Just Following Orders

War on Terror

I don’t know, but I remember watching some of the Trials held after World War II, on some history channel, where captured Nazi’s from the Prison Camps kept saying they ‘were just following orders‘ as their defence for the inhuman treatment of prisoners in their care. Then there was the whole Japanese trials for their treatment of Allied Prisoners, even though Japan was NOT a signatory of the Geneva Convention, in regards to treatment of captured combatants.

Now memo’s released by the ACLU, regarding the torture of prisoners held by America, and all the testimony to date, gives me that same eerie feeling I had, listening to the various defendants protesting their innocence for how they acted. It is so familiar, and worse, at how well they all kept records of their actions, by the numbers, for cover.

A third memo instructs interrogators to keep records of sessions in which “enhanced interrogation techniques” are used. The memo is signed by then-CIA director George Tenet and dated January 28, 2003. (source - CNN News)

It puzzled me then, even as a kid, and more so now, as an adult, at how civilized people can be so willing to accept torture as being anything but torture. I mean come on, waterboarding is not ‘enhanced interrogation tactics‘ as Bush and Co. claim, IT IS TORTURE.

We pass laws, against people abusing animals and yet we allow our Government to abuse humans? Locking a dog up in a car, without water and food is considered animal abuse, but we can shuffle prisoners every three hours, for weeks at a time, and that is just ‘enhanced interrogation tactics‘ according to the Bush Administration?

What is wrong with people?

The memo’s show that it is important to keep records, to show that their intent is not to harm those being interrogated. In short, to try and show that their ‘intent’ was benign, while dunking a person in water, letting their lungs fill with fluid, to make them believe they are drowning.  Like how can anyone claim their intent wasn’t to harm them, at least mentally?

“Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture,” Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, wrote in the memo. (source - CNN News)

This is no different than what the Nazi defendants said, they didn’t INTEND to harm anyone, they were simply following orders, but back then, it didn’t wash, and how does anyone believe it will wash today? If you are going to use methods that are clearly defined as wrong, by the International Conventions, of which you are a signatory of, how can you even pretend to claim your intent wasn’t to cause harm?

I don’t give a flying fig for what some upper idiot might say. We are supposed to be humans, who have a sense of what is wrong, what is right. How does any of those who have CARRIED OUT THEIR ORDERS claim to be okay with what they have done?

That is truly the troubling thing of all this torture debate. How can ordinary people do the bidding of someone, when they know it is morally, legally, and ethically wrong? How can ANY elected official not know that? Yet George Bush and others not only have done it, but they DEFEND IT.

Ian @ July 25, 2008