Senate agreement paves way for torture, kangaroo courts

On Sept. 21, Republican senators John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham announced they had reached a compromise agreement with the White House over legal language governing the interrogation and trial of “terror” suspects. The compromise confirms that the entire debate has functioned as a tactic designed to eviscerate the Geneva Conventions, legalize torture and convene kangaroo courts.

The Bush administration has strongly resisted trying prisoners in standard military courts-martial. These courts are

themselves highly undemocratic. The juries consist of military officers selected by the high command. This means that the prosecution itself selects the jury and exercises command authority over it.

The administration nonetheless resisted this option in the face of a ban on testimony obtained through torture, and a requirement that the defendant be allowed to challenge evidence against him.

The so-called compromise agreement is nothing of the sort. It gives the administration the legal authority to act outside the most basic norms of international and U.S. law with absolute impunity.

A capitalist legal charade

The agreement explicitly allows breaches of the Geneva Convention, prohibiting only “grave breaches.” Grave breaches are defined in general terms such as torture, rape, biological experiments and cruel and inhuman treatment. The Bush administration already denies such violations, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The agreement then grants the President the final authority to interpret “the meaning and application” of the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, it explicitly bars detainees the right to protest violations of the Geneva Conventions in court.

The implications of these aspects of the agreement are obvious. Torture will continue, even broaden, under complete and open legal sanction. The Geneva Conventions are empty, feeble legal artifacts. For prisoners of the United States, they provide no meaningful protections whatsoever.

Additionally, the agreement allows the introduction of hearsay evidence. It also allows the use of evidence gathered by methods it defines as “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” as long as the torture took place prior to a 2005 “ban” on these methods.

Finally, the agreement modified the rules of evidence found in standard courts-martial. In such proceedings, the

Republican senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner announce the torture deal, Sept. 21.

accused are allowed to view and challenge the evidence against them as an elemental right of legal process. The new agreement allows the prosecution to deny such information throughout the preliminary “findings” process, where defense strategies are created.

The prosecution is now sanctioned to withhold such evidence from the defense, even after the evidence has been introduced in court. The prosecution instead will be allowed to present concise “summaries” of the evidence against the accused. This is pure sophism, a legal charade. In practice, prisoners will be denied meaningful access to the evidence against them from start to finish of their trials.

The Democratic Party leadership has made clear that it will not oppose any of the measures sought by the administration and endorsed by congressional Republicans. Democratic senate minority leader Harry Reid responded to the agreement by saying, “Five years after September 11, it is time to make the tough and smart decisions to give the American people the real security they deserve.”

Taken as a whole, the agreement reached between Senate Republicans and the Bush administration is ominous and historic.

The two capitalist parties and three branches of government in power have worked in coordination to give legal sanction for the use of barbaric methods associated with military and fascist dictatorships. They have worked in concert to flaunt the Geneva Conventions with breathtaking arrogance in the clear light of day.