Well over 200 people from the Washington, DC area attended and heard presentations from among others, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mi); Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh from the New Yorker magazine; 27 year CIA veteran Ray McGovern, founder of founded the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and who confronted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld after a speech in Atlanta, Georgia on May 4, 2006; Elisa Massimiano of Human Rights First; Rev. Beth Pyles, member of Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq; Jennifer Harbury, from the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC), and many others.

The insights provided by this panel of national leaders in their fields are unequalled. They especially highlighted the continuing miserable failure of the national major media, who, even in an idiotic `pro and con' world, are never more than a phone call away from competence and leadership on any subject. What the speakers had to say, individually, showed how rarely those phone calls get made, if at all. Taken together, the panelists demonstrated another more significant failing of the major media. No one working today in the major media print and TV seems either to know how, or have permission, to put together the kind of research project that will turn into world changing news anymore. Where on earth did the real journalists go?

Hopefully this conference, and other activities planned by the campaign to stop torture will generate the energy which will begin to change all this, by providing information and views and social activity to bring what is being discussed daily in the progressive blog community, out into the mainstream media. This will clearly be a key part of the effort to restore morality and accountability to national institutions on these questions.

The individual speakers addressed different aspects of this complex issue. When brought together a compelling, coherent story emerges. If we have turned away from the Geneva Protocols; if we are ignoring the Nuremberg doctrine on command responsibility, with our society now accepting the previously unacceptable excuse of "I was just following orders"; if the basic prohibition of  "war of aggression" (as war which contains all the other crimes of war e.g torture, rendition etc, mistreatment of civilians, retaliatory, exemplary treatment of combatant and non-combatant populations) is overthrown; if we are ripping up the human rights framework embedded in the UN's founding charter;  and if we are now discarding all these cornerstones of the world legal and political order constructed after the defeat of Hitler -- then aren't  we now saying that our national values have undergone some really profound changes over the past two generations? Shouldn't there be some kind of discussion about what those changes might mean? Shouldn't there be some discussion about whether these changes are acceptable or not?

Sen. Levin offered his observation that the media have been improving, on the margin, over the recent period. But Sy Hersh disagreed, saying "I don't think so" in answer to his own question "Can the press cope with it?" "It" being the urgent matter of the constitutional impact of continuing flagrant violation and disregard of the nation's criminal codes, and the prospect of court review of the matter.

The total picture painted by the all the presentations came together like this, in brief: country and its institutions are confronted with a turning point by:

• the combination of the still obfuscated origins of the Iraq war;
  
• the unresolved failures of strategic, political and military intelligence;
  
• the Abu Ghraib revelations and their aftermath;
  
• the swinish new "legal interpretations" by Bush's and Cheney's legal counsel and the Dept. of Justice, approved over the opposition of the professional JAGs in the military, are destroying the foundation of international treaties and domestic felony codes, despite Bush's Orwellian assertion that "we don't do torture";
  
• the unconstitutional assertion of prerogative powers by the executive against the other two branches of government (legislative and judicial) by Bush and minions is jeopardizing not just the rule of law, but the electoral intent of the citizenry;
  
• the ongoing illegal obstruction and violation of every effort to investigate;
  
• the commitment to shut down whistle-blowers and leakers, including threatening to eliminate the pensions of leakers.

If such ways of proceeding are not changed, the US and its way of life are not much longer for the world. Where political and related institutions have dropped the ball, churches remain to step forward to reaffirm the values of human dignity which make change possible.

Each of the speakers highlighted the difference between moral and practical/utilitarian type arguments against torture. Ray McGovern captured the spirit of all of them: "torture is not wrong because it is illegal", he said, "it is illegal because it is wrong".

Senator Levin proceeded from that difference to specify that the present administration is now undermining equality before the law by creating different classes under the law. According to Bush's legal interpretation, aliens interrogated by Americans outside the US are no longer protected by the Convention Against Torture. The CAT is a Senate ratified convention, it is the law of the land, and of its citizens. For him, the question of the day is, what will the administration do with our law, and where will the court system end up on that question? He pointed to the Habeas Corpus challenge against Guantanamo detention, now pending before the Supreme Court, and its ruling which is now expected within the next couple of weeks.

