We Don't Condone Torture, We Just Do It

The United States said Nov. 12 it did not condone torture under any circumstances, but acknowledged to a UN anti-torture watchdog it had "crossed the line" following the September 11 attacks.

"The US is proud of its record as a leader in respecting, promoting and defending human rights and the rule of law, both at home and around the world," acting US legal advisor Mary McLeod told the 10-member UN Committee on Torture.

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And we’re proud of it.

"But in the wake of 9/11 attacks, we regrettably did not always live up to our own values," she said.

"We crossed the line and we take responsibility for that," she said, quoting US President Barack Obama.

We”take responsibility” in the same way that every politician for the last two decades has taken responsibility for what they’ve done when they get caught. They say the words.

"We recognise that no nation is perfect, ours included," Keith Harper, US ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, told the committee.

Prefaced with a reminder that “nobody’s perfect.” Pathetic.

The US delegation was asked to explain why the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba remains open, why many detainees remain there without charge and when Washington plans to shut it down.

The committee members also questioned the treatment of prisoners there, and lack of redress for victims of the widely publicised abuses by US troops at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in the early 2000s.

Beyond the "war on terror" legacy, the committee members raised issues of abuses in US prisons, rape in prisons, the broad use of drawn-out solitary confinement, and long years on death row.

And they asked how Washington could justify its widespread detention of non-violent, non-criminal illegal immigrants, including minors.

And they slammed police brutality that appears to disproportionately affect minorities

They just don’t understand.  (We'll keep looking for the US answers to all those UN questions.  Reportedly, today the US will give them.  Also, McClatchy has a more comprehensive article on what has been asked and responses to date.)

The committee is set to publish its conclusions on November 28.

And the we can all go back to what we were doing.

“There should be no doubt,” McLeod concluded, “the United States affirms that torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment are prohibited at all times in all places, and we remain resolute in our adherence to these prohibitions.”

We shall see. But of course, we can’t control other countries, say where we outsource prisoners.

National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement Wednesday that the U.S. delegation appearing before the committee in Geneva had also clarified the U.S. view that the convention continues to apply when a state is engaged in armed conflict.

[...]

Today, [U.S. assistant secretary Tom Malinowski ] said, “U.S. national security agencies now arguably have more explicit safeguards against torture and cruelty than those of any other country on earth. They can and should be a model for others.”

[...]

Asked whether that meant compensation or apologies would be offered to people who had been held without charge for years, or who had perhaps been waterboarded, [State Department spokeswoman Jen] Psaki said [at a briefing in Washington], “I don’t believe that was a part of the discussion, no.”