Promising news from the Washington Post this holiday season:
President Bush reversed position yesterday and endorsed a torture ban crafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after months of White House attempts to weaken the measure, which would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.
McCain's bill was influenced in part by the testimony of Captain Ian Fishback, 26 year old West Point Graduate and officer with the 82nd Airborne Division.
Fishback relinquished anonymity in order to stand up against what he believed was deeply immoral, even though he understood that the violations of the Geneva Convention that were going on were not isolated instances but in response to instructions from the officer-corps and 'probably in combination with the executive branch of government.'
In an interview published in the September Human Rights Watch report, Fishback said:
Congress should have oversight of treatment of prisoners. That is the way; the Army should not take it upon itself to determine what is acceptable for America to do in regards to treatment of prisoners. That’s a value… that’s more than just a military decision, that’s a values decision, and therefore Congress needs to know about it, and therefore the American people need to have an honest representation of what’s going on presented to them so that they can have a say in that ...If America holds something as the moral standard, it should be unacceptable for us as a people to change that moral standard based on fear. The measure of a person or a people’s character is not what they do when everything is comfortable. It’s what they do in an extremely trying and difficult situation, and if we want to claim that these are our ideals and our values then we need to hold to them no matter how dark the situation.
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