Here’s what can be said for sure: While the CIA and the Bush Administration try to hide their torture policies by destroying a videotape of a brutal interrogation, other proof exists.

The italic description above doesn’t come from a spy novel. It comes from a declassified secret transcript in the investigation of the 2003 death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Mowhoush. The transcript was obtained recently under the federal freedom of information law. Although a Washington Post story referenced the transcript’s existence in a 2005 report, many of the graphic details found in the 285 pages of testimony have never been publicly reported.

Two soldiers were eventually charged in Mowhoush’s death, which occurred two days after the events described above. Those soldiers slipped a sleeping bag over Mowhoush’s head and one of them sat on Mowhoush’s body and smothered him when he didn’t answer questions.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, who did all those things, was found guilty of negligent homicide in 2006. Compared to the beating and abuse that killed Mowhoush, Welshofer’s punishment of 60 days restriction to Fort Carson, Colorado, was a slap on the wrist. But at least Welshofer was tried.

The United States government charged no one for beating Mowhoush with a rubber hose or whipping him with a long thin metal baton called an asp or clubbing him in the chest with a rifle butt. The government charged no one for piling on Mowhoush and indiscriminately punching and kicking him apparently breaking several of his ribs. The government charged no one for lying to Army investigators by saying they were not in the room where Mowhoush was tortured when they actually were.

In fact, although “it was very clear to the doctor (performing the autopsy) that this guy was beaten with several objects,” the worst torturers could not even be questioned, an Army legal officer explained in the transcript that was declassified in 2005, around the time the CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes now causing all the concern. No one has been held responsible for the much of the torture the transcript describes.

The reason why, testified the Army legal officer, is because “the beatings (of Mowhoush) appeared to come from other government agencies that we didn’t have access to investigate.”

“You were not allowed to investigate any allegations involving (non-military) personnel, is that correct?” a defense lawyer asked a different investigating officer.

“That is correct,” came the answer.

“Other governmental agencies” — code for the CIA and its operatives — continue to function under a separate standard that empowers torture, Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch said in an interview last week.

That is why the current flap about the destroyed CIA interrogation tape is so important.

It is why in November 2007, Human Rights Watch pushed for the passage of pending Congressional legislation that “requires all U.S. interrogators to abide by the same rules already in place for the military.”

The military rules grew out of incidents like Mowhoush’s death.

Since then, said Daskal, “The Army has been very specific” about what can and cannot be done to foreign detainees captured in the war on terrorism. By comparison, the CIA has not come close to outlawing torture, she said.

While you’d be hard-pressed to find a CIA or White House official to say that what happened to Mowhoush was standard operating procedure, you’d have to look just as hard to find anyone among the spies or their contractors who has been held accountable for such brutality.

“The CIA has reported some cases (of detainee abuse),” said Daskal. “But only one civilian has been prosecuted for abuse of a detainee in Iraq or Afghanistan. The department’s own internal investigations suggest that many more civilians have been involved in abuse.”

Part of the problem stems from a double standard that thwarts accountability, Daskal insisted.
She cited an executive order issued in July by President Bush that seemed to give the CIA power to use interrogation techniques with foreign detainees that the U.S. military has banned.

The executive order “doesn’t list the techniques available,” said Daskal. “But it’s clear the CIA operates under rules that allow for more abusive interrogation (than the military). Abuse migrates.”

That much is clear from the Mowhoush investigation.

Col. David Teeples, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, actually testified that he “didn’t know what the authorized (interrogation) techniques were.” But he knew “that there were detainees that were kept standing for hours, just to fatigue them. And I know that, you know, sleep deprivation was a technique, and I believe the first time I heard about the claustrophobic effect was in Chief Welshofer’s rebuttal to his letter of reprimand. And, so, I could understand why the sleeping-bag technique could be used as a claustrophobic technique, not intending to harm someone, not intending to kill someone, but intending to put some type of fear in their mind. Now … the way I answered that one question about sitting on somebody, certainly I wouldn’t condone sitting on somebody until they stopped breathing. Now, just sitting on somebody … [to] make somebody afraid … I don’t know that that’s wrong.”

With a commanding officer so morally ambivalent, there is little wonder that civilian and military interrogators step over the line.

A doctor who examined Mowhoush’s body reported that she had seen evidence of similar beatings on another prisoner.

“There was the one particular person that I was quite sure was beaten,” the doctor testified. “He spoke English very well, and he had worked as a translator with me throughout the day and was removed, I believe for interrogation. I’m not even sure. And several hours later, I was called to see him. And he was fine when I saw him in the morning and was badly bruised when I saw him in the afternoon.”

The doctor detailed the injuries.

