Torture: America’s black eye

The Senate Intelligence Committee report released earlier this week, confirms what many have known for years: the CIA tortured prisoners during the early years of the “war on terror.” It happened during the Bush administration’s tenure, with the approval of that administration and some in Congress. They were dead wrong. It ended when President Barack Obama took office. But the damage was already done. America has a self-inflicted black eye.

The report really is a stunner. What were they thinking? We’re supposed to be the good guys. Only the bad guys kidnap, torture and imprison people for years without trial or conviction. Right?

Well, for 12 years or more, wrong. We were the bad guys. We kidnapped people, imprisoned them — sometimes to secret prison scattered across the globe — without due process, trial or conviction for some for up to 12 years. We tortured them by water-boarding, sleep deprivation, being stuffed into boxes naked, or worse still, forced rectal feeding. That last one makes me sick to my stomach.

Some of these people were not saints, but among those we tortured were a significant number of people who were determined to be innocent of the allegations that prompted our use of torture. Some of these people were terrorists, according to the U.S. government and intelligence reports gathered from around the world. Not nice guys to be sure. Some were believed to be the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks. And therein lies the reason some have tried to justify for this mess.

The terrorist acts of 9/11 were a declaration of war. This September day was one of the blackest in U.S., matched only by the attacks of Dec. 7 1941. The loss of life was more than 3,000 in New York City, Washington, D.C,. and an open field in Pennsylvania. The implements of destruction were four aircraft hijacked by terrorists bent on destruction. Two slammed into the Twin Towers, the third into the Pentagon. The fourth failed to strike its intended target, thwarted by the bravery of the plane’s hostage passengers. These heroes forced it down at full speed into that field far away from cities and innocents on the ground. That day traumatized the entire nation and shocked the world.

And in our collective zeal to get the bad guys and avenge our fallen we lost something along the way. Forgotten were the principles of our Constitution, due process, justice, the Geneva Convention and Hague Accords. Instead of being treated as criminals, or prisoners of war, those we captured and held in U.S. custody were given a new status: “Enemy Combatant.” They had no rights as criminals or protections of due process in the justice system. They had no rights as prisoners of war under the international agreements we as a nation signed decades ago for the ethical, humane treatment of POWs. They had no rights whatsoever.

This opened up a huge, nasty can of worms. In a dance of legal- beagle gymnastics of Olympic proportions the Central Intelligence Agency got the OK from our government to use torture techniques. Some took place in secret prisons. Some would end up imprisoned in infamous places like Guantanamo Bay after undergoing repeated acts of torture at the hands of CIA interrogators for years. These people had no due process, no trial, no conviction and no appeal.

Nothing justifies torture. Nothing. Nothing justifies imprisonment without trial. Not even the loss of more than 3,000 lives on 9/11. It won’t bring these souls back. And we’ve tarnished our national “soul,” and soiled our good name in the process.

I want these twisted people captured, tried, convicted and either put away for the rest of their misbegotten lives or handed the death penalty and put on death row. I want to see groups like al-Qaida and ISIS broken up and rendered toothless. That is, if they were treated as criminals. As POWs they should held in POW camps until the end of hostilities and then released to their home countries. Or tried for war crimes. These were the paths we should have taken in regard to the captured terrorists in our custody.

But the risks were considered too great and so a darker path was taken. It was one we should never have set foot on.

Now we as a nation have to face the truth of the actions taken. The first big step is getting out in the open to the nation and the entire world. That report will shake a lot of nerves and anger more than a few. Indeed, it has already. Some them our allies and some our enemies, both pointing fingers at the U.S. in accusation, in anger and in stunned disbelief.

As a nation of laws that prides itself on being the good guys, we are better than this. We must admit we sank to the level of the bad guys and make certain that our government never uses torture in our name again.

The report reveals much. It also raises some larger questions about those who devised and carried out the torture and those who approved its use and still defend it today. And that goes right up to the top — the Bush White House. So what happens now?

Under international law, these acts are war crimes. But prosecuting those responsible will be easier said than done.

The release of this report raises some very difficult questions with even more difficult answers. This is only the beginning. It could get very, very ugly before it is over.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.