Editorial: Honor with actions

Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005 | 10:48 a.m.

At a news conference Monday in Panama City, Panama, President Bush departed from the primary subject of free trade long enough to make a few remarks about terrorism and torture.

The president said the United States is at war with an enemy "that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again." Agreed. Terrorist organizations have long represented a serious threat to American civilians and troops abroad, and, since 9/11, they have represented a serious threat to us here at home. In our view, the war on terrorism would have been justified if it had been declared three decades ago, and it is certainly justified today.

According to reporting by The Washington Post, Bush went on to say, "And so, you bet, we'll aggressively pursue them, but we'll do so under the law." We agree that terrorists should be aggressively pursued. But was Bush right to suggest the pursuit has always been "under the law?"

What law is it that allows civilian prisoners to be held for years in detention camps at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and other, undisclosed, locations without legal representation? Without any court hearings? Without any family visits? Without any individual contact with the outside world at all? (The Red Cross has toured some of the camps, but has come away highly critical of the conditions.) Despite widespread reports that many detainees are likely innocent and that many are being tortured, they are being held in virtual seclusion.

Certainly no U.S. law should be interpreted as meaning such treatment is allowed. And certainly established international law clearly prohibits it. Maybe Bush was talking about Cuban law.

Bush then emphatically stated, "We do not torture." Really? Then what was the world seeing in the photos from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad? A few soldiers gone bad? The world doesn't believe that, and anyone who ever served in the U.S. military would know that enlisted soldiers don't get away with such sustained, on-duty conduct without at least tacit approvals from superior officers.

And if Bush, by his statement, actually meant, "We do not believe in torture," then why is he allowing Vice President Dick Cheney to aggressively push for CIA torture privileges? Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was tortured during captivity in North Vietnam, wants a definitive U.S. law prohibiting all departments of the United States from ever inflicting torture on anyone. Cheney wants the CIA exempted, and Bush is backing him 100 percent.

If we are to achieve the support of the civilized world in our just war on terror, and if we are to succeed in spreading democracy, we need to show by our actions, as well as our words, that ours is a moral society that rejects such barbarism as torture.