By Karen J Greenberg
Published: May 30 2008 21:08 Last updated: May 30 2008 21:08
In April 2004, the American TV news exposé 60 Minutes aired a now infamous set of photographs depicting torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Images of US servicemen and women taunting prisoners with leashes and dogs, and of a hooded man connected to electrodes, overnight brought the word torture into present-day consciousness.
Weeks later, a US Department of Defense paper, the Taguba Report, catalogued countless instances of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. The photos, it seemed, hinted at just a small part of a larger policy of coercive interrogation.
Since then, investigations and rebuttals have created two battling narratives over this issue, between law and action. The law is clear. In the US torture – defined as an act intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering – is illegal. Under international law it is also illegal. Yet the Bush administration continues to defend itself in words and legislation. And while laws have been passed to accommodate the administration – the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act – the US Supreme Court refuses to support circumventing international law.
How has the world’s leading democracy, a model for the ideal that power and decency reinforce one another, become the place where torture is debated rather than outlawed? How is it that a religiously devout president has justified torture by American hands?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60a7754e-2de6-11dd-b92a-000077b07658,s01=1.html
