Resistance within Navy to torture

The New Yorker reports that Alberto Mora, general counsel of the U.S. Navy resisted the moves outside of international conventions and laws on the use of torture. He mostly fought with William Haynes II, general counsel for Department of Defense and a member of the clan that agrees with David Addington, Dick Cheney's cheif of staff, in the unitary executive theory. A memo from 2004 reveals that:

Mora's criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and presistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, in April 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush's decision, in February 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as "unlawful", "dangerous," and "erroneous" novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.

However, Mora lost out to lawyers close to VP Cheney in the argument about whether the U.S. was subject to the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mora, the article points out is a "cautious, cerebral conservative...[who] strongly supported the Administration's war on terror, including the invasion of Iraq". The New Yorker also reports that his concerns came from fear that torture would "undermin[e] any attempts to prosecute [terrorism suspects] in a court of law", doubts about the "reliably of forced confessions" and the feeling that, in his own words, "it just ain't right". Mora also worries that cruel and degrading treatment violates the inherent right to dignity bestowed on all, and in its absense, "the whole Constitution crumbles". For a Republican appointee, it is a remarkably honest view.

One of the main rationales for allowing torture and cruel treatment was that, although it was illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Administration officials or other "higher authorities" could allow these otherwise illegal techniques. However, this sounds like the type of practice that caused the Protestant Reformation (not to mention many other revolutions in the past) where people could buy forgiveness in advance. Neither argument holds water and both expose those who give the advanced forebearance to the risk of shaming themselves.

When Mora criticized a report by John Yoo, one of the authors of the torture memos, the Defense Department secretly signed and implemented them. The memos allowed for the use of over 30 techniques that amount to cruel and degrading treatment and "when the Commander-in-Chief deemed it necessary, [the authorization to engage] in torture". However, in December 2003, the memos were withdrawn by the Office of Legal Counsel because the Justice Department "could no longer rely on the legal analysis" in the memo because "Yoo's interpretation of the President's powers [were] overly broad". The article helps tell the story of how the Administration authorized torture and cruel and degrading treatment of detainees that led to Abu Ghraib and left many members of the Bush Administration possibly on the hook for war crimes charges under the War Crimes Act, which defines a war crime as one that violates the Geneva Conventions. Mora closes by saying: "When you put together the pieces, it's all so sad. To preserve flexibility [in interrogation tactics], they were willing to throw away our values".