Jamie Mayerfeld - University of Washington



“Torture in the War on Terror”

By Jamie Mayerfeld

Lecture sponsored by Amnesty International at the University of Washington, October 20, 2004

(last revised Dec. 11, 2004)

Sometime after September 11, the Bush administration decided to use torture as a tool in fighting the War on Terrorism. First it decided that harsh treatment – not to be called torture, but amounting to torture in practice – might be necessary to extract valuable intelligence from its captives. It then permitted the widespread use of such treatment. At the same time, it set about reinterpreting the law to make the use of torture logistically easier, and to remove the threat of criminal punishment against those responsible for torture. These choices constitute a policy of cruelty, both shameful and self-defeating.

That the administration adopted a policy of torture is shown by the following decisions. First, it introduced harsh forms of treatment against suspected members of Al Qaeda and Taliban, most of whom are held in Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay. The treatment degenerated into torture, and no serious effort was made to rein it in until after Abu Ghraib became a public scandal.

Second, the administration received numerous reports of abuse and torture in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay from the Red Cross and other watchdog organizations, but took no action of any kind until it learned of the famous photos. Moreover, its response was incomplete: it halted abuse in some locations (like Abu Ghraib, we believe) but not others (like Guantánamo Bay).

Third, the United States has shipped detainees to foreign countries whose security forces are known to use torture as a means of interrogation.[1]

Let’s start with Abu Ghraib.[2] From the Taguba report[3] we know that detainees were kept naked for days at a time, forced into humiliating sexual poses, hooded, forced to stand, beaten, jumped on, set upon by dogs, sodomized, and threatened with rape, electrocution, and execution. We know that the same abuses were committed in several other detention facilities in Iraq.[4] And let us recall that the famous photos record not only deliberate sexual humiliation, but also severe beating (leading in some cases to death) and the use of stress positions intended to cause intense pain. The black hoods were kept on for hours or days a time, often interfering with breathing; some hooded prisoners died by asphyxiation. The famous scarecrow photo documents the use of forced standing, an excruciating form of torture used by, among other regimes, the Gestapo, Stalin’s NKVD, the Brazilian military, and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Sleep deprivation (another technique used at Abu Ghraib) is an ancient form of torture.[5] All throughout 2003, the Red Cross and other organizations protested the abuses of Iraqi detainees, but the US impeded access by Red Cross officials to Abu Ghraib prisoners, and (to repeat) only took corrective action after it learned of the photos. [6]

Anyone who claims that what happened at Abu Ghraib “really wasn’t torture” needs to read the sworn depositions by the victims.[7] Here is a typical excerpt:

…… The guards started to hit me on my broken leg several times with a solid plastic stick. He told me he got shot in his leg and he showed me the scar and he would retaliate from me for this. They stripped me naked. One of them told me he would rape me. He drew a picture of a woman to my back and makes me stand in shameful position holding my buttocks. Someone else asked me, “Do you believe in anything?” I said to him, “I believe in Allah.” So he said, “But I believe in torture and I will torture you. When I go home to my country, I will ask whoever comes after me to torture you.” Then they handcuffed me and hung me to the bed. They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion. They ordered me to thank Jesus that I’m alive. And I did what they ordered me. This is against my belief. They left me hang from the bed and after a little while I lost consciousness ……”

The abuses at Abu Ghraib were imported from Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.[8] Interrogation officers at Abu Ghraib were trained by officers from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion at Bagram Airforce Base in Afghanistan. Already in December 2002 the Washington Post reported that detainees in Bagram were forced to stand or kneel for hours in black hoods, and forced into stressful positions.[9] These reports are independently confirmed by Human Rights Watch, which documents, in addition, the use of extreme sleep deprivation, exposure to freezing temperatures, and severe beatings. There have been several suspicious deaths in custody. The US military has dragged its feet in investigating these deaths, though it picked up its pace somewhat after the Abu Ghraib revelations.[10] It recently implicated 28 officers and enlisted men in the beating deaths of two detainees at Bagram.[11]

Then there is Guantánamo. The Washington Post has reported that in April 2003 senior officials at the Pentagon and Justice Department approved a list of about twenty interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, including: the reversal of sleep patterns, and exposure to heat, cold, loud music, and bright lights.[12] There is some confusion about the conditions under which such techniques could be officially applied, and whether harsher techniques also received official authorization. But we know that, in reality, Guantanamo became a living hell for many of its inmates. Here is the testimony of one former prisoner:

I was in extreme pain and so weak that I could barely stand. It was freezing cold and I was shaking like a washing machine. They questioned me at gunpoint and told me that if I confessed I could go home. They had already searched me and my cell twice that day, gone through my stuff, touched my Koran, felt my body around my private parts ……I heard a guard talking into his radio, "ERF, ERF, ERF," and I knew what was coming - the Extreme Reaction Force. The five cowards, I called them - five guys running in with riot gear. They pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting; in all I must have brought up five cupfuls. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.[13]

Other former detainees reported:

Our interrogations in Guantánamo… were conducted with us chained to the floor for hours on end in circumstances so prolonged that it was practice to have plastic chairs…  that could be easily hosed off because prisoners would be forced to urinate during the course of them and were not allowed to go to the toilet……One practice … was ‘short shackling’ where we were forced to squat without a chair with our hands chained between our legs and chained to the floor.  If we fell over, the chains would cut into our hands.  We would be left in this position for hours before an interrogation, during the interrogations (which could last as long as 12 hours), and sometimes for hours while the interrogators left the room.  The air conditioning was turned up so high that within minutes we would be freezing.  There was strobe lighting and loud music played that was itself a form of torture.  Sometimes dogs were brought in to frighten us…  Sometimes detainees would be taken to the interrogation room day after day and kept short-shackled without interrogation ever happening, sometimes for weeks on end.[14]