“He had bruising on the backs of his hands. He had very severe bruising over his entire back. He complained of feet pain, and he had bruising on the bottoms of his feet. And he had bruising on the tops of his feet.”

This is what happens when the Pentagon endorses a “strategy that mimics Red Army methods,” Georgetown University law professor M. Gregg Bloche and British lawyer and Georgetown bioethics fellow Jonathan H. Marks wrote in a November 2005 op-ed piece in The New York Times. The authors claimed methods such as “prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees’ phobias” were all methods of interrogation approved by the military for “high value detainees” at Guantanamo. Those techniques were derived from communist torture methods. They were once used in a defensive program called “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape” — or SERE — to help train American service members who might be captured.

By injecting SERE tactics into America’s interrogation of detainees, Bloche and Marks wrote, “the Pentagon opened a Pandora’s box of potential abuse.”

Often with little to show for it.

Mowhoush was considered a “high value” terrorist.

Only the U.S. tortured him to death before it could get much if any value out of him.

Here, according to the declassified transcript, is how Mowhoush died two days after “other government agencies” beat him so badly that it took five people to carry him back to the cage where he was kept.

At the guidance of Chief Warrant Officer Welshofer, (Specialist Jerry) Loper assisted in placing a green Army sleeping bag … over Mowhoush’s head, actually the feet area over the head so that the face was covered. And then to hold the bag tight, they wrapped a length of electrical wire, not like an extension cord but like white wire that was used to actually run the wiring in the buildings over there. (It was) maybe 20 feet long. And then they laid Mowhoush on the floor … And then at that point … Welshofer straddled Mowhoush, one foot on either side and then kind of squatted or sat on Mowhoush’s upper body while he was on the floor in the sleeping bag … [A]s the interrogation continued, at one point Welshofer covered Mowhoush’s face with his hand and held it for a few seconds and then released …

At first, the Army listed Mowhoush’s cause of death as a “heart attack.” Welshofer told the doctor called to the scene that Mowhoush had “lost control of his urine and collapsed.”

Like the destroyed CIA interrogation videotape that is the topic of today’s controversy, all of this Mowhoush torture testimony was once classified as “secret.” In the now-declassified transcript, an intelligence analyst — whose name is of course blacked out — tries to explain why.

She applies the same rationale that doubtless was applied to the CIA video.

Certain information, said the analyst, “if it were released publicly, could cause serious damage to the national security.”

Or worse, criminal revelations about the people in charge of it.

Thus said Colorado Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff about a bi-partisan call to censure Rep. Doug Bruce for kicking a newspaper photographer. Bruce kicked the photographer for taking his  Bruce’s picture during a public prayer on the floor of the House of Representatives.

The road to stripping public pensions of immoral investments will require significant detours. Colorado has mapped out two. On Tuesday, the state’s retirement program announced a moratorium on new investments in companies doing significant amounts of business in the Iranian energy industry. This follows legislation last year that decreed divestiture of Sudanese-related investments.Colorado’s move puts it among the leaders of a nascent national movement to strip all public pensions of Iran-related investments.

However, until the concept of fiduciary responsibility changes, buying stocks and bonds that generate enough return to fund the retirement checks of former state employees begins and ends with an amoral commitment to making money.

Meredith Williams, who directs the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association known as PERA, acknowledged as much after the hoopla of a press conference in the governor’s office announcing the agreement on Iran.

“PERA employees are part of a trust,” Williams explained. “By law, they have a fiduciary responsibility to do what is in the best interest of (retired) employees.”

That means that for all the talk of punishing Iran financially for its contributions to terrorism and the distribution of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) used to take American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, the law may not allow PERA to dump hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock in companies doing business in Iran.

“That’s possible,” Williams agreed in an impromptu press conference in the halls of the Capitol.

The legislature set the legal standard for automatic divestiture at genocide. There is no genocide in Iran – at least none that has been reported and confirmed as is the case in Sudan. The upshot is that Colorado’s retirees could be living partly on blood money for years to come.

The moratorium on future investments in Iran-linked companies is a start. It avoided legislative action that is hard to adjust to meet changing circumstances. It received the blessings of Republicans and Democrats, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council.

State Treasurer Cary Kennedy, a Democrat, called the Iranian divestiture resolution an “example of success achieved when everyone works together without partisan bickering.”

“America’s public pensions should not aid and abet regimes that build IEDs or call for the destruction of Israel,” added Republican state Sen. Josh Penry. “This policy is rooted in the best interest of those who invested in PERA. This agreement is a model to be emulated by other pensions …”

It is also a model without deadlines. The Iran divestiture resolution that the PERA board unanimously endorsed includes no certain dates for taking specific actions.

