| WRMEA Archives 2006-2010 - 2009 August |
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 2009, pages 63-64
Human Rights
Al Jazeera Debates Torture
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AL-JAZEERA English held a televised town hall debate headlined: “Truth, Accountability and the Bush Administration’s Legacy of Torture,” on May 29, at the Newseum in Washington, DC. The debate on torture was moderated by Josh Rushing, the former U.S. Marine press officer for U.S. Central Command during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Rushing became famous for his appearance in the documentary “Control Room,” and now co-hosts, with Avi Lewison, an Al-Jazeera show called “Fault lines.”
Straight-talking Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA); former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris; Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; and human rights attorney and activist Jumana Musa put forth sometimes clashing, always informative viewpoints. Some panelists, like Wilkerson and Moran, favored a truth commission on torture policies during the Bush administration, like the 9/11 commission, in order to hold policymakers accountable for their actions. Wilkerson regretfully added that it may be too late—Vice President Dick Cheney should have been impeached while he was still in office.
Moran warned that we could end up punishing lower level criminals—“the Private Lindy Englands.” The congressman added, “The people I want to hold accountable are the lawyers who redefined the existing law...and the policymakers who sought out how to go about torturing people.” When asked to name names, he suggested Cheney and Jay Bybee, who is now a federal court judge. Wilkerson added that he’d like to see lawyers such as Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Yoo, Bybee and former Department of Defense General Counsel William Haynes disbarred for failing the rule of law. “They said ‘tell me what you want to do and I’ll make it legal,’” Wilkerson noted.
Scheuer, who was chief of the Bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999, said that Moran was “talking about nonsense...No laws have been broken. Everything that was done was done with the approval of the Department of Justice and Congress.”
His fellow panelists added Scheuer to the list of people who should be investigated for providing legal cover for Bush’s torture policies.
We’d better stop talking about human rights in the Middle East, Jumana Musa advised—we look like hypocrites if America won’t investigate the crimes committed in this so-called war on terror.
As a member of the studio audience during the debate, this reporter couldn’t help wishing that larger American audiences could watch Al-Jazeera programs like this. Unfortunately, unless you have a Dish satellite system or can watch Al-Jazeera on the Internet it’s impossible. Major cable networks still refuse to carry Al-Jazeera. To watch this debate on YouTube go to:<http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2009/05/20095298047611852.html>.
—Delinda C. Hanley
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