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By Cheryl Abraham

Somewhere in an American run prison a young man, a "detainee", is bent over, his head touching his shins, his hands shackled tightly behind his legs and affixed to the bars of his cell. He is shirtless and his prison pants are soaked with sweat and urine. He cannot move and he is in agony, he has been in this position for hours, maybe days, he cannot remember how much time has passed, he does not know the day or the month, he only knows pain.

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Meanwhile in the United States, John Yoo and David Addington temporarily disrupt their privileged lifestyles and leave their comfortable homes. They are  to testify before a House subcommittee meeting regarding statements and documents they have authored that have been used by the U.S. government to legalize the destruction of the human body in the name of national security, and to justify the opinion that the president has unlimited power.  Yoo and Addington arrive to all the pomp and circumstance of rock stars, lights flashing as the press takes picture after picture, and yells out questions. Yoo and Addington present themselves as "experts" to some of the most powerful people in the world.  

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The young man's legs tremble and shake from the exertion and strain of the stress position he has been forced into. He has no idea how long he has been without water, sleep, or food. Muscles throughout his body have been in a perpetual spasm and there is no position he can move into to lessen his pain because he cannot move. The smell of his cell sickens him, the pain overwhelms him, and he can see no relief coming to him anytime soon. He is utterly alone and helpless against what is happening to him.

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It seems as if David Addington has enough of a conscience to know that he should not blatantly state his approval of extreme, cruel, and harsh interrogation techniques. Or maybe he is acting under the time honored principal of hedging bets for his own future. But much is revealed about the dark side of Cheney's former chief of staff by what he did NOT say under questioning by the House subcommittee. Addington kept a haughty demeanor during the entire meeting and did not bother to veil his utter contempt of both the questions and the questioners. These questions, almost without exception, related to the moral and legal issues regarding the treatment of prisoners. When Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D- N.Y.) asked Addington if he would bear any responsibility if the interrogation program was found to be illegal Addington's reply was a smug, "Is that a moral question or a legal question?" Addington went on to state that he bore no legal or moral responsibility for the interrogation program. Nadler asked Addington whether or not it would be legal to torture a detainee's child as part of an interrogation, to which he countered with subterfuge - incredible considering the simplicity of answering such a question by any moral, reasonable, and rational person.  

Addington bobbed and weaved through further questioning stating that he "did not recall" if he had ever pushed for harsh interrogation techniques. The Washington Post writes of Addington, "Think of Addington as the id of the Bush White House. Though his hidden hand is often merely suspected -- in signing statements, torture policy and other brazen assertions of executive power -- Addington's unbridled hostility was live and unfiltered yesterday." 

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The young man doesn't know what the charges are against him, he's never seen a lawyer. He can't even allow himself to think about all the hows and whys that ended up with his imprisonment. He tries not to think about his family and whether they know where he is or whether they are even alive. It is an agonizing litany of questions and imaginings he often repeats to himself.  He is torn between wanting to die to escape this pain and wanting to live to prove his innocence. But these thoughts leave him as the pain overtakes the thinking part of his brain and he feels more like a trapped and horribly wounded animal than a human being.

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Addington was asked to describe an interrogation he witnessed at Guantanamo Bay. "You could look and see mouths moving," Addington answered arrogantly, "I infer that there was communication going on." 

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The young man hears footsteps. They are coming again to ask their questions, questions he has no answers for, but he will tell them anything, anything to be released from his bonds, he will confess to anything they want him to just so he can lie on the floor and ease some of his pain. He doesn't care at this point what the questions are; just the small hope that his abusers will untie him is enough to evince any information from him, true or fabricated. The guards start yelling their questions and the young man screams and cries his incoherent answers. From a distance another guard watches and sees that mouths are moving, "There must be some communication going on in that cell!" the guard muses.

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John Yoo displayed as much arrogance as Addington. Yoo's defiant contempt for the rule of law, the Judiciary committee, and its members was both flagrant and outrageous. Yoo also bobbed and weaved through the questions. Yoo has unabashedly re-defined torture so that our president, our government, our military could practice torture but because of Yoo's legal re-definition of it our president can say to the world, "We do not torture." It is the twisted logic of Yoo and Addington that, so far, has given legal absolution to an out of control president and has provided justification for "enhanced interrogation techniques" practiced by the US, justifications that attempt to remove the stigma of despotism that marks any government that tortures human beings for any reason. The legality of torture is what Yoo and Addington so brazenly and dastardly defended during the hearings.  

David Swanson of afterdowningstreet.org states, "Yoo and Addington were evasive, repeatedly stonewalling members of the subcommittee. The Justice Department evidently placed limitations on what Yoo was allowed to discuss, but he invoked privileges where it did not appear privilege was authorized. This led to Yoo's refusal to answer several direct questions. Jeanne Mirer stated, "The evasiveness of Yoo and Addington did not earn them credibility with the subcommittee, and frustrated many of the questioners. These tactics prevented the subcommittee from getting answers to the many important questions about the source of legal authority for the positions espoused in the 'torture memos' regarding aggressive interrogation techniques." 

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The detainee, exhausted and barely conscious, is allowed to drink a few sips of dirty water. He looks at what's left of his body- he sees he has lost a great deal of weight since his detainment, he is a mere shell of what he once was and he wonders if he were ever allowed to go home would anyone recognize him. He has been inside these prison walls for over five years with no relief in sight. He has spent much of this time in solitary confinement only coming into contact with other humans during questionings or beatings. He can't remember a lot of what has happened to him over the course of five years and can't remember when he lost the ability to think clearly. He doesn't know what will happen to him, every day is filled with suffering. Every day he wishes for death.

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John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in an obvious attempt to illustrate the ridiculousness of Yoo's torture memo giving the president unlimited powers in a time of war asked Yoo if the president could order someone buried alive. John Yoo, without remorse, without blinking, and without so much as an inkling of human emotion answered Conyer's question in a flippant and evasive manner, stating that a president would never have to make such an order, but not going so far as to say that such an order being made by a president would be the order of someone sick and depraved. In fact it can be inferred by Yoo's answer that if the president wanted to order someone to be buried alive then the president is within his rights to order it be done. 

The Bush regime has used these lawyers to justify war crimes, and if left unchecked and unstopped will continue to use whatever means necessary to legitimize any and all aspects of the Bush agenda. This demonstration of the callous disregard both Yoo and Addington have for both human life and basic human rights shows the incredible capacity for evil that has become an accepted element of the Bush regime, thus profoundly illustrating the incalculable need, right now, for millions of Americans to drive out the despotic Bush regime.

Yoo and Addington both left the hearing to return, unhindered, to their privileged lives and their comfortable homes.  
 

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Meanwhile at an American run prison another day is at an end. But the young detainee doesn't know it, he hasn't seen the sun for weeks, he has no idea if it is morning or night. All the young man knows it that he is a "detainee" an "enemy combatant" and he is an enemy of the United States. He has been imprisoned for years without charges, without knowing what he has done to be imprisoned here. He knows that his keepers question him endlessly and mistreat him continually, and he can see no way out of his situation. He truly is unrecognizable as the man he was when he was first captured. He prays that the war will end soon as that may be the only way, other than death, that he will be able to leave the hell that he is a prisoner of.

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