A Christian's lament

Opinion: A Christian's lament over the Pew torture poll

By David Gushee

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

(ABP) -- Dear Jesus, Everyone seems to be talking about the poll put out last week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. They found that 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe “the use of torture against suspected terrorists to gain important information” to be often or sometimes justified. Only 16 percent of this group -- a community that by self-definition is very, very serious about following you -- believes torture is never justified. That number was lower than any other group polled. I think that what really got people’s attention with this poll, Lord, is that both evangelical identity and church attendance were positively correlated with support for torture. Thirteen percent more evangelicals said torture was often or sometimes justified than in the general population. In other words: The more often people go to church, the more they support torture. So those of your followers who go to church every week support torture at 54 percent, while those who seldom or never go support it at 42 percent. These results have bounced around the country all week, reinforcing the opinion here that Christianity -- the faith that purports to be related to loyalty to you, Jesus -- leads people to support torture. It would be easy for casual news-watchers to conclude that if you want to end torture in this country, the best thing to do would be to empty out the churches. What a negation of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20)! We could call it the Great De-Commissioning! But, Jesus, can it be that the problem is that the churches are already empty? Can it be that the institution that you founded to advance your mission in the world is already empty of any understanding of what it might really mean to follow you? Is it already empty of people who take your teachings and example so seriously that they might have the capacity to resist seductive and dangerous ideas floating around our culture -- like the idea that if torture “works” to “protect national security,” and thus is something that followers of Jesus Christ ought to support as good loyal Americans? Is your church already empty of courageous leaders who are willing to lose their jobs in order to say a resounding NO to a heretical idea like that? Is it already empty of people who understand that if you are a Christian, you cannot serve two masters, like, for example, Jesus and National Security? Is it already empty of people who understand that because all human beings are made in your image, there are some things that we just can’t do to anyone, no matter who they are? What is this thing called “Christianity” in this country, Lord Jesus? Does it have anything to do with you? It seems a strangely Americanized thing, a disastrously domesticated faith toward which people can nod their heads in loyalty as long as it doesn’t conflict with their full participation in whatever this country feels like it wants to do. You founded an international, countercultural movement filled with followers who did everything you taught them to do to advance the peaceable and just reign of your Father in this rebellious world. We American Christians have turned it into a culture-religion that has nothing to say even about, say, waterboarding, slamming people repeatedly into walls, forced nudity, prolonged shackling, 11 days of sleep deprivation, psychological terror, sexual humiliation, religious desecration, and so much more! Or that even supports all of this to protect ... America! O Jesus, what have you to do with a religion like this? “I spit you out of my mouth” -- these words of yours somehow come to mind (Rev. 3:16)! Lord, you taught us much about resisting temptation. You talked about not giving the Devil a space in which to operate, and about cutting off the sources of temptation at the root (Mark 10:43-48). It seems like on this torture issue, Jesus, our nation got tempted by its fear and anger and grief to go down a road we had repudiated since our founding! When what we were doing first surfaced (Abu Ghraib, 2004), we all purported to be shocked, shocked. Now at least half of your people say it’s fine to do worse than what we did there! Where’s your Holy Spirit, leading us into righteousness and convicting us of our sins? Or, better, where is the responsiveness of your people to your Holy Spirit, the One who speaks truth to your people if we will but listen? O Lord, you know that some of us have been fighting this torture thing for several years. We thought that America would come to its senses eventually. We thought that a transition to an anti-torture president would make a difference. Well, the policies may be changing right now, but support for torture among even your own self-identified followers remains sufficiently strong that it looks like, under a different president, we would go right back to doing it, and Christians would go right back to supporting it or just remaining acquiescent! The more torture memos that get released, the more we argue about whether torture is okay! Can nothing end this cancerous debate? Jesus, this doesn’t look like a problem that can be solved through garden-variety activism. Another press conference, another media alert, another academic meeting, another document or article -- none of this seems to make any difference. Lord, it seems that the problem runs deeper than what such activism can solve. Clearly, your church in this land has been deeply corrupted. I’m still trying to figure out all the sources of that corruption, but it looks like some combination of an inadequate understanding of what the Bible really teaches, an inadequate grasp of who you really are, an inadequate commitment to your Lordship over all of life and thus our obligation to follow your teachings in all things, inadequate disciple-formation processes in our churches, inadequate leadership from the pulpit, inadequate social ethics (especially the lack of any firm commitment to human dignity and human rights), and inadequate understanding of the distinction between the church and the nation. I’m sure there’s more. There are times when a church so badly misunderstands what it means to be church that it must be repudiated as fundamentally ungodly, fundamentally a negation of true Christianity. This has sometimes been called a status confessionis moment -- a situation where the basic integrity of the gospel and the core witness of the church are at stake. Jesus, I believe this is one such moment. Any church -- congregation, parachurch organization, denomination, or group of individual Christians -- that supports torture has violated its confessed allegiance to you and can no longer be considered part of your true church. Let them be anathema. Jesus, I pray with all my heart for the survival of a remnant of faithful Christianity in this country. It goes far beyond torture. It has to do with whether we are really your people or are liars and hypocrites, just deluding ourselves on the way to Judgment Day. -30- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. EDITORIAL DISCLAIMER: As part of our mission to provide credible and compelling information about matters of faith, Associated Baptist Press actively seeks a diversity of viewpoints in its columns, commentaries and other opinion-based content. Opinions expressed in these articles are not intended to represent ABP editorial policy and do not necessarily reflect the views of ABP’s staff, board of directors or supporters. Comments (8)

