Presidents' Body Counts by Al Carroll

Author:Al Carroll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: presidents, wars, civil war, genocide, terrorism, american indians, native americans, world wars, korean war, vietnam war, iraq war, afghanistan, mexico, spanish american war, Philippines, cold war, cambodia, holocaust, bangladesh, rwanda, obama, washington, lincoln, roosevelt, truman, jefferson, haiti, slavery, trail of tears, andrew jackson, clinton
Publisher: Al Carroll
Published: 2016-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

GW Bush and Torture Deaths

What: Torture of prisoners, most of them falsely accused of terrorism, by US military, government agents, or private contractors in prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Naval Base, or in prisons in third party countries at US government request or supervision.

The Body Count: At least 108 deaths in custody. How many were deliberate murders, manslaughter, depraved indifference, or accidents is far from clear.

About 92% of prisoners at Guantanamo were falsely imprisoned. Only 8% were Al Qaeda or Taliban. Most were local residents or refugees. Some were aid workers or missionaries. Five were British citizens. Over 600 out of 779 prisoners have been released, but also refused entry to their home countries or the US. Instead, sixteen nations have taken them in as political refugees.

Who Also Gets the Blame:

Vice President Dick Cheney amassed the most power and influence of any Vice President in US history, using his reach mostly in intelligence. Cheney defends torture or “enhanced interrogation” to this day and maintains that it led to saving lives and prevented terrorist attacks. This is a lie. In fact, torture led to lives lost. Suspects often gave inaccurate information, telling their abusers whatever they could think of to stop the torture, leading to resources diverted to stopping attacks that were never going to happen.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the torture policy, specifically signing off on practices such as water boarding.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez led the formulation of the legal defense of torture.

Solicitor John Yoo specifically crafted the government memos legally defending torture.

CIA interrogators carried out some interrogations, but more often supervised or directed the kidnapping of suspects to be tortured in third party countries, usually dictatorships with no laws against torture.

US officers and enlisted at Baghram and Guantanamo guarded the prisoners and carried out the better known abuses such as sexual humiliation. Most of those punished were low ranking enlisted who clumsily took photographic evidence of their crimes.

Unknown private contractors, likely former military intelligence or CIA, carried out most of the interrogations at US bases. One of the side effects of conservative control of these wars was that both torture and intelligence gathering were privatized. Some intelligence officers volunteered for Iraq or Afghanistan knowing that after a short period they could resign and then be hired by private firms to do the same work for several times the pay.

A US public with a large segment that supports torture made it easier to be carried out and more difficult for war criminals to be tried.

Fox News, talk radio, and Hollywood productions such as the television show 24 that endorsed torture, including films such as Iron Man that show torture as only done by the enemy, played a large role in the US public's acceptance of torture as necessary, even patriotic.

For most of US history, the military had a relatively good record of opposing torture as inhumane, unworthy of a soldier, and inefficient since it tends to produce false information. In most wars, even when the enemy was hated, US soldiers rarely tortured the other side.

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