“The biggest change is in gathering information (about companies’ Iranian connections),” Williams said. “We’ll go more in depth and engage the companies (in discussions of their Iranian ties) – what portion of their operations are in Iran. There is not a time frame. It will vary from firm to firm. Some may blow us off. Some may bury us in information.”

PERA will file quarterly reports of its progress in Iranian divestiture. But right now, it has not even developed a list of companies that will be excluded from future investments, nor has it decided which, if any, of its current holdings ought to be shed.

The standard will be if a company has invested more than $20 million in the Iranian energy industry in any one of a specified 10 years, Williams explained.

Once again, no time frame exists for PERA establishing a list of those who have done that.

The promise of action hinges on untangling often complex trails of ownership that wind their way back to Iran. Or as Williams put it: “Companies owning companies owning companies.”

Even that does not guarantee the sale of existing holdings if PERA can’t find non-Iran-linked companies that offer a comparable value and return.

Gov. Bill Ritter was right when he said that divestiture by public pensions helped bring an end to apartheid in South Africa.

But as long as the road to what’s morally right runs through the intersection of what’s fiscally sound, the citizens can expect gridlock.

While most House business is of the watching-paint-dry variety, the emotions shown by Democrats and Republicans Monday gave the public a reason to watch — and more importantly — to tune in again.

Romanoff’s recollections of visiting the Little Rock, Ark., high school where federal troops had to escort African-Americans to enter were especially moving.

Meanwhile, few discernible technical glitches messed up opening day. And there were some pleasant surprises for those of us who tested the new system remotely, watching from home on Internet-connected computers at www.coloradochannel.net or TV sets tuned to Comcast Cable channel 165.

Sitting in a control room a floor above the House floor, director Deb Lastowka manipulated the televised images among four remote-control cameras and the feed from a mounted projector.

Viewers went from wide-angle scenes of the entire chamber to tight shots of speakers at the podium and to some pre-set shots of the Speaker’s gavel and a fancy chandelier that hangs above the chamber. The only real problem was back-lighting from a pair of un-curtained windows on either side of the dais that caused some speakers’ faces to disappear in darkness at certain points.

Lastowka will try to block the light from the windows. Otherwise, she was satisfied as she showed me the control panel after the inaugural broadcast.

“(Producer) Laura (Graves) and I work for D Productions that runs non-profit public access television,” Lastowka said.

Behind her, a bank of monitors glowed with a variety of images from the House chamber. What looked like a remote control joy stick to control cameras sat on the table.

“We studied two dozen states that have this,” Romanoff said of the TV system’s design.

Among the bells and whistles is a “Did You Know?” segment designed by Graves. It includes interesting tidbits of Colorado civics that air when the House is not in session, along with nuts-and-bolts information, such as daily calendars of bill readings and committee hearings.

Did you know, for instance, that the current state flag was adopted in 1911?

There are plenty of other minutiae available, as well as the ability to watch government in action – or inaction, as the case may be.

No, newly sworn Rep. Doug Bruce didn’t kick any newspaper photographers on the House floor as he did last week.

Still, all in all, the first day of what legislators billed “Colorado Open House” TV gave Coloradans unprecedented access that turned out to be what Romanoff promised in a Sunday news release.

“No one’s likely to confuse us with ‘Entertainment Tonight,’” Mr. Speaker said. “This is more like ‘Education Today.’”

Colorado Rep. Doug Bruce’s apparent inability to utter those three words after kicking a newspaper photographer could cost him most of his influence in the General Assembly.Bruce’s fellow Republicans are annoyed with Bruce’s behavior. They are as annoyed as the El Paso County representative was with a newspaper photographer who took Bruce’s picture during a public prayer on the House floor a week ago today.

Bruce kicked the photographer and now the legislature will return the favor.

The GOP members of a House panel investigating Bruce’s assault were his stiffest critics during a three-hour fact-finding hearing Friday afternoon.

The panel recommended censure and a demand of apology from Bruce, the fiscally conservative author of Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Bruce was appointed to the House to fill out the term of Bill Cadman, who went to the state Senate.

Now, because of his own arrogance, the newly seated representative can expect to be little more than a punch line in bad jokes, even within his own party.

At Friday’s hearing, Bruce droned on about a “Triple Play” media conspiracy forged by the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Denver’s Channel 4 TV to provoke and record an embarrassing action by him.

Bruce made a big deal about the lack of force he had applied with his foot to the knee of the Rocky photographer kneeling in front of him.

“The force might cause a football to fall off a tee,” Bruce wanted his brethren to understand. “This wasn’t a field goal kick.”

Bruce hoped to demonstrate, but wasn’t allowed to since sane people of any political persuasion understood it doesn’t make a difference.

