W's error: Too silent on Saddam's torture

NY Daily News ^ | November 07 2003 | A.M. Rosenthal

[knighthawk]

This too will pass - the evenings when you are sitting around a table talking about President Bush and want to lean across and slap the face of the person smirking about him. Actually, before administering that slap, I would first quote the British writer Barbara Amiel: "I've heard Americans gloat over their own casualties in Iraq, as if every death were a stab in the President's heart alone rather than in American soldiers, so profound is their hatred." Then I would slap.

I doubt that many Americans do delight in American casualties. But still, far too often, the repellent nastiness of hatred for the President rises from the table.

A major underlying reason for the gap between the President and part of the public is not that he withheld secret information about Iraq. It has been that the administration did not focus enough on the hideous nonsecret actions of Saddam Hussein's fascist regime - the steady, daily torture and execution of both Iraqis and prisoners from other nations.

That information was obtained for years by governments around the world, including our own. It was revealed only when, for the time being, it suited the various governments' interests.

To know and understand the torture and executions perpetrated for decades is absolutely essential to knowing and understanding the nature of the Saddam regime. Whether Saddam is dead or alive, that information lies at the heart of how he governed and how his people suffered. The devastating consequences are felt in that shattered country to this very day.

Now Saddam's survivors - and perhaps he himself - fight to create another tyranny whose horrors would be equally unspeakable and whose territorial ambitions would reach far past Iraq's present boundaries to stretch through the Middle East and beyond.

These obsessive ambitions were the bedrock of Saddam's sadism in his sickeningly lush palaces and dreadful torture chambers - and will be again if he and his survivors have breath.

Something is seriously missing in the Bush administration's efforts to deal with the reality of Iraqi torture. It is that the President and his top officials are not heard frequently enough talking about the screams of the countless Iraqis who were caught up in Saddam's machinery of torture.

If the President and his top aides do not find the time to become witnesses against that torture by detailing its horrors time and again, they will deprive the country of an essential moral and political dimension in the war to stamp out the remnants of Saddam's fascism.

Many - perhaps most - Americans may not even be aware of what went on in the Iraqi torture chambers. Rarely has the foreign press reported it in detail. For a shameful period, CNN barred information about torture in Iraq from being carried by the network.

But whether Saddam is alive or in hell, we Westerners would be fools not to recognize the reality that torture was the basis of his government.

If summary street executions and eyes torn out of heads do not move us, we should at least realize that the use of torture terrifies a people and allows a government to give orders as it pleases.

In Iraq, those orders included directives to scientists for intense work on nuclear weapons - and will again if Saddam's fascism is not wiped out.

What surprises and depresses me is that this administration, like its predecessors, has not kept the danger flag flying. Occasionally, major American officials say something about how torture is evil. But I do not know how many speeches the really important officials - the President and secretary of state, say - have made on the subject.

Some years ago, Congress set up a human rights watch, and others were created privately. But you do not get the impression that this administration - any more than its predecessors - has thrown its full muscle into fighting the use of torture in the world. The continuing use of torture by Saddam's guerrillas in Iraq to intimidate the population into silence challenges American moral authority.

If members of a democracy do not take every action possible against rule by torture, they share the guilt. The most effective place to begin the fight is the Oval Office.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[SuziQ]

It has been that the administration did not focus enough on the hideous nonsecret actions of Saddam Hussein's fascist regime - the steady, daily torture and execution of both Iraqis and prisoners from other nations.

HELLO? Is anybody home in Abe Rosenthal's brain? Did he even listen to President Bush's State of the Union address in January? Did he listen to any of his speeches in the run up to war? Not only did Pres. Bush speak about it, he put it on par with the desire to find and destroy the weapons of mass desruction that the whole world knew Sadaam had, as a reason for going to war!

[hoosiermama]

SOmeone somewhere is going to produce a movie, vidoe presentation on these horrible atrocities. It sould be played with a tag by "W". "I stand by my decision"

Nothing else needs to be said.

[NutCrackerBoy]

A major underlying reason for the gap between the President and part of the public is ... that the administration did not focus enough on the ... steady, daily torture and execution of both Iraqis and prisoners from other nations.

W said it, they just tuned him out.

[Brett66]

Yep, those that don't hate him listen. Those that hate him, ignore him. Very unfortunate, because the torture and brutalization of Iraqis was real and it's not just another partisan viewpoint.

