President George Bush’s acknowledgment of the CIA’s secret detention centers to interrogate international terror suspects has surprised no one. They were known to exist. Indeed, the Council of Europe has tried to investigate these Abu Ghraibs in Europe and the ways in which the CIA moved the prisoners to and from them. Much more interesting is the timing of the admission. There is no obvious political pressure for him to tell the truth. Although starting a nationwide campaign in support of Republicans in November’s mid-term elections, this was not an issue that had put these candidates on a back foot.
However, after the June Supreme Court ruling that the military tribunals hearing cases against Guantanamo Bay suspects were illegal, the administration asked Congress to change the law to permit them. Therefore, the subtext in Bush’s admission of something we already knew on Wednesday at an election rally may have been that only Republicans can be trusted to be as tough on terrorism as their president. This was also clearly an attempt to keep the voters’ minds away from the administration’s failing policies, especially regarding Iraq.
Interestingly, Bush confessed that if suspects refused to talk, they were made to do so. He refused to say more on the grounds that if the technique were known, terrorists would be able to resist it. But he insisted that although the process was tough, it was not torture and was in no way illegal. Bush clearly expects the world to accept his word on this, as he did when he told the world that Saddam was an “imminent threat” poised to attack the US with nuclear or biological weapons of mass destruction.
His timing may have had much to do with the CIA deciding that it could get no more out of its last 14 secret prisoners, now all transferred to Guantanamo. These include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11 and Al-Qaeda’s No. 3 before his capture in Pakistan in 2003; Ramzi Binalshibh, allegedly another leading 9/11 planner; Abu Zubaydah, until arrested in Pakistan in 2002 the supposed linkman between Osama Bin Laden and many Al-Qaeda cells; and Hambali, suspected of being a top leader in Jemaah Islamiah, also wanted by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines in connection with bombing attacks.
The Bush administration has said when Congress legalizes military tribunals, these men will be among the first to go on trial early next year. Bush also revealed Wednesday that from now on Guantanamo detainees would be subject to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. The Americans have therefore in one turn of phrase abandoned their fiercely held contention that because the detainees were “illegal combatants,” they could not and should not be subject to the convention. Such a volte-face is easy for a president for whom no truth, however glaring, can exist until it is selectively recognized. Unfortunately for Bush, his many critics, now including Euro MPs furious at his revelations, work in the real world where truth isn’t so often applied selectively.
