c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) President Bush acknowledged last week (Oct. 11) that the scandal arising from treatment of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison “kind of eased us off the moral high ground” in the war in Iraq.

Bush’s remark came at the end of a news conference when he was asked whether there was anything he would have done differently in prosecuting a war that the administration has sought to justify as essential to combating terrorism around the globe.

At first blush, Bush’s comments seemed to acknowledge that critics in the religious community may be correct in arguing that the administration’s policies on war and the rights of detainees undermine U.S. interests.

But on second look, Bush’s response is more a restatement of his stance that the scandal was an aberration committed by a few rogue military personnel and separate from administration policies. Responsibility for the abuses, the administration continues to maintain, did not go very far up the chain of command.

Ethicists have long criticized the Bush administration for its disregard of the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of prisoners.

Since June, a broad spectrum of prominent U.S. religious figures _ including megachurch pastor Rick Warren, Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, and Sayyid Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America _ have mounted a “Torture is a Moral Issue” campaign to build support for the Geneva Conventions against torture and for the humane treatment of those held captive by other nations.

“The use of torture or other dehumanizing measures is diametrically contrary to the love of God and the gospel of Jesus,” according to the NCC’s Edgar. “One of the ideals of the United States is to stand in the world as a bastion against torture.”

Speaking of the scandal that arose when photographs surfaced in April 2004 of the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad at the hands of U.S. military personnel, Bush said, “I believe that really hurt us.”

“It hurt us internationally. It kind of eased us off the moral high ground; we weren’t a country that was capable of, on the one hand, promoting democracy and then treating people decently.”

But, he continued, “Now the world is seeing that we’ve held those to account who did this.”

Indeed, throughout the news conference, Bush made it clear that the administration’s reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of detainees _ along with his programs for warrantless wiretaps _ would not be ceded for moral purposes. Such programs, he said, are necessary to “give those on the front line of fighting terror the tools necessary to fight terror.”

And that fight, he seems to indicate, continues to be a religious and moral war waged against those who would impose what he has taken to calling an “ideological caliphate.”

“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” he said. “There are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives. And they want us to leave (Iraq). And they want to topple (the) government. They want to extend an ideological caliphate that has no concept of liberty inherent in their beliefs.”

In June, the Supreme Court said the administration could not proceed with military commissions set up to try detainees held by the U.S. The decision also upheld the minimum Geneva Convention standards as binding law on the United States.

But in September, Congress authorized many of the policies and powers the administration has been exercising since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks without either congressional or judicial approval. The new law gives the president the power to identify enemies, imprison them indefinitely and interrogate them without any of the judicial reviews traditionally afforded defendants. Bush is scheduled to sign that law on Tuesday (Oct. 17).

Although some of the harshest interrogation methods are banned, overall the bill strengthens the administration’s view that it is free to do as it feels it needs to do with terrorist suspects.

Some provisions of the new law are sure to be challenged in the courts, but at least for the moment, security has trumped morality.

KRE/RB END ANDERSON