the international community is to shine the light of international protest on those detention centers whether it is iraq whether it is grave whether it is afghanistan or whether it is kuantan about the responsibility of the international community is to ensure a constant pressure on the united states to open up those detention centers to allow international monitors into those detention centers including the red cross among others to ensure the detainees are not being abused  part of the abuses of also stemmed because the u s has hidden detainees even when the red cross entered kuantan emote or aboud grabe the cia would take certain detainees and hide them from the review process those individuals are referred to as ghost detainees it simply perpetuates abusive treatment when individuals are hidden from view from those monitors that were stablished by the international community to protect human rights sometimes when i think about torture and i think about what it really means it's as if there is an immense dark cloud descending on most of us on this or a dark cloud from which there hasn't been with remembered pain and with fresh pain of all sorts and with indignities and humiliations that may never end and i think we should live with that from time t