It's a tragedy that any American might even have to engage in a post-facto examination of why torture is wrong, but this is where we are.
- For starters, torture is illegal under both national and international law, and its practice is prohibited by treaties and conventions to which the U.S. is a signatory.
- Americans that participate in -- on any level from direct application to administrative support and encouragement, including, I might add, the failure to investigate and hold accountable -- the practice of torture are guilty of crimes and are morally corrupt.
- Among the serious consequences for our nation, other than the disgrace and humiliation it brings upon our citizens, is the undeniable fact that, once we torture, we open up all Americans abroad to the possibility of being tortured as never before. Remember when we threatened Saddam Hussein with dire consequences if he so much as touched a hair on the body of a downed pilot during the Persian Gulf War because mistreatment of prisoners was beyond the pale? What did he do? He avoided harming American prisoners because he knew it was a door he should never open, for his own sake. No more: now torture is fair game for U.S. citizens because we have lost our moral authority.
- Torture is unnecessary and counterproductive because professional interrogators have long known that reliable information can be obtained by legal means and that information obtained by illegal and immoral means is so very often unreliable, costing us a loss of moral authority with little if any gain and likely having a negative impact on our national security.
- Renaming torture with euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation techniques" doesn't change a thing and in fact serves to only enhance its moral corruption. Waterboarding is torture; stress positions is torture; extreme heat and cold is torture.
Abu Ghraib |
For the record, here are links to the relevant torture statutes and treaties, as well as to a number of excellence writings and sites about the subject:
United States Code: Title 18,CHAPTER 113C—TORTURE
UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- Article 5
UN Convention Against Torture
UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Third Geneva Convention -- Treatment of Prisoners of War
Fourth Geneva Convention -- Protection of Civilians in Time of War
Is torture against the law? -- Slate Magazine
Topic Torture -- Salon.com (Look through the many articles, especially by Glenn Greenwald)
How America tiptoed into the torture chamber -- Andrew Sullivan
The Bradley Manning Torture Accountability Project
The Center for Torture Accountability
Guantanamo Bay |
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