Addington, Cheney and Torture
Andrew Sullivan | November 4 2005
ADDINGTON, CHENEY AND TORTURE: Dick Cheney's new Scooter
Libby, David Addington, is, as one would expect, a big believer in the military's
right to abuse detainees. In the aftermath of
the abuse scandals, many in the Pentagon want the U.S. to return to the
fold of civilized countries, and its own history, and stop the policy. The
same goes for many, many people in the CIA. When honorable soldiers and
CIA officials see their own agencies being accurately accused of activities
that shock the conscience, they are not happy. Nor are critical allies of
the U.S. in the war on terror. But all these voices have been railroaded
by the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal. They aren't going to back down now:
A central player in the fight over the directive is
David S. Addington, who was the vice president's counsel until he was named
on Monday to succeed I. Lewis Libby Jr. as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff.
According to several officials, Mr. Addington verbally assailed a Pentagon
aide who was called to brief him and Mr. Libby on the draft, objecting to
its use of language drawn from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
"He left bruised and bloody," one Defense Department official
said of the Pentagon aide, Matthew C. Waxman, Mr. Rumsfeld's chief adviser
on detainee issues. "He tried to champion Article 3, and Addington
just ate him for lunch."
Ah, yes. The Geneva Conventions. Remember them? To
put it in their allegedly "vague" language, Cheney's chief aide
believes that the U.S. should legally and as a matter of policy be free
to conduct interrogations that include "cruel treatment and torture,"
and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular murder of all kinds,
mutilation, humiliating and degrading treatment." It doesn't get much
clearer than that, does it?
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