OT - Bush's strategy of abusing terror suspects

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Human-Rights-Bush.html

January 18, 2006
Rights Group Says U.S. Has a Strategy of Torture
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:26 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration has a deliberate strategy of
abusing terror suspects during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said
Wednesday in its annual report on the treatment of people in more than
70 countries.

The human rights group based its conclusions mostly on statements by
senior administration officials in the past year, and said President
Bush's reassurances that the United States does not torture suspects
were deceptive and rang hollow.

''In 2005 it became disturbingly clear that the abuse of detainees had
become a deliberate, central part of the Bush administration's strategy
of interrogating terrorist suspects,'' the report said.

On a trip to Europe last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
told foreign leaders that cruel and degrading interrogation methods
were forbidden for all U.S. personnel at home and abroad. She provided
little detail, however, about which practices were banned and other
specifics.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday he had only seen
news accounts of the report, but he rejected its conclusions.

''It appears to be based more on a political agenda than facts,'' he
said. ''The United States does more than any country in the world to
advance freedom and promote human rights. ...The focus should be more
on those who are violating human rights and denying people their human
rights.''

In a separate report, the organization strongly criticized three
insurgent groups in Iraq -- al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sunna and the Islamic
Army -- for targeting civilians with car bombs and suicide bombers in
mosques, markets, bus stations.

However, the group said the abuses ''took place in the context of the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military occupation that
resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and sparked the
emergence of insurgent groups.''

Human Rights Watch has criticized the Bush administration's war against
terrorism before, registering concern that abuses in the name of
fighting terrorism were unjustified and counterproductive. In other
reports, the group has protested that the Bush administration's
promotion of democracy was applied narrowly and missed allies, such as
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, that were due criticism.

The latest report taking aim at the Bush administration said that the
president's repeated assurances that U.S. interrogators do not torture
prisoners studiously avoid mentioning that international law prohibits
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners.

The report said that Alberto Gonzales -- while still the nominee to
become attorney general -- claimed in Senate testimony in January 2005
the power to use cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as long as the
prisoner was a non-American held outside the United States.

''Other governments obviously subject detainees to such treatment or
worse, but they do so clandestinely,'' the report said. ''The Bush
administration is the only government in the world known to claim this
power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is
lawful.''

Last fall, Gonzales submitted documents to the Senate Judiciary
Committee saying ''it is the policy of the administration to abide by''
the relevant portion of the torture treaty overseas, ''even if such
compliance is not legally required.''

In December, Bush bowed to congressional and international pressure and
signed legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to forbid
harsh treatment of detainees. He did so after initially threatening to
veto such legislation, and after Vice President *** Cheney
unsuccessfully lobbied legislators to kill the measure or at least
exempt the Central Intelligence Agency.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in an
interview that he was concerned that, in a statement Bush issued when
signing the bill, the president suggested he retains ''commander in
chief authority'' to order abusive interrogations.

The report said that CIA Director Porter Goss last March justified an
age-old torture technique called water-boarding, in which the victim
believes he is about to drown. Last August, in Senate testimony,
Timothy Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel, would not rule
out mock executions, the report said.

Evidence shows that abusive interrogation was a conscious policy choice
by senior U.S. government officials and cannot be reduced to the
misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, the report said.

The report claimed abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at
detention centers elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and the U.S.
detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The report said Britain was threatening to send suspects to countries
likely to torture them. Both the United States and Britain are claiming
the practice, known as rendition, can be justified if the receiving
country promises not to abuse the suspects.

Canada, meanwhile, was criticized as trying to dilute a newly drafted
U.N. treaty to outlaw the practice of countries' detaining people
secretly and without acknowledgment.

Many countries, including Uzbekistan, Russia and China, use the ''war
on terrorism'' to attack political opponents as Islamic terrorists, the
report said.

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