Nuremberg Defense

The Nightmare Redux

Red Cross report says detainees at CIA 'black sites' were tortured

The confidential report, published Sunday, could bolster calls for legal action against the Bush administration.

By Jonathan Adams

posted March 16, 2009 at 10:35 am EST

•A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded in 2007 that US methods to extract information from prisoners at secret CIA jails as part of the "war on terror" amounted to torture, according to excerpts from a confidential report published on the website of the The New York Review of Books on Sunday.

With US President Barack Obama on record as backing the prosecution of officials involved in "clear instances of wrongdoing," the report could fuel calls for such legal action.

Though allegations of the torture of terror suspects at CIA-run "black sites" have been widely detailed before, the Red Cross report has "an unusual claim to authenticity," the article's author, Mark Danner, wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times.

The article in the Times quoted the report's conclusion:

The allegations of ill-treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill-treatment to which they were subjected while held in the CIA program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill-treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The International Committee of the Red Cross interviewed detainees in late 2006 after they had been moved to the US detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The report was not for public release, but for top CIA and other US government officials' eyes only. It was given to them in February 2007 and labeled "confidential."

The Review article ended by noting that many human rights advocates "urge investigations and prosecutions" of Bush officials who adopted the antiterror methods alleged in the Red Cross report.

President Obama, while declaring that "nobody's above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing ... people should be prosecuted," has also expressed his strong preference for "looking forward" rather than "looking backwards."

A book on the war on terror, published last year, mentioned the Red Cross report, but relied on "sources familiar with the report." The New York Times last year quoted from the book, Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side," which said that "the Red Cross document 'warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the US government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.'"

The New York Review of Books did not say how it obtained a copy of the report.

According to The Washington Post, Red Cross policy prevented it from the making the report public.

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts.

The Post added that the accounts that the 14 detainees gave to the Red Cross were "remarkably uniform" and included reports of "beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures. and, in some cases, waterboarding or simulating drowning."

"Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions," the Post wrote.

The Post reports that the CIA declined to comment on the Red Cross report, but quoted a "US official familiar with the report" as saying: "It is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves."

The Post also reported reaction from the Red Cross:

ICRC officials did not dispute the authenticity of the excerpts, but a spokesman expressed dismay over the leak of the material. "We regret information attributed to the ICRC report was made public in this manner," spokesman Bernard Barrett said.

"The ICRC has been visiting the detainees formerly held by the CIA," he added, "at Guantánamo since 2006. Any concerns or observations the ICRC had when visiting the detainees are part of a confidential dialogue."

The Red Cross report has surfaced just as former US Vice President Dick Cheney is publicly criticizing President Obama's terror policies for making the US less safe, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

The Red Cross report's conclusion appears to directly contradict former US President George W. Bush's claim that the methods used against terror suspects were permissible under international law, Reuters reports:

Former U.S. President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of coercive interrogation tactics on senior al-Qaeda captives detained by the CIA in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Bush certified in 2007 that the CIA's interrogation program complied with the Geneva Conventions.

The anti-terrorism policies of the Bush administration drew worldwide condemnation as violations of human rights and international law.

As this Cox & Forkum political cartoon shows, however, some in the US ridiculed the idea of providing legal or humanitarian protection for terror suspects.

NPR interviewed Mr. Danner about his article on Sunday's "All Things Considered" program. (Listen to the report here.)

Find this article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0316/p99s01-duts.html

Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official

Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official
Trial Overseer Cites 'Abusive' Methods Against 9/11 Suspect

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 14, 2009; A01

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.

Military prosecutors said in November that they would seek to refile charges against Qahtani, 30, based on subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war crimes charges against him in May 2008, said in the interview that she would not allow the prosecution to go forward.

Qahtani was denied entry into the United States a month before the Sept. 11 attacks and was allegedly planning to be the plot's 20th hijacker. He was later captured in Afghanistan and transported to Guantanamo in January 2002. His interrogation took place over 50 days from November 2002 to January 2003, though he was held in isolation until April 2003.

"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.

