You and I grew up thinking torture was something only bad guys did. Dictators and despots use torture, not the United States. If Frances Sharp were still alive and teaching American history at Warsaw High School today, how would she handle revelations that the United States conducts torture programs?
Abu Ghraib. Secret prisons. Guatanamo Bay. Detainees brutalized and humiliated with full authorization from George W. Bush.
No country and no president can ever be above the law.
I am looking at the famous photograph of General Dwight E. Eisenhower addressing U.S. troops before the D-Day invasion, June 6, 1944 (Vivian McQuoid's late husband is the helmeted soldier quite recognizable at the left of the general). What would those men have thought that day if they had known that 60 years later U.S. army personnel (both male and female) within the chain of command would, with gleeful faces, be photographed torturing detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison?
It was chilling to find on the Internet a graphic 23-page Wikipedia article about those atrocities. Rumors and reports about them have been coming out for several years, but feeble progress has been made toward cleaning up the act. Prosecutors in Germany and Italy are wise to the practice of using the European Union as either a stopover or a final destination for the CIA's future renditions, and are starting the process of bringing to trial CIA agents involved in the kidnappings.
If there is indeed an arguable excuse for torture in the CIA arsenal of interrogation tactics (a faster way to assess national security risks than through formal court proceedings, for instance), let's scrutinize the protocol. There is a great deal at stake. One person's threshold for pain may be lower than another's. Does that affect the veracity of what is screamed? Says who? If inherent in our species there is, even in the most unlikely folks, an anima humana, is there anybody exempt from suffering in the torture chamber? If morality is too weak to govern behavior, what about prudence? Abu Ghraib boomerangs. The world is round. The macabre things we do to others ... will they not get done to us?
Raj Purohit, Senior Fellow at Citizens for Global Solutions, and a specialist in international law and justice, recommends that Congress create an Independent Bipartisan Commission of Torture and U.S. Interrogation Policy. Take action with www.globalsolutions.org Write to President Bush. Write to Senator Bayh. Write to Senator Lugar. Help put behind us this disgraceful chapter in our nation's history.
