The Washington Post and War Crimes

By Scott Horton

Today the Washington Post runs an editorial taking a well-justified swipe at Don Imus.

He called noted African American journalist Gwen Ifill a “cleaning lady.” He called a columnist at the New York Times a “quota hire.” He's labeled Vice President Cheney a “war criminal.”

Whoa. The first two are racially charged slurs. The third is a political characterization, which, moreover, is right on target. Not just that. Let’s remember which editorial page was the first to raise the charge of “war crimes?” The answer is: the Washington Post. On December 23, 2004, the paper published one of the most compelling editorials that has ever appeared in its pages. It had the simple caption: “War Crimes.”

[T]he documents show that the abuse of prisoners was already occurring at Guantanamo in 2002 and continued in Iraq even after the outcry over the Abu Ghraib photographs. FBI agents reported in internal e-mails and memos about systematic abuses by military interrogators at the base in Cuba, including beatings, chokings, prolonged sleep deprivation and humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag. “On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water,” an unidentified FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. “Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.” Two defense intelligence officials reported seeing prisoners severely beaten in Baghdad by members of a special operations unit, Task Force 6-26, in June. When they protested they were threatened and pictures they took were confiscated.

. . .

[T]he documents also confirm that interrogators at Guantanamo believed they were following orders from Mr. Rumsfeld. One FBI agent reported on May 10 about a conversation he had with Guantanamo's commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who defended the use of interrogation techniques the FBI regarded as illegal on the grounds that the military “has their marching orders from the Sec Def.” Gen. Miller has testified under oath that dogs were never used to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, as authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld in December 2002; the FBI papers show otherwise.

. . .

The record of the past few months suggests that the administration will neither hold any senior official accountable nor change the policies that have produced this shameful record. Congress, too, has abdicated its responsibility under its Republican leadership: It has been nearly four months since the last hearing on prisoner abuse. Perhaps intervention by the courts will eventually stem the violations of human rights that appear to be ongoing in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. For now the appalling truth is that there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign prisoners by this American government.

Since this editorial appeared, the evidentiary trail has led straight to Vice President Richard Cheney as the author of the administration’s torture policy. Indeed, Cheney openly advocated the need for torture before the Republican Senate Caucus in his efforts to block the McCain Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and in his advocacy of the initial version of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This is a matter of the utmost gravity to the nation. For the Washington Post to write dismissively of the accountability of the vice president in an editorial talking about the judgmental errors of a radio talk show host shows a lapse of judgment just as great as they one they attack. Indeed, it leaves one wondering whether the Post editors are having a senior moment.