Secret US-Iraq "Status of Forces" Agreement Would Preserve Human Rights Violations, Torture Policies in Iraq

The Bush-Cheney administration is engaged in secret talks with their Iraqi counterparts to craft a binding executive agreement renewing current US military and detention policies when the United Nations authorization expires this December. The "status of forces" proposal is bogged down in disputes between the Pentagon and key Iraqi factions, and faces potential sharp questions in the US Congress in the coming weeks.

Assuming the administration has its way, which is by no means certain, the agreement between the two executive branches will preserve the right of US forces to initiate unilateral military action and continue rounding up tens of thousands of Iraqis in abusive preventive detention facilities where human rights are violated routinely.

Senators including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama oppose any such bilateral executive agreement without Senate hearings and concurrence. House critics like Rep. Bill Delahunt and Jim McGovern already are engaged in hearings on the proposed agreement. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers also has questioned the constitutionality of the measure.

At stake for the anti-war movement and the progressive blogosphere is whether the current administration can bind the next president to its current Iraq policies.

In a June 13 letter to the United Nations Security Council, Human Rights Watch [HRW] called for a rejection of the American rationale for preventive detention. In legal terms, the US currently claims the right of internment "for imperative reasons of security." But with the declared end of "belligerent occupation" in 2004, HRW argues, the Iraq war is a conflict where Article 3 of the Geneva convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights should apply to the treatment of all detainees and prisoners. Those protocols require that "all persons arrested be brought promptly before a judge; have access to legal counsel and family members; be charged with a cognizable criminal offense and receive a prompt fair trial meeting international fair trial standards." Those standards are systematically violated in Iraq [and Afghanistan] where as many as 100,000 detainees are held without charges, without lawyers, and without an independent judicial process, in life-threatening conditions. American taxpayers spent more than $20 billion during the past five years supporting the repressive Iraqi police and prison apparatus.

In careful language, the HRW letter goes on to "recognize the problem of torture and other mistreatment in Iraqi detention facilities. International law prohibits the transfer of individuals to the custody of a state where there are substantial grounds for believing they are in danger of being tortured." That's the prohibition which the proposed "status of forces" agreement attempts to circumvent.

Whether HRW can achieve enforcement of the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and Afghanistan is doubtful since their appeals are to the very authorities who installed the sectarian, Shi'a-controlled governing coalition in Baghdad complete with brutal militias and secret prisons. The complicity of the US was revealed in a 2004 article by a top counterinsurgency adviser to the US Command urging a "global Phoenix program" as the solution to global jihad. First implemented in South Vietnam, that is the program now being carried out in Baghdad with little questioning by the American media.

The UN Security Counsel is unlikely to intervene on its own against the proposed "status of forces" language. But increased rumblings in the Iraqi parliament and the US Congress, under pressure from human rights, clergy and anti-war groups, could become a tipping point revealing the heart of darkness the Iraqi and Afghani gulags have become.

US law [the Leahy Amendment, 1997] already prohibits any assistance to military or police entities known to be human rights violators. Key Congressional staff are preparing official letters inquiring why the Leahy Amendment doesn't apply to Iraq. The Center for American Progress and the recently-formed Campaign Against Torture in Iraq and Afghanistan have demanded the Leahy Amendment be implemented.

That would undermine the remaining authority of the al-Maliki regime in Baghdad and, by threatening to de-fund official repression, force an ultimate choice on Baghdad and Washington. Ending preventive detention policies, holding provincial elections as promised, while keeping US troops in a holding pattern, might well bring about a legitimate Iraqi government that would insist on a timetable for US withdrawal. It may be that or a new generation of suicide bombers born in detention camps.

Tom Hayden is the author of Ending the War in Iraq [2007]. For more information, go to www.stopfundingtorture.com

Comments

[godsbreath64]

"wayout left",

the only thing relevant the Senate and any public sevant has ignored these past 90 months is their CONSTITUTIONAL charge to protect and defend such. None of this sedition gets off in the American society (ah, the memories), if they ONCE meet their charge.

Can we have a nation wide moritorium, the day spawn o' Bush signs telicom imunity into unconstitutional law? >; = /

The only thing they will listen to is $$$$.

[Insideout143]

I just can't wait to see the democratic majority show their stuff on this one.... unfortunately, methinks that we will never see it. So much for the rule of law. It has become the rule to break the laws.

[wayoutleft]

"At stake for the anti-war movement and the progressive blogosphere is whether the current administration can bind the next president to its current Iraq policies." not exactly.
at stake for the anti-war movement and the progressive blogosphere is whether to support a candidate who hasn't explicitly refused to be bound by the current administration's policies. the answer to that question is: of course they will, the "anti-war movement and progressive blogosphere" being what they are. obama will not speak out and warn bush that he has no authority to lock this war in place. no. he hasn't "consulted with the generals" like bush does yet. he wants a "careful responsible" end to blowing 12 billion/month in iraq.
and yes i support a percipitous withdrawl from iraq just like i did from vietnam. there is no other kind of withdrawl. you stay or you go. what the war freaks warned about then is russia or china controlling all of asia. their paranoid little fear fantasies are similarly hollow now regarding iran. tom, remember the "citizens for a responsible bloodbath"? looks like they're the only anti-war front that survived.

[rabrophy]

I don't understand why a "status of force" agreement is not considered a treaty, subject to review by the Senate.

[wayoutleft]

review by the senate LOL- as if they want to review anything about iraq, the truth is the senate has the power to IGNORE the agreement. it's ignoring the agreement that really shows their power.

