An article by Porter Goss “No Place for Queensberry Rules in this brutal war” awarded prominence by the Sydney Morning Herald on its Opinion page on Tuesday, April 28 is morally repugnant and also an excellent example of why we need to be vigilant of even the most democratically elected government; why we need to be pro-active in seeking a judicial Bill of Rights and together with a judicially enforceable Code of Ethics for Governance for our contracted or otherwise employed public servants and security services.
For those who have not read the Goss article, get it, read it. It is about as bad as it gets and tells us a lot about the Bush administration, whom the Howard Australian Government so odiously toadied up to and supported. It is also a lesson in real politic.
Goss is a past director of the CIA and past chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee which, following 9/11 was “briefed” on the CIA’s “High Value Terrorist Program” and “enhanced interrogation techniques”. This briefing was an “ongoing subject”
Goss tells us that the Committee:
§ was briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high value terrorists’
§ understood what the CIA was doing
§ gave the CIA bipartisan support
§ gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities
§ on a bipartisan basis aked if the CIA needs more support
He does not recall any objections from members of the committee.
He tells us that the (present) American Government has “crossed the red line” between protecting American national security and gaining “partisan political advantage” by “giving away all the secrets”; that in so doing, America has given invaluable information about “the rules by which we operate.” (Presumably the ‘secrets’ to which he refers are the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.)
Goss then gives examples of the murderous methods of the terrorists and says that in response, “our (US) intelligence officers will soon resort to word-smithing cables ….. while opportunities to neutralise brutal radicals are lost.”
He closes with the statement: “Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us.”
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Apparently Goss believes that use of the enhanced interrogation techniques is okay. He simply does not comprehend that :
§ the so called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ are enhanced only in comparison with hanging drawing and quartering, stoning, burning at the stake and the like;
§ cruelty and torture are unacceptable to all peoples everywhere, and
§ an eye for an eye leaves us all sightless.
The USA promotes itself as a leader of the free world, upholder of human rights and integrity. Yet with the apparent concurrence of a small committee of Congress, under the leadership of the Bush Administration, the American Government and their contractors and agents subjected their prisoners to the cruelties of the enhanced interrogation techniques and other degrading, illegal and inhuman treatment. Moreover the highest levels of the Australian Government were complicit. Not only did the Australian Government not raise its voice in public censure, it allowed its citizens to be held without trial and to suffer at least some of the enhanced techniques for a number of years.
There is no reason why it this cannot happen again, here, in Australia, done by Australians, anywhere. All that is required is that a government be formed of people with either the ethics of a Porter Goss or too cowardly to argue against a leadership with the Goss ethic. Under such a Government, an Australian bureaucracy and its agents meted out sub-humanly cruel, harsh and unconscionable treatment to refugees. If an Australian Government and its bureaucrats can so engineer our laws as to strip vulnerable refugees of their most basic human rights, then another government can engineer the context to justify enhanced interrogation techniques, perhaps more barbaric than those strongly advocated by Porter Goss, to whomever they categorise as warranting such treatment. And then jump behind the Australian flag bleating that they did it in the national interest, grotesquely exaggerating levels of threat, inciting the nation to panic.
Whatever else we do, we must seek proactively to prevent this from happening again. We need to ensure that our Governments, civil administrations and security services from top to bottom, are appropriately trained and restrained under judicial law from committing such transgressions.
We can begin by demanding not only a judicially enforceable Australian Bill of Human Rights, but also a judicially enforceable Australian Code of Ethics for Governance binding on all Australians (civilian and military) everywhere.
E-mail your representatives.
Bill Miller
28/04/2009
Labels: Australian Bill of Rights, human rights
