Much of the public debate about the "enhanced interrogation program" conducted by the Bush Administration centers around the topic of the effectiveness of the program. It has become public record that tactics such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, fear tactics, simulated electrocution, and forced standing were performed against accused terrorists at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.
Multiple sources have identified such acts as paramount to torture. These sources include The United Nations, The United States Department of Justice, Senator John McCain, and President Barack Obama. The debate as to whether the "enhanced interrogations" are in fact torture can no longer continue. Waterboarding is torture, plain and simple. Both the Geneva Convention--of which the United States has been a signatory since 1955--and The United Nations Convention Against Torture-- of which the United States has been a signatory since signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the United States Senate in 1994-- explicitly and universally prohibit torture, without exceptions. Article 1.1 of the Convention Against Torture states thusly:
Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Furthermore, Section 2.2 states:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
Upon ratification of the Convention Against Torture, the United States became legally bound to the text of the treaty, meaning that the United States willfully gave up any supposed right to inflict torture upon another human. Since multiple sources have confirmed that the "enhanced interrogation program" was in fact torture, then the United States is in direct violation to the treaty.
The Convention Against Torture also codifies into United States law the criminality of committing torture. The United States is bound by both Domestic and International law to investigate any and all valid claims of torture that take place in, by, or on behalf of the United States. This compliance is not optional.
The interrogations methods devised by the Bush Administration are torture, and there is no other recourse than swift, independent investigation of these acts. The effectiveness of such "enhanced interrogation methods" is completely inconsequential, because the act of torture is universally illegally, no matter the aims or justification. Any and all that are involved in the planning, execution, or support of torture must be brought to justice for the crimes they have committed. The Nuremberg Trials, led by the United States, conclusively determined that necessity and the furtherance of orders are invalid justifications for the crime of torture. If we are to live in a society that purports to have "liberty and justice for all", then we must prosecute those that willfully violate the law, wherever they may be found.
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