The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including The Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

The Qahtani case underscores the challenges facing the incoming Obama administration as it seeks to close the controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the dilemmas posed by individuals considered too dangerous to release but whose legal status is uncertain. FBI "clean teams," which gather evidence without using information gained during controversial interrogations, have established that Qahtani intended to join the 2001 hijackers. Mohamed Atta, the plot's leader, who died steering American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center, went to the Orlando airport to meet Qahtani on Aug. 4, 2001, but the young Saudi was denied entry by a suspicious immigration inspector.

"There's no doubt in my mind he would've been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001," Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. "He's a muscle hijacker. . . . He's a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don't charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, 'Let him go.' "

That, she said, is a decision that President-elect Barack Obama will have to make. Obama repeated Sunday that he intends to close the Guantanamo center but acknowledged the challenges involved. "It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," Obama said on ABC's "This Week," "and we are going to get it done, but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted, even though it's true."

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have said that interrogations never involved torture. "The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values," Bush asserted on Sept. 6, 2006, when 14 high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA prisons. And in a interview last week with the Weekly Standard, Cheney said, "And I think on the left wing of the Democratic Party, there are some people who believe that we really tortured."

"I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."

"The Department has always taken allegations of abuse seriously," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in an e-mail. "We have conducted more than a dozen investigations and reviews of our detention operations, including specifically the interrogation of Mohammed Al Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker. They concluded the interrogation methods used at GTMO, including the special techniques used on Qahtani in 2002, were lawful. However, subsequent to those reviews, the Department adopted new and more restrictive policies and procedures for interrogation and detention operations. Some of the aggressive questioning techniques used on Al Qahtani, although permissible at the time, are no longer allowed in the updated Army field manual."

After the Supreme Court ruled in the 2006 Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case that the original military commission system for Guantanamo Bay violated the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, Congress rewrote the rules and passed the Military Commissions Act, creating a new structure for trials by commissions. The act bans torture but permits "coercive" testimony.

Crawford said she believes that coerced testimony should not be allowed. "You don't allow it in a regular court," said Crawford, who served as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces from 1991 to 2006.

Under the act, Crawford is a neutral official overseeing charges, trials and sentencing, with ultimate decision-making power over all cases coming before the military commissions.

In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it."

The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "A lot of this happened on his watch," she said. Last month, a Senate Armed Services Committee report concluded that "Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there." The committee found the interrogation techniques harsh and abusive but stopped short of calling them torture.

An aide to the former defense secretary accused the committee chairman, Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), of pursuing a politically motivated "false narrative" that is "unencumbered by the preponderance of the facts."

In June 2005, Time magazine obtained 83 pages of Qahtani's interrogation log and published excerpts that showed some of the extreme abuse. The report of a military investigation released the same year concluded that Qahtani's interrogations were "degrading and abusive."

Crawford said she does not know whether five other detainees accused of participating in the Sept. 11 plot, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, were tortured. "I assume torture," she said, noting that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has said publicly that Mohammed was one of three detainees waterboarded by the CIA. Crawford declined to say whether she considers waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, to be torture.

The five detainees face capital murder charges, and Crawford said she let the charges go forward because the FBI satisfied her that they gathered information without using harsh techniques. She noted that Mohammed has acknowledged his Sept. 11 role in court, whereas Qahtani has recanted his self-incriminating statements to the FBI.

"There is no doubt he was tortured," Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, Qahtani's civilian attorney, said this week. "He has loss of concentration and memory loss, and he suffers from paranoia. . . . He wants just to get back to Saudi Arabia, get married and have a family." She said Qahtani "adamantly denies he planned to join the 9/11 attack. . . . He has no connections to extremists." Gutierrez said she believes Saudi Arabia has an effective rehabilitation program and Qahtani ought to be returned there.

When she came in as convening authority in 2007, Crawford said, "the prosecution was unprepared" to bring cases to trial. Even after four years working possible cases, "they were lacking in experience and judgment and leadership," she said. "A prosecutor has an ethical obligation to review all the evidence before making a charging decision. And they didn't have access to all the evidence, including medical records, interrogation logs, and they were making charging decisions without looking at everything."

She noted that prosecutors are required to determine whether any evidence possessed by the government could be exculpatory; if it is, they must turn it over to defense lawyers. It took more than a year, she said -- and the intervention of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England -- to ensure they had access to all the information, much of it classified.

Crawford said detainee interrogation practices are a blot on the reputation of the United States and its military judicial system. "There's an assumption out there that everybody was tortured. And everybody wasn't tortured. But unfortunately perception is reality." The system she oversees probably can't function now, she said. "Certainly in the public's mind, or politically speaking, and certainly in the international community" it may be forever tainted. "It may be too late."

She said Bush was right to create a system to try unlawful enemy combatants captured in the war on terrorism. The implementation, however, was flawed, she said. "I think he hurt his own effort. . . . I think someone should acknowledge that mistakes were made and that they hurt the effort and take responsibility for it."

"We learn as children it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission," Crawford said. "I think the buck stops in the Oval Office."

Researchers Julie Tate and Evelyn Duffy contributed to this report.