Richard Armitage, the former US Deputy Secretary of State, tells Avi Lewis of Al Jazeera why he should have resigned from the Bush administration over its lack of respect for the Geneva conventions.
In the interview, Avi Lewis presses Mr. Armitage about why he remained in the Administration: “So when you knew that the administration of which you were a part was departing from the Geneva Conventions and sidelining them, why didn’t you quit?”
Mr. Armitage responds:
“In hindsight maybe I should have. But in those positions you see how many more battles you have. You maybe fool yourself. You say how much worse would X, Y, or Z be if I weren’t here trying to do it? So torture is a matter of principle as far as I’m concerned. I hope, had I known about it at the time I was serving, I would’ve had the courage to resign.”
Mr. Armitage left the government after George Bush was re-elected in November 2004. He announced he was leaving the day after the resignation of Colin Powell, Mr Bush’s secretary of state. Furthermore, Mr. Armitage told Al Jazeera that no one at the State Department knew prisoners were being abused until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April 2004.
Al Jazeera launches a new series tomorrow called Fault Lines and I’ll cover them here at By The Fault.