Ja, det skal uforbederligt venstreorienterede eller i hvert fald krigskritiske stemmer jo sige. Er det Michael Moore, der nu igen har været ved at blamere sig?
Nej, denne gang kommer kritikken fra den amerikanske regerings ledende statsadvokat på Guantanamo-lejren med ansvar for at retsforfølge de mistænkte i Bushs “krig mod terror”. Den nu pensionerede oberst Morris Davis lægger ikke fingrene imellem, når han beskriver sin egen tidligere arbejdsplads:
Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush’s executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.
Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as “torture” – were in breach of the US’s own statutes on torture, and added: “If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted.”
The US military, he said, had been ordered to use unlawful methods of interrogation by “civilian politicians, and to do so against our will and judgment”.
Davis was speaking at a conference on human rights law at Bard College in New York state. After resigning from the armed forces, in a dramatic defection to the other side of the raging debate over conditions at the camp, he became executive director of, and counsel to, the Crimes of War project based in Washington DC. The speech was to launch the project’s 10th anniversary campaign and to protest against the existence of the camp and the torture there and at so-called “black sites” run by US intelligence around the world.
“No court has jurisdiction over Guantánamo,” said Davis. “Some senior civilian Bush adminstration officials chose Guantánamo to interrogate detainees because they thought it’s a law-free zone where we can unlawfully… handle a very small number of cases. We have turned our backs on the law and created what we believed was a place outside the law’s reach.” He added that America was “great at preaching to others, but not so good at practising what we preach. There is a point when enough is enough, and you have to look at yourself in the mirror. Torture has no place in American courts.”
Link: Former US chief prosecutor condemns torture in Guantanamo