The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
U.S. President George W. Bush stumbled into office as the Òaccidental presidentÓ after losing the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000 but winning the electoral college. Then Al Qaeda made him the Ò9/11 presidentÓ who fought terror. Now, as Bush prepares to bow out early next year, he is rebranding himself again as the Òtorture president.Ó At least, that is how critics such as Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch see it, now that Bush has damaged AmericaÕs image yet again by vetoing legislation to prevent the CIA from using ÒwaterboardingÓ and other Òcoercive interrogationÓ techniques. These include beatings and sexual abuse, mock executions, withholding of food and water, and menacing by dogs. The law would have forced the CIA to use only army-approved techniques. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi puts it, AmericaÕs global leadership depends Ònot only on our military might, but on our moral authority.Ó While the Bush administration argues that waterboarding and the like arenÕt Òtorture,Ó they are widely perceived as such. And the U.S. Army rightly argues such practices bring discredit on the U.S. and its troops, undermine domestic and foreign support, and place captured U.S. soldiers at greater risk. Yet Bush has hurt AmericaÕs image in other ways. The administration has reinterpreted the Geneva Conventions to deny legal protection to detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and CIA-run holding tanks. It hauled Canadian Omar Khadr and others before military tribunals where normal standards of justice do not apply. It despatched Canadian Maher Arar and others via Òextraordinary renditionÓ to torture in Syria and elsewhere. BushÕs veto of the no-torture law is consistent with his efforts to affirm and expand presidential power. As a troubled presidency draws to a bleak close, American voters will get the chance to weigh this and other issues of character. The likely Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, has backed BushÕs refusal to rein in the CIA, even though McCain Ð a former, tortured Vietnam prisoner of war Ð lobbied to put a stop to harsh army interrogations. Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both see roughing up detainees for what it is: an affront to American values. They rightly endorse a blanket ban.