Bruce’s conspiracy theory, his rationalization of obviously inappropriate behavior, his rambling dodges offered as a self-professed paragon of moral values and law and order grew not only absurd, but offensive.

“Would keeping your hands and feet to yourself be an option in this situation?” wondered the investigative panel’s co-chair, Republican Steve King of Grand Junction.

When Bruce answered no, there was no place left to go, save where you might take a petulant four-year-old.

So Bruce’s committee assignments may be in jeopardy from the House’s minority leadership. But whether or not House Republican leader Mike May does what he should and strips Bruce of committee assignments, Mr. TABOR’s credibility with his party caucus is shot. And Bruce pulled the trigger.

At Friday’s hearing King asked Bruce if he was “angry” when he kicked the photographer.

Bruce said he was “annoyed.”

“You indicated it was acceptable to kick a photographer because you were annoyed,” Republican Rep. Ray Rose then asked. “Would you consider it OK for me to kick you if I’m annoyed with you?”

Instead of answering, Bruce launched into a bizarre explanation that though he applied his foot to someone else’s knee, it was not a kick, but a “nudge.”

This came after a sergeant-at-arms who witnessed the whole incident had testified that he told his boss that Bruce “kicked” the photographer.

While insisting that he was no “wild man” and that he didn’t “lose it,” Bruce gave his enemies all the ammunition they need to blow him off as a nut job. But the real damage came from his disarming any potential allies.

  “I find it appalling that Rep. Bruce tries to cloak himself in prayer and patriotism,” Republican panel member Frank McNulty told the hearing. “It’s not OK to physically assault another person on the floor of the Colorado House unless you’re threatened.”

Even if you’re threatened, the best course of action still might be to call a sergeant-at-arms.

Still, McNulty’s point was a no-brainer that showed just how little wisdom or grasp of political reality Bruce exhibited.

That likely will come back to haunt him with his constituents, but it will surely come back to haunt him with his Republican colleagues.

“I can’t justify that you have more power than the pope or Billy Graham to decree that you won’t be photographed during public prayer,” an openly peeved King told Bruce. “Rather than show spirituality, you showed violence. Republican or Democrat, I will show you no quarter.”

School board member Kevin Patterson called the conversation “off the wall.”

“If a kid has surgery, there’s always a health plan that can make accommodation,” he said. “To say the new mom has to come back the day after delivery does not make sense.”

And it isn’t happening, school officials insist.

“The assumptions were not correct,” school system spokesman Alex Sanchez said of the student and counselor claims.

Still, the policy needs adjustment, admitted school board Chairwoman Theresa Pena.

What it won’t get is a controversial title that radio talk show hosts, critics of public education and political challengers of DPS’ elected school board can feast on.

“We are not going to have a maternity leave policy,” Pena stressed. “What needs to be changed are regulations. Different schools were handling things differently, not just for young mothers, but any long-term absence. It needs to be addressed.”

Sanchez said the school system already offers support to pregnant students under an overall health leave policy. “We have never given unexcused absences to anyone who missed school to have a baby,” Sanchez said.

Nor has the school system automatically given unexcused absences to teen mothers who take time off to recover from delivery and bond with newborns, Sanchez continued.

“What happens is if the student comes to school and says, `I’m pregnant. Here’s my plan.’ — that’s an excused absence. But students are still accountable and responsible for the school work they miss.”

Pena said the school system needs “to update regulations so there is some consistency.”

The conflict stems from competing demands of recovery and academic progress.

“If you ditch school for 30 days, it’s a truancy situation,” said Pena. “That’s different than a health care situation.”

The goal, she emphasized, “is to keep kids in school.”

Giving birth and bonding with newborns clearly falls into the category of health-related absence. The problem is that birth and bonding should not exempt new teen moms from having to do school work if they want to pass on to the next higher grade.

Whether or not your absence is excused, after you miss a certain number of assignments, you’re not academically prepared for promotion.

“It goes to an attendance issue of so many accrued absences,” Pena said.

It also goes to a sad irony.

As bad as the pregnancy rate is in Denver Public Schools, the dropout rate is worse.

So administrators will tweak the scales that balance health with learning, hoping to keep the school board from a politically risky vote.

  “We’re waiting for the language,” Sanchez said of the policy clarification.

It should “respect family or medical professional” wishes while insuring that students who must miss school continue to make academic progress.

“It’s about the application of current policy,” Patterson said.

He’s right. It should not take a vote of the Board of Education to get teachers to homebound students whether they just had a baby or an appendectomy. But the students of the Denver Public Schools need to understand one thing before they answer the unprotected call of hormones that can change the rest of their lives:

Bonding with your baby will never give you the skills to provide a decent home for that child.