Sen. Levin documented how Congress has failed in its oversight, and detailed how a Senator, not a member of the governing party such as himself, has to proceed. Senator Levin has put a stop on the appointment of one Alice Fisher to be head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. It seems that this Alice Fisher may be the Alice Fisher who received e-mails from FBI agents in Guantanamo expressing horror at what the Defense Department was permitting to be done to detainees. It took a full year to get unredacted e-mails out of Justice. When asked in confirmation hearings, Miss Fisher could not remember this incident.  The Senator has not been able to talk to the FBI agents because they were talked to within Justice and persuaded to say that their memos were wrong, allowing DoJ to tell Levin there was no need for to him to proceed. Miss Fisher was given a recess appointment by Bush, but that is about to expire, and Levin expects hearings to be held again within a few months.

Hersh offered his views on a number of different aspect of the process that has unfolded since the publication of his initial articles exposing the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and focused both on what remains unknown and to be told, as well as some matters that are now perhaps known better than they were before.

In particular the award-winning journalist mentioned: the build-up to war in Iraq, arguing that it is still not known with precision how the country was misled, and who it was who did the misleading; he discussed the role of the press and how that institution will fare as the legal implications of the unfolding torture and war stories continue to unfold; he provided an insight into his thinking on chain of command questions, both in regard to the development of the on the ground situation in Iraq, and the `who knew what when' situation in Washington.

Hersh said it is certain that President Bush knew by the end of January 2004 what had happened at Abu Ghraib -- about  three and a half months before the story broke in the media, and hearings were held on the Teguba report . Hersh asked: What did Bush do once he knew? What did the system do? From the moment Bush knew, Bush said nothing, he didn't speak out. No one has said that Bush knew in advance of the torture at Abu Ghraib, but once he did know, he did not demand an investigation.

Elisa Massimiano's organization, Human Rights First, in collaboration with New York University and Human Rights Watch, has compiled the details of what is known about torture cases in the Iraq war so far. 300 allegations have been made against approximately 600 US troops involving 400 detainees. Not one U.S. military officer has been held to account thus far. Only enlisted soldiers identified from the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs have been prosecuted. There has been no prosecution of any soldier who did NOT appear in the photographs. Of 20 referrals to the Justice Department's Criminal Division, only one has been prosecuted. This must have been one of the "few bad apples".

Massimiano was followed by Ray McGovern who, among other things, told of the work of Jean Marie Arrigo who has researched the question of what is required when there is a state-backed policy of torture; in other words, what is the logistical infrastructure for the policy of torture. Among the things McGovern listed are:

• the training and equipping of torturers
  
• the recruiting of medical assistants
  
• the conduct of research to determine what to do
  
• the pre-approval of the courts.

Such a policy clearly cannot be the work of the proverbial few bad apples.

Like other speakers, Seymour Hersh appears before many groups of students and others on campuses. He told attendees that recently he thinks the number of people coming to hear him speak has quadrupled. Other people thought that the attendance at the WRCAT conference was another sign that the tide might be beginning to turn.

Outside the formal panels, and in smaller break-out groups, there was much discussion about what could be done and how. The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture is promoting a 4-point program:

• An end to all US torture of prisoners
  
• An end to US outsourcing of torture ("renditions")
  
• All secret prisons to be closed
  
• An independent commission to investigate human rights abuses at US installations like Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

These four points were the subject of a lot of discussion, specifically the empaneling of an independent commission. Who would convene it? What would be its remit? The 9/11 Commission provides one model of how to proceed. However, the proposal to establish such a commission has already been defeated in Congress. And as the speakers indicated, nothing is likely to come out of Congress without some really significant changes.

This points to the need for a major effort to mobilize support for the upcoming elections to change the composition of the legislative branch. In which regard participants mentioned the role of blogs in conditioning major media, others spoke of working questions about torture into questionnaires submitted to candidates for office at any level of government. Lobbying, vigil and demonstration activities are also planned and upcoming around the country. White ribbons, on trees and clothing and vehicles indicate opposition to torture and will be going up in yards and other places. Next week there will be a call in day (June 26th) with opponents of torture calling the White House, Senators and Representatives.

The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture is a part of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. This June is anti-torture month. There are activities going on around the country which can be found on the organizations' web-sites.

www.nrcat.org
www.wrrcat.org
www.humanrightsfirst.org

The author, Chris White, is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun and a former vice-president and board member.

Originally posted at Daily Kos