Among the many criminal policies of the Bush regime, torture is one of the most heinous.  Bush and his cabinet level torture team have defied the Constitution, human rights laws, the Geneva Conventions and other laws to torture human beings.  Torture is an inhumane process that experts agree does not elicit the truth from the victim only what the torturers want to hear in order to make the pain stop.

 

It is immoral, and a criminal policy that has had and will continue to have terrible consequences for the United States.

 

An US Army deserter in Canada seeking refugee status because he refuses to be involved in torture may bring the Bush torture policy to trial in an historic case.

 

The Toronto Star reports: "Peter Jemley is unique among the growing ranks of war resisters who have sought refuge in Canada.

"For one thing, he's old by military standards. The only reason the army considered the 38-year-old recruit three years ago was because the age cap had been raised to fill the U.S. military's growing void.

"The Tacoma, Wash., father of two young children also bucks the soldier stereotype. Jemley is a college history major, both quiet and fervently independent. If describing a bad situation he's likely to say it "sucked," then apologize for his profanity.

"Now Jemley's reasons for deserting set him apart too, and make his case a historic first.

"He wants Canada to accept him as a refugee because he's opposed to torture.

"Jemley argues that as one of only a small number of Arabic linguists with top security clearance, he could be forced to violate international law by participating in the interrogations of terrorism suspects. It was something he hadn't considered when he enlisted in 2005 and was handpicked to undergo two years of intense training due to his adeptness with languages.

"Only last February did he discover that his government had sanctioned new rules on how terrorism suspects could be interrogated. He believes it's torture and when he realized he might be asked to be a part of it, he fled.

" 'It's a soldier's obligation to say `no' if their commander is doing things that are criminally complicit,' Jemley, now 42, said in a recent interview in Toronto. 'I think everyone is agreeing now that torture is really what has been going on ... I have every reason to believe that from my small pool that I belong to, with my credentials, that I'd be ordered to do such things.'

"The issue of Guantanamo's legality arose earlier this year in the Supreme Court case concerning Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. The high court justices ruled that Canadian agents had acted illegally by interrogating the Toronto teenager in 2003 and 2004. But the high court relied on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that deemed Guantanamo illegal, rather than debating issues of torture and indefinite detention specifically.

"Jemley's case is the first to deal with the issue directly. The CIA has admitted it uses acts such as waterboarding. There's evidence that Guantanamo detainees were subjected to programs such as sleep deprivation, intimidation with dogs and sexual humiliation. If these tactics are torture, thereby violating international law, Jemley argues he could be prosecuted for war crimes if he participates.

"Canada must decide whether the U.S. administration has sanctioned torture in deciding his case, his lawyer says.

"Jemley's decision to join the army was not one he took lightly, nor one borne of patriotic duty. "It wasn't a political decision. I didn't really like the Bush administration any more then, than I do now, but Iraqis are people too and I'm not afraid of doing difficult things. So I thought I could help," Jemley said.

"After scoring extremely high on the army's Defense Language Aptitude Battery test he was asked if he'd become a linguist and was sent to the Army's language school in Monterey, Calif., for two years. Upon graduation, he spent a brief stint at the secretive National Security Agency, the U.S. government's electronic eavesdropping agency, and then sought independent contracts where he could work until his unit was deployed.

"In February, he signed a lucrative contract with Washington's Office of Military Commissions, the legal arm of the Guantanamo trials that is prosecuting a couple dozen detainees, including Khadr. It was when Jemley started doing his own research into the Guantanamo cases that he came up with media reports about the waterboarding of suspects. When he was asked to sign an addendum to his OMC contract, which added that he must be available to be on-call for "other language related assignments," he refused and was fired.

"A second contract offered him work in unspecified locations with "the agency" based in northern Virginia. No one would confirm it was the CIA and when he couldn't get answers about what he'd be doing he turned down the job.

"By then he knew he was trapped. These were positions he could refuse, but if he was ordered to duty he couldn't say no.

" 'I did everything I was supposed to. I'm not afraid to be deployed. I'm not afraid to die,' Jemley said.

"(But) I'm ashamed about what's going on."

So, a Canadian court case of a US Army deseter could be the straw that broke the camel's back regarding the Bush regime's criminal torture policies.