There’s a bit of silver lining in the torture controversy I must mention. A Navy lawyer named Alberto Mora, a Cuban-American, won the Profile in Courage Award for standing up to Rumsfeld and putting a stop to “aggressive interrogations”, i.e., torture, at Guantanamo Bay when this stuff first came up early in the Bush first administration. There was also a Lt. Col. in the Air Force who was commandant of the trainers who used these techniques to train pilots to resist torture by our enemies who also advised against use of these methods and plainly said why: it’s illegal torture and it doesn’t work. Somewhere in the bowels of the FBI is an interrogation team leader who also stood up at Gitmo and withdrew his crew rather than have any part of the torture of detainees. Similarly, the Navy Criminal Interrogation Task Force team at Gitmo was ordered to “stand clear” on request from the CITF force on site. Both the FBI team leader and CITF commander went all the way to Gitmo’s commanding general to object and when the first Gitmo commandant stopped it upon the request of these trained interrogators, Rumsfeld changed commandants and the torture proceeded. Let’s not forget the State Dept. counsel, Zelikow, who sent a memo around to CIA, DOD and the White House telling everyone the OLC memos were full of shit and did not correctly state the law and history of these techniques. Not only does this mean that there are good Americans to be celebrated for their heroism, it also means that everyone who knew what was being ordered knew that it was torture because they had been bluntly told. There’s a special place in hell for Condi Rice, who gave the green light as NSC advisor.
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