Abu Ghraib Lack of Accountability Caused by US Desire to Be Above Law - FBI Whistleblower
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) The lack of accountability for US leaders responsible for the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq was caused by their desire to be above the law, former FBI Principal Legal Adviser, Special Agent and whistleblower Colleen Rowley told Sputnik.
Rowley acknowledged that US officials who endorsed and ordered torture and other war crimes at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere had created and disseminated artifice memorandums that purported to "legalize" the illegal by claiming that the Geneva Conventions no longer applied to US actions.
But, "the underlying problem ... is due to the notion that the US-NATO-Israel is so 'exceptional' and 'indispensable' that it is entitled to police other nations and foreign officials via wars of choice, covert assassinations and drone bombing, but cannot be bound by the same laws it enforces on others," she said.
After the United States and allied conquest of Iraq in 2003, US Army and CIA personnel committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape sodomy and murder according to documented accounts.
Wednesday marks the 15-year anniversary of the US military charging six soldiers for abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib.
Rowley explained then-President George W. Bush and his top officials had sought the old "King Can Do No Wrong" immunity based on its claimed benevolent intentions - perceiving itself as a force for good in the world,.
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"However any country that claims to act as the 'policeman of the world - force for good' inherently sets itself above the law it wishes to apply to others," she said.
Late US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had warned of these dangers almost a century ago, Rowley recalled.
"As Justice Brandeis once noted in his famous dissent, when any 'government' (even though Brandeis was referring only to the US government's enforcement of domestic law) becomes the lawbreaker, its bad example quickly spreads and ends up breeding chaos," she said.
All law, even when strong enforcement structures exist, was based on equality and reciprocity, Rowley explained.�
"The rule of law will simply evaporate when the 'enforcer' becomes the law breaker," Rawley said.�
At the end of 2004, Rowley retired from the FBI after serving for 24 years. In 2002, she shared the Time magazine Person of the Year award with two other whistleblowers - Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.
The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses came to widespread public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse in 2004. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad.
In May 2002 memorandum to now-Special Counsel Robert Mueller who was then FBI Director, Rowley exposed some of the FBI's pre-September 11, 2001 failures. She testified in front of Congress.