[Sabertooth]

A major underlying reason for the gap between the President and part of the public is not that he withheld secret information about Iraq. It has been that the administration did not focus enough on the hideous nonsecret actions of Saddam Hussein's fascist regime - the steady, daily torture and execution of both Iraqis and prisoners from other nations.

< -snip- >

Something is seriously missing in the Bush administration's efforts to deal with the reality of Iraqi torture. It is that the President and his top officials are not heard frequently enough talking about the screams of the countless Iraqis who were caught up in Saddam's machinery of torture.

If the President and his top aides do not find the time to become witnesses against that torture by detailing its horrors time and again, they will deprive the country of an essential moral and political dimension in the war to stamp out the remnants of Saddam's fascism.

Absolutely correct. The sadism of Saddam's tyranny ought to be thrown in the face of those forever chattering "where are the WMDs already?"

[rintense]

Exactly! Bush has spoken several times about the rape camps, torture chambers, etc. Hell, how much detail do these idiots want!

[Southack]

President Bush has mentioned the torture on several occassions.

Moreover, I see relatively little value in further pandering to the ridiculous "where are the WMD's" crowd simply because they are professional, permanent malcontents. They will either deny evidence of WMD's if given to them, or else they will effortlessly segue to yet another entirely different criticism.

Their goal is to bring down Bush, after all, and their method is perpetual criticism of *everything*.

What we must do is to stay on target, on message, and continue being the adults at the world playground of children states.

[hoosierpearl]

How can it be W's error, when the media often doesn't broadcast his speeches? He has given several speeches and mentioned the torture as several freepers have pointed out. The media doesn't pick up on his comments and talk about it. That isn't his fault, it is the fault of the PC media who are biased and seem out to get him. He talked about world slavery in the speech at the UN and no one picked up on that. I consider that an important issue, but the UN is silent on slavery in Muslim countries, the press is silent on the issue. This isn't W's fault.

[Sabertooth]

Moreover, I see relatively little value in further pandering to the ridiculous "where are the WMD's" crowd simply because they are professional, permanent malcontents.

It's pandering when you appease your opponents, not when you trump their argument.

What we must do is to stay on target, on message, and continue being the adults at the world playground of children states.

The message is that we were in Iraq for a lot more reasons than WMDs. We're off it now, giving the Left what little opening they have to carp about the WoT.

The entire adults/children/malcontents model is specious. There are a lot of ill-informed voters who make their decisions based on soundbites, and there always will be. They are the ones who need to be informed about Saddam's torture state. We need the embeds on the ground in Iraq now, bringing back the vivid video evidence and the inescapable comparisions with Nazism.

The common understanding should be "opposing the war = favoring torture."

Then let the Left and the media chatter to themselves in the corner.

[dirtboy]

HELLO? Is anybody home in Abe Rosenthal's brain?

Abe's full of it here. His former employer, the NY Times, spent several decades covering up Stalin's mass murder and torture of millions. The vast majority of the left only cares about torture when they can use it as a smear against Republican administrations.

[Southack]

"We're off it now, giving the Left what little opening they have to carp about the WoT."

The only possible way that such carping can work for the Left is if Iraq turns into a daily body-count morass for months on end (in which case, yes, we would need to reinforce the message that opposing the War equals supporting totalitarian torture).

But frankly, I don't see it happening. Oh sure, a few fainthearts are going to extrapolate from a couple of copter shootdowns that this is Vietnam Part Deux, but the insurgency on the ground in Iraq is pathetic and weak, overall. They can snipe in a few areas. They can setup IED's on our well-traveled routes (which even then opens them up to our counter-ambushes). They can loft up a few mortar rounds and fire off some RPG's, and they can run the occassional suicide bomber (sometimes in cars). They've got a few hundred shoulder-fired AA missiles, most of which aren't effective on any but our most vulnerable aircraft.

They can't mass. They have no supply routes. They don't control the currency. They can't even convince their own population to participate in even a regional, much less a national work strike. They can't stop traffic in either the cities or remote rural areas. More importantly, they have no overt national sponsor. Their old currency is worthless, replaced by all new bills, and their existing stocks of ammo aren't infinite...thus their ability to continue any meaningful resistence is dubious.

To put this in context, Israel is losing more soldiers and civilians each week on its home turf than we are losing American soldiers over in Iraq.

Look at Afghanistan. We're doing so well there (no "Arab rage" no "angry street") that the Left will hardly breath a word about it.

So to me, Iraq is just a matter of time. The resistence there is considerably less than what we faced in occupying Germany after WW2 was won, and the carping in the press is doomed to little more than short-term impact.