We Torture Prisoners, Don't We?

We Torture Prisoners, Don't We?
December 8, 2005


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President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice both insist: “The United States does not authorize or condone torture.” And what do you know? For once, they’re telling the truth.

It is true. The Bush administration does not engage in torture — as they have redefined it. But the way any other civilized country defines it, the United States is, indeed, torturing prisoners in a network of secret CIA prisons, located on foreign soil, to which they are “rendered” by a secret fleet of CIA planes. It is immoral. It is shameful. And it is illegal.

In 1994, the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment — which prohibits all such treatment of prisoners, even during time of war. So how can Bush and Rice argue that the CIA’s rendition and treatment of prisoners is in keeping with our “international obligations”? First, by contending that, in the war on terror, the ban does not apply to foreign nationals held and interrogated abroad. Then, by redefining torture for non-military personnel. In other words, they don’t let our troops torture prisoners; they let the CIA do it instead.

In August 2002, the Bush Justice Department secretly declared all interrogation methods short of “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death” to be acceptable and not considered torture. Once made public, that practice became impossible to defend. So the administration adopted a new set of rules, still in place today. Under Bush’s new rubric, certain specific interrogation techniques are officially listed as “non-torture.” They include: sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, use of dogs to terrorize prisoners, forced nudity, extended exposure to extreme temperatures, waterboarding, mock executions and mock burials. And we wonder why people hate us?

Having rewritten the rules, Bush can legitimately wag his finger at reporters and say: “I did not torture that prisoner, Mohammed al-Kabar.” In just the same way, Bill Clinton, having redefined sex to exclude oral sex, was able to insist: “I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” But Clinton was only playing word games, and so is Bush. Except Bush’s word games are a lot more dangerous — and have a lot more serious consequences.


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