Getting away with torture.

Among the many disgusting photographs taken within the walls of the Abu Ghraib prison is one in which the slight figure of Pte. Lynndie England is seen holding a leash. The leash is tied to the neck of a man. The man is naked and sprawled on the bare concrete floor.

England was court-martialled and convicted of several crimes, including abusing detainees, in 2005. She was sentenced to three years in a military prison.

This week, a bipartisan committee of the United States Senate -- a committee co-chaired by former Republican presidential nominee John McCain -- released the results of its investigation into the interrogation of prisoners in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

One of the many findings was a description of the methods used on Mohammed al-Khatani by Gitmo interrogators. "While key documents relating to the interrogation remain classified," the committee states, "published accounts indicate that military working dogs had been used against Khatani. He had also been deprived of adequate sleep for weeks on end, stripped naked, subjected to loud music, and made to wear a leash and perform dog tricks."

It sounds eerily familiar, but al-Khatani was not abused by a few low-ranking rogues. As the committee shows in its report, the techniques used in al-Khatani's interrogation were thoroughly discussed at very high levels of both the Department of Defence and the White House. And they were approved.

Much else was approved, as well.

The Senate committee traced these interrogation practices back to a training program called "Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape" (SERE), which the Department of Defence developed in order to prepare military personnel for abuse at the hands of captors who do not respect international norms. "The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions, include stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps and, until recently, for some who attended the Navy's SERE school, it included waterboarding."
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It's tempting to think these techniques can't be all that bad if the U.S. military inflicts them on its own personnel. Resist that temptation.

"There are fundamental differences between a SERE school exercise and a real world interrogation," the report notes. "At SERE school, students are subject to an extensive medical and psychological pre-screening." There are strict limits on "frequency, duration, and/or intensity" of the techniques. Psychologists monitor the training and intervene if things go bad. "And SERE school is voluntary: students are given a special phrase they can use to immediately stop the techniques from being used against them."

The distinction between classrooms and interrogation rooms seems to have been lost on the Bush administration. Secretary of Defence Don Rumsfeld actually scrawled on a memo outlining specific techniques, "I stand for 8 to 10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Apparently, Rumsfeld couldn't understand that being on your feet and moving about in a safe and friendly environment isn't quite the same as being a sleep-deprived, disoriented prisoner under the absolute control of a hated enemy who orders you to stand motionless for four hours and physically punishes any transgression.

All the techniques used in SERE training were ultimately authorized for use in interrogation by the secretary of defence. The worst of them, waterboarding, was authorized by none other than the vice-president of the United States. Earlier this year, when the CIA acknowledged its officers had tortured suspects -- for that is what waterboarding is -- the White House flatly stated that if the president felt it necessary, they would be authorized to do so again.

The SERE techniques were first introduced to Guantanamo, the Senate report says. Minutes of a meeting held at Gitmo to discuss interrogations record a CIA lawyer who summed up the administration's understanding of the line between acceptable interrogation and torture. "If the detainee dies," he said, "you're doing it wrong."

From Gitmo, the techniques were taken to Afghanistan. From Afghanistan, they went to Iraq. Summing up, the Senate committee concluded that decisions made at the highest levels "led directly" to the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
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And those abuses got American soldiers killed.

"You can't underestimate the damage that our treatment of prisoners" did, John McCain said in an interview Sunday. On a visit to an Iraqi prison, McCain recalled, he and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had been allowed to speak to a senior al-Qaeda leader. The Americans asked how the terrorists had been able to foment so much chaos.

Abu Ghraib, the man responded. It did wonders for recruiting.

In the same interview, McCain was asked about prosecutions. He ducked. "What I am interested in and committed to, is making sure we don't do it again."

That's important, to be sure. But so is justice.

As it stands, Lynndie England and a handful of other bottom-rung personnel have been convicted and punished for abusing prisoners. None of the top officials who authorized the sort of actions committed by England has been prosecuted. Nor has anyone been charged for having authorized or inflicted waterboarding, a technique deemed to be torture by everyone but Dick Cheney and his lawyers.

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," wrote retired Maj.-Gen Antonio Taguba, the man who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, in the foreword to a human rights report released earlier this year. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

With luck, Guantanamo will soon close. But as long as the only Americans punished for abusing prisoners are the likes of Lynndie England, American justice will remain an oxymoron.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

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