Death Squads, American Style

The term 'death squad' entered the lexicon back in the 1980s when it was used to refer to gangs of off-duty military personnel who were hired by right-wing military dictatorships in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador to kidnap and murder people they suspected of sympathizing with the Marxist guerrillas who were fighting the army in the mountains.

In a story published in the New York Times this week it has been revealed that in 2004 the CIA hired the private military contractor Blackwater to organize a program to locate and assassinate suspected Al Qaeda operatives. The program was top secret and Vice President Cheney allegedly specifically ordered that Congressional oversight committees not be informed of its existence.

It seems like there might still be more surprises in store for those of us who have been paying attention to Bush and Cheney's little shop of horrors. The list of human rights violations and abuses that can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration is long and includes: the “disappearance” of suspected terrorists into CIA-run secret prisons, the denial of the right of habeas corpus of detainees, the use of ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods, a.k.a. torture, such as water-boarding, sleep deprivation, and auditory stimulus overload by military interrogators and the CIA, the indefinite detention without charges or trials of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo, the construction of the concept of “unlawful enemy combatants”, the use of Predator drones to assassinate suspected terrorists, the detention of an American citizen, Jose Padilla, without charges or trial for more than three years, the irregular renditions of persons such as Maher Arar to countries such as Syria, Egypt and Yemen where they have been tortured, the torture of persons such as Khalid Al Masri in secret CIA prisons, ill-treatment and deaths of detainees held at Baghram airbase in Afghanistan, and the secret and illegal eavesdropping on American citizens by the National Security Agency in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among others.

A number of these human rights abuses have been the subject of several high-level special reports on U.S. human rights violations prepared by the charter-based bodies of the United Nations. In the report dealing with respect for civil and political rights while conducting counter-terrorism, the Special Rapporteur for the Mission to the United States of America, Martin Scheinin, identified, "serious situations of incompatibility between international human rights obligations and the counter-terrorism law and practice of the United States. Such situations include the prohibition against torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; the right to life; and the right to a fair trial” (Scheinin 2007). He has also identified deficiencies in United States law and practice pertaining to "the principle of non-refoulement; the rendition of persons to places of secret detention; the definition of terrorism; non-discrimination; checks in the application of immigration laws; and the obtaining of private records of persons and the unlawful surveillance of persons, including a lack of sufficient balances in that context"(23).

It is now clear that senior officials of the government of the United States conspired to break the law, and that the Department of Justice was complicit in these crimes and their cover-up. The New York Times stated unequivocally that "some of the very highest officials of the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed orders," and this was done "with President Bush's clear knowledge and support"(20 April 2008). The President’s top national security advisors, Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, held dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to enhanced interrogation methods, including brutal methods of abuse that all civilized nations consider to be torture.

A report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 11, 2008, the day after the sixtieth anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of human rights, concluded that, “the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody,” saying also that, “The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees”.

These reports, and many others dealing with the human rights record of the Bush administration, demonstrate that there is ample reason to believe that senior officials of the George W. Bush administration, conspired to systematically violate human rights, broke U.S. laws, and authorized the commission of war crimes.

Yet calls for accountability for these crimes, even for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate them, have been pushed aside by the Obama administration again and again using the specious argument that it is better to look forward than back. But the only way we can hope for a American future in which these kinds of abuses will not be repeated is by fully investigating what happened during the Bush-Cheney administration and holding the architects of these policies accountable.

Rather than misinformed people screaming at their Congressmen about "death panels" that were never even contemplated, progressives should be screaming about the government-sponsored "death squads" that were authorized by the former administration. Where is the sense of moral outrage on the left? Why are progressives allowing themselves to be "slow-walked" into accepting the fact that the Obama adminstration is allowing political considerations to interfere with the investigation of these crimes and the administration of justice?

Addendum: August 31, 2009

We now learn that Blackwater was supposed to provide foreigners for surveillance and support for death squads so as to make sure there were no "American fingerprints" on these secret operations. Fortunately, the program never became operational and was downgraded and finally ended before anyone was assassinated.
See this report in the Huffington Post for details.

Obama's Strategy for Health Care Reform

Thus far the Obama administration has been letting Congress take the lead in framing legislation to bring about fundamental change in the way Americans get their health care paid for. The bills being developed in Congress currently feature a "public option" that would create a government run and financed health insurance fund that would compete with the big private health insurers, like Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, and the other for profit health insurance companies. These companies, as well as the for profit hospitals, the manufacturers of medical equipment and supplies, the big pharmaceutical companies are now launching a massively funded public relations campaign designed to get rid of the public option idea and go on with "business as usual" for another few decades.

At the same time, the Obama plan has ticked off progressives because he and his democratic allies in Congress have decided at the outset to take a "single-payer" option off the table. There was a good discussion of this on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show the other day with Bernie Sanders and the President of the California Nurses Union, Rose Ann DeMoro in which they both expressed frustration and anger about Congress not taking the single-payer option seriously. The single-payer option is the only possible plan that offers significant cost savings while also ensuring universal coverage. It has been empirically tested and refined in Canada and other countries that have long ago accepted the proposition that health care is a human right, to another opportunity to make a killing in the market. There is a well-developed proposal for a system of national health insurance (see PNHP)

There is no good reason for Congress not to even consider a single-payer option. But perhaps this is a calculated political strategy. The insurance industry and their Republican allies in the Congress are already lining up to oppose the "public option" that they claim will eventually threaten the private insurance business. The public option plan does not have the advantages of the single-payer system in terms of cost saving and administratiive simplicity nor in terms of universality. But it does allow the private health insurance business to stay in existence to compete with a government financed insurance program. But the private insurers and their allies are already whining that by offerring the public a lower cost option for health insurance, the public option will eventually take over the market and price private companies out of the competition.

I believe that this argument is total bullshit -- did all private schools and colleges go out of business when state governments started funding schools? But in any case, what Obama ought to say to this argument is: "OK, if you guys won't let us have the public option which may eventually drive some of your insurance companies out of business, then we are putting the single-payer option back on the table and that is what we will be pushing through Congress this year." Your choice is between accepting a proposal that may put some of insurance companies out of business eventually, or one in which they will all be put out of business immediately. Your choice."

It is likely that if the Democrats in Congress and the President play this particular brand of political hard ball the Republicans will walk and refuse to vote for any plan. But once Al Franken gets seated, the Democrats have enough votes to pass it anyway, without any Republican support. If they avoid the 60 vote threshold by means of reconciliation they will need only 50 votes to pass it in the Senate, and they should be able to do that even if convervative Democrats such as Arlen Spector and Ben Nelson vote with the Republicans.

If the Republicans start screaming bloody murder about employing this tactic to get a long overdue national health insurance bill passed, I suggest that President Obama dispatch Rahm Emanuel to Capitol Hill to convey to them the immortal words that Vice President Dick Cheney said to Senator Patrick Leahy --- "You can go fuck yourselves".