No Torture, No Exceptions

Washington Monthly | March 2008

orture—the word evokes images of dark, damp dungeons and outlandish punishments and pain. But torture can take many forms, and it lives today. Incredibly, Americans are part of it. And we must put a stop to it.

Torture is illegal, ineffective, and morally wrong. The United States has signed numerous treaties condemning torture and abjuring its practice. Those treaties are the law of the land. And, yes, waterboarding is torture: in the past, we convicted and punished foreign nationals for torture by waterboarding. There are no legal loopholes permitting torture in "exceptional cases." After all, those were the same excuses used by the torturers we once condemned.

The honor of the American man-at-arms is one of our most potent weapons. It is enshrined in the Geneva Conventions. It encourages our enemies to surrender to us on the battlefield. It protects any of our own soldiers who may have been captured. It encourages noncombatants and civilians to trust us and cooperate willingly. And it does not countenance the abuse of captives in our care.

May 16, 2007 We encourage you to listen to the speech.

General Wesley Clark - Legitimacy: First Task for American Security

Hosted by: Center for Politics and Foreign Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University

May 16, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC and Melange

(Introduction by Robert Guttman, Director of the Center for Politics and Foreign Relations (JHU- SAIS)

Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here. Bob, thanks for the kind introduction. As I look around, I see a lot of friends and a lot of people who were with me at various times in my military activities, people I- whose paths I've crossed in business life and people that- who- that I've worked with in politics. I'm very proud of the fact that the 70,000 people on the internet convinced me and my family that I should run for President in 2003, and I'm very glad that I did that. It was a great experience, and, and I meant every word of the speeches I gave on the campaign. And as Bob said, I still have a political action committee. I have a website, and you can come and see those positions if you go to my website. It's called securingamerica.com .

But today I'm not here for that purpose. Today I'm here on a very serious and sober topic. I want to talk about restoring legitimacy as the first order of business for a new American strategy.

I was in Europe when, a few days ago, Vice President Cheney visited the Gulf. He traveled around. He reminded Iran and others in the Gulf that we have two aircraft carrier battle groups out there. Two! It was a stark reminder of military power. There's no other nation that has two aircraft carrier battle groups. It's about sea control - more than a hundred strike aircraft, dozens and dozens of cruise missiles, hundreds of precision GPS-guided bombs, 500,000 2000 pounds, coupled with overhead imagery and stealth land-based aircraft and conventionally armed ballistic missiles perhaps launched from the United States itself. I hope the leaders in Iran understood that their air defenses, their military, their military supporting infrastructure, their civilian infrastructure that supports the military, their scientific military related activities - all of that is at risk.

This is serious military power potential. I know about it because I've used it. As NATO Commander, we used every one of those assets, except for the US-based missiles, against Serbia in 1999, and I'm well aware of what they can do. But I'm also aware of their limitations, as is the rest of the world today.

Clark Speaks Out on New Torture Rules

October 3, 2006
By James Ricci | Times Staff Writer | Los Angeles Times

In an address at UCLA, the retired general lambastes the Bush administration for challenging the Geneva Convention.

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, speaking to UCLA faculty and students Monday, said that observing the Geneva Convention is crucial to America's interests and its ability to mobilize other countries for collective efforts.

Clark — who was supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization under President Clinton and led a coalition of nearly a score of countries to successfully end Serbian oppression of Kosovo's Albanians in 1999 — said the Bush administration's insistence on more leeway in applying Geneva Convention standards to the interrogation of terrorism detainees runs counter to America's history of observing international law.

"We were anti-colonial," he said. "We did not support the French re-conquest of Indochina. We helped force the Dutch out of the East Indies. We did not support the invasion of Suez by Britain and France in 1956. We were a nation that operated selflessly. People saw us as different because we followed international law."

Making his debut as a senior fellow at the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations at the university's International Institute, Clark called law "the ultimate human construct — more important than bridges, more important than [micro]chips…. Law is sacred in the American system."

Reprinted with permission.

"Hardball with Chris Matthews" transcript
MSNBC
January 4, 2005

Guest: C. Boyden Gray, Ralph Neas, Tony Blankley, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Frank Gaffney, Wesley Clark

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Tsunami politics. The Bush administration is spending millions of tax dollars and a pair of big American faces to fuel the effort in Southern Asia. Will this turned-on campaign jack up our image in Islamic countries? We‘ll talk to former presidential candidate General Wesley Clark.

Plus, Thursday‘s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to consider President Bush‘s nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general promises to be punishing, as his critics jab at his role in setting U.S. policy on torture.

Let‘s play HARDBALL.

Good evening. I‘m Chris Matthews.