568 ChaPter^11
In addition to the president, Vice- President Cheney, Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld, John Yoo of the State Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and
author of the famed “torture memorandum,” which asserted that anything
short of organ failure or death was legal and acceptable, and Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales were also singled out for their criminal behavior by the
ICRC. In addition to violating numerous U.S. laws, the Red Cross report
delineated clear evidence of violations of U.S. treaties, most notably the
Geneva Convention [Gonzalez, the Attorney General, like a Nazi General,
Wilhelm Keitel, who had been found guilty of war crimes after World War II,
thought they were quaint and obsolete], and the Convention Against Torture.
Although the President had lied about these activities taken under the aus-
pices of the Patriot Act, and the administration grossly violated international
and human rights laws, the U.S. Congress facilitated the torture of detainees
when it passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Opposition by
Democrats in Congress remained purely rhetorical, as members did not even
attempt a filibuster for, as the junior senator from Illinois Barak Obama
explained at the time, “Soon, we will adjourn for the fall, and the campaigning
will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second attack ads and negative mail
pieces, and we will be criticized as caring more about the rights of terrorists
than the protection of Americans. And I know that the vote before us was
specifically designed and timed to add more fuel to that fire.” Afraid of being
accused of “coddling terrorists” America’s elected officials, with near unanim-
ity, went along with what they knew to be torture and criminal activity.
Despite all the evidence of the criminality on the part of the Bush admin-
istration activities, too many Americans choose to remain tied to the rhetoric
of an administration ostensibly trying to win the “war on terror.” In the days
immediately following 9/11, the American people wanted to know why the
terrorists had attacked the nation and the President then had a ready answer,
“Because we love freedom, that’s why. And they hate freedom.” In the follow-
ing months of his presidency, he would repeat this theme. Why did terrorists
attack the United States? “Because,” he said, “we love freedom that’s why. And
they hate freedom.” That was, of course far, very far from accurateThe Limits of Power
Iraq, despite the later claims of victory after the surge, remained a war that
was hard to defend, and declarations of success there remain as unproven as