Government wrongly ignores inhumane torture tactics

By Rachel Marcus     5/14/09 7:00pm

"Some of life has to be mysterious. Sometimes in life you wanna just keep walkin'." This is what Peggy Noonan, Reagan speechwriter and frequent Republican pundit, had to say about the U.S. Attorney General's recent declassification of documents that describe a number of methods explicitly authorized by Bush Administration officials for use as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA. Among the approved procedures described are facial slaps, sleep deprivation, stress positions, enclosure of the prisoner in a small box with large insects and the most controversial of all these techniques, waterboarding.

Although evidence of the United States' use of torture on suspected terrorist prisoners has been public since at least 2004, the recent release of these new documents has created a media upªroar on both sides of the political spectrum. Several prominent Democrats in the Senate, such as Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, have pointed to these documents as evidence of the need for independent investigations into the Bush Administration officials who approved the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques."

On the other hand, many Republicans are simply upset that the documents were released at all; they seem undisturbed by the notion that we tortured prisoners, even though President Bush himself emphatically insisted that "the United States does not torture." The argument on this side holds that al-Qaeda's knowledge of the details of our torture techniques will allow them to train against these tactics. Therefore, our torture methods will become ineffective because al-Qaeda operatives will be inured to them. Karl Rove even went as far as to say that "the techniques have been ruined!" on a recent Fox News interview.

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But that is patently untrue. In short, we lied about torturing our prisoners, and now those who supported the liars are upset that the truth is finally coming to light.

This kind of attitude is criminal hypocrisy. Torturing prisoners is a violation of the Geneva Convention on human rights. The United States has long viewed itself to be a beacon of moral decency on the world stage, and it has repeatedly denied violations of the Convention's treatises.

The controversy in this situation lies in the sticky definition of torture outlined by the Bush Administration. Although the authors of the recently-released memos state that torture will not be allowed for use in interrogations, they then go on to exempt a number of tactics that are plainly torture methods, including the infamous practice of waterboarding.

Long favored as an "enhanced interrogation tactic" by despotic regimes like the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge, waterboarding (as per the CIA guidelines) entails strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined at an angle of 10 to 15 degrees, then pouring water over a cloth covering over his/her mouth and nose from a height of six to 18 inches for a time period of no more than 40 seconds at a time. By simulating a feeling of drowning, this procedure intends to create an intense feeling of fear that will supposedly lead to prisoners to divulge more information that they may be holding back.

Now, several voices in the media, including Newt Gingrich and New York Times Washington editor Doug Jehl, have stated that they "don't know" if waterboarding should be considered as torture. This statement is ludicrous. In the years following World War II, the United States prosecuted and even executed several Japanese for waterboarding American POWs during the war, on the basis that waterboarding is unjustifiable torture. A half-century later, the Bush Administration made good use of this precisely this technique in the interest of "national security"; one prisoner was reported to have been waterboarded 183 times.

One premise of the argument against the release of the documents maintains that torture tactics have led to the revelation of valuable information about potential terror threats, insisting that Americans are safer as a result. At the same time, a few Bush-era CIA officials have said publicly that although they support the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," much of the valuable information they obtained from questioning prisoners came before they began applying torture. Regardless of its supposed usefulness, torturing prisoners is a Geneva Convention-certified human rights violation, and the United States, in its self-regarding position of moral authority in the world, should be ashamed of its use in any context.

Now that the public is widely aware of this information, the main problem we face going forward is the cowardice of our leaders in addressing the situation. Barack Obama has specifically said that no CIA operatives will be prosecuted for following orders from their superiors.

However, he has also said that the current Administration would like to "move forward" instead of supporting efforts to investigate and punish those people involved with authorizing the use of torture. Essentially, he, like Noonan, would like to "keep on walkin'" and forget about the whole torture ordeal.

This is unacceptable.

Crimes that go unpunished are likely to be committed again; by effectively pardoning Bush Administration officials for their misdeeds, the Obama Administration has dealt a slap in the face to the Geneva Convention and to human rights advocates everywhere. The United States must conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations of torture and punish those who issued orders accordingly.

As a nation, we cannot pretend to assume a moral high ground in any international situation if we simply suppress this issue. Americans need to demand support for initiatives like those of Sens. Leahy and Feingold, such that we can face our past errors as a nation and perhaps even learn a collective lesson or two in the process. Only in this way will we ever truly be able to "move forward" into the future.

Rachel Marcus is a Jones College senior.

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