[mamacat]

Remember the polls that said over 60% of Iraqis think it is OK to kill Americans in their country?

Remember May 2007, when the Iraqi legislature said they wanted the U.S. to get out of Iraq?

Now that Dubya is a lame duck, his quack is worse than his bite, and Maliki thinks it is safe to act tough. Forcing Maliki out of power with a coup at this time will make it look like the surge failed, and hurt one of the Republican talking points in the November U.S. elections. He knows that the Dems will be happy to work with him in turning their country back over to them, so it is a win-win. He helps himself to look strong to the Iraqis, and he maybe helps the Dems get elected, which would be very good for his country.

The Dems need to start talking about this issue, and use it as another reason to vote for them, and to prove that the Republicans don't know Dick about national defence.

[AbbieXHoffman]

Now why isn't this in the news???? It's not like there aren't multiple channels that have 24 hour news cycles to report on this. Instead they give about 2 minutes to each issue they discuss and they are all on the election and each show has the exact same talking points and content.

Perhaps they can give about 5 minutes of their 24 hours to real NEWS besides the gottcha election minutia.

Thanks Tom.

[godsbreath64]

So we're a progressive blogosphere?

Wasn't that the error of decades prior? The umbrage that is america is the mainstream. Do the not conserve the constitutional society, or not? The left and right comes from military ceremony. The King's trusted advisor sits to his right and that person's opponant sits to the left of the king. The fascist media ursurped the lable from JFK's, LBJ, wacked Bobby first and then again in the 90's. Enough.

The americans are in opposition to cabel/ junta sedition, not progressives. Because how progressive can you be to ostrich from Impeachment of the vice precedant and the minion. Far less maturing democracies would have called for a people's moritorrium by the 19th month of a lame shucks administration, not carpin' through the 90th.

Someone tell me where Karl's, Karl is, I will make the citizen's arrest.

What do we tell our children? We were a nation of laws, now only seditionists.

[wayoutleft]

you have captured a great big chunk of the truth about capitalist politics. the most important task before capitalism is to label anything in the peoples' interests as "liberal, left, or progressive" and to separate it in peoples' minds from the "mainstream center". that way- even though the majority of people want healthcare and an end to the war, for instance-each of us feels individually that our ideas aren't shared except by a political minority. actually they are center, mainstream ideas and it's the capitalist media apes who represent the small minority.
now they're claiming what obama is moving to is the center. what they have thereby succeeded in doing is getting him AWAY from the center. the phoney outrage at his "clinging to guns and religion remark" was classic. everybody believed somebody else was outraged; but nobody actually was.

[godsbreath64]

Wow.

Thank you for my articulation. It is so needed : )

Why then do you call yourself "way out left"?

Wouldn't you be "american consensous"?

I just got done with "Republican Brain" the other day.

We all know they don't have brains, only wallets.

[research]

President Obama will just invoke the unitary executive theory and wipe all BushCo's work away.

[godsbreath64]

Gee, thanks comrad.

Somewhere over the rainbow!!

[levibatgirl]

Since the bush/cheney cabal does not see fit to honor subpoenas, why adhere to anything they put together as 'binding'. Screw them.

[lthuedk 1]

So, who will preside over the Constitutional Convention? We have almost reached the point where this nation is no longer viable and no longer representative. Clearly it has become a militant corporatist entity which obeys no law. Just look a McCain: He thinks corporate prostitution is the wave of the future.

Time to hit F5 and take it back.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/a_retrospective.html

Tom, we have known for some time what happened. Yet, the People are artificially held in check by a government that is a sham.

F5

[WorkingClass]

"At stake for the anti-war movement and the progressive blogosphere is whether the current administration can bind the next president to its current Iraq policies".

Absurd. Obama will be the unitary executive. The new decider. The law will not apply to him just like it does not apply to George Bush.

[ElkoJohn]

`
will the Obama Man
kowtow to the Bushies ??
stay tuned sports fans
`

[outnow]

Having an empire is inconsistent with a government according its citizens human rights.Therefore, the "imperial forces" must use "shock and awe," torture, imprisonment, "divide and rule" policies as did the British. Wasn't it ironic that, while the British fought against fascism in WW II, they were in the very process of applying those same policies in South Africa and India.

Likewise, with the neocons pressing for control of Iraq's oil resources, the idea of spreading democracy while controlling the resources resulted in a prolonged occupation with obvious commercial motives becoming impossible to hide. Such hypocrisy is not consistent with human rights. Transparency in foreign policy is what Bush and Cheney do not want. Yet, their very hypocrisy is what defeated the initial plans for access to oil and the rebuilding of a democratic and thriving Iraqi economy, as looting of museums and homes was allowed to proceed. Abu Graib and other fiascoes have cemented this pattern, and the "Status of Forces agreement" would only make it permanent. To keep the PSA agreements in force regarding oil, the Bush policies need to extend indefinitely. That includes the right to use deadly force and deprive people of human rights without any responsibility or culpability.

[Gma11]

The sooner we oust these thugs the better.

If there is no agreement reached by December, it will be interesting to see how the Iraqi government responds to the results of the American presidential election.

[Sundialsvc4]

Consistently, this Congress behaves like an ineffectual Parliament.

It is far from "ineffectual," of course. It is thoroughly and completely corrupted by "the business of war," exactly as "Ike" Eisenhower predicted. But does it fathom the cost, even to its own institution?