These testimonies come from prisoners released by the authorities, after all evidence linking them to Al Qaeda or Taliban was discredited. Their reports are confirmed not only by fellow detainees,[15] but also by Red Cross officials,[16] FBI agents,[17] and by the very guards and interrogation officers meting out this treatment. The latter told the New York Times:

One regular procedure … was [to make] uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels… Such sessions could last up to 14 hours with breaks.[18]

A Red Cross report leaked to the press reported that in June 2004 Guántanamo Bay was still scene to “humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes [and] use of forced positions … The construction of such a system whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture."[19] There can be no doubt that torture remains the official policy of the United States in Guantánamo Bay.[20]

When the Pentagon decided to beef up interrogation practices in Guantánamo, it entrusted the task to General Geoffrey Miller. At Guantánamo Miller’s major innovation, in which he took great pride, was to coordinate the work of detention guards and intelligence officers, adjusting the conditions of detention to facilitate interrogation.[21] The model was considered enough of a success that Miller was sent by Secretary Rumsfeld on a tour to Abu Ghraib late in the summer of 2003 to improve intelligence operations there. [22] Miller left behind instructions for the training of a detention guard force “that sets conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees.”[23] His visit also led to the posting at Abu Ghraib of new “Interrogation Rules of Engagement.” The harsher of these techniques, which required a commander’s approval, included: withholding of food and water; isolation for longer than 30 days; use of threatening dogs; sensory deprivation (meaning hooding) for up to 72 hours; sleep deprivation for up to 72 hours; stress positions up to 45 minutes.[24]

We also know that the US government holds a dozen or more high-level Al Qaeda suspects in undisclosed locations around the world and that it adopted secret rules authorizing their subjection to interrogation techniques such as “water-boarding,” in which the prisoner is held under water and made to believe he will drown. Sources confirmed to the New York Times that water-boarding has been used against one detainee at least. Others have probably been tortured as well.[25] Human Rights Watch notes that these people have been effectively “disappeared.”[26] History suggests that they are in serious danger of being killed so that they will never report the treatment they received or the identity of their captors.

Finally, the administration has engaged in the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” or outsourcing the torture of terrorist suspects to other countries.[27] According to the New York Times, US agents have been present at some of the torture sessions conducted by foreign governments. A secret administration memorandum states that US personnel are absolved of legal responsibility “if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country.”[28] And recently the Bush administration sought to pass legislation that would make it easier to send terrorist suspects to countries where torture is used. Under current law the US may not send an individual to a country where it “is more likely than not” that he or she will be tortured. The proposed legislation, withdrawn after public outcry, would have allowed deportation unless the individual could prove “by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured” – an almost impossible standard.[29]

All this information, amply documented in the press, puts the lie to the Bush administration’s claim that abuses brought to light by the Abu Ghraib scandal are only the work of a “few bad apples.”

The administration’s intentions are made plain in a serious of secret internal memos (subsequently leaked to the press) that addressed the prosecution of the War on Terrorism. If the Administration wanted to use torture, it knew that it faced two legal obstacles in doing so: the Third Geneva Convention governing the treatment of Prisoners of War, and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The US has ratified both treaties. Under the Torture Convention, the US is obliged to prosecute and punish any citizen or official responsible for torture. Under the Third Geneva Convention, the US is obliged to prosecute and punish any citizen or official responsible for the torture or inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Congress has formally recognized these obligations by passing the Torture Act and the War Crimes Act. The Department of Justice has the obligation to prosecute government officials or ordinary citizens guilty of the aforementioned crimes.

As we now know, the administration devoted an extraordinary effort to circumventing these legal commitments. It asked its top lawyers whether government officials were in any danger of being prosecuted under the War Crimes Act or the Torture Act. In a series of long, detailed, meticulously crafted memos, the senior legal staff of the White House and the Department of Justice argued that administration officials could not be touched by either of these acts or their parent treaties. President Bush was intimately involved in this process. Referring to the President in a May 21 interview with the Washington Post, White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales, said, "Anytime a discussion came up about interrogations with the president, . . . the directive was, 'Make sure it is lawful. Make sure it meets all of our obligations under the Constitution, U.S. federal statutes and applicable treaties.'”[30] An unnamed senior administration official told the Post, President Bush "felt very keenly that his primary responsibility was to do everything within his power to keep the country safe, and he was not concerned with appearances or politics or hiding behind lower-level officials. That is not to say he was ready to authorize stuff that would be contrary to law. The whole reason for having the careful legal reviews that went on was to ensure he was not doing that."[31] It is clear that the memos were written to produce the legal conclusions requested by the President. The memos became the template for administration policy, and their language is quoted in numerous subsequent interdepartmental and intradepartmental memos up and down the bureaucratic ranks.

Let’s look first at the Third Geneva Convention (and the War Crimes Act). With the support of White House Counsel Gonzales and the Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jay S. Bybee, President Bush determined in early 2002 that members of Taliban and Al Qaeda were not protected persons under the Third Geneva Convention. The decision, criticized by most legal experts, broke with a 50 year-practice by the United States of granting POW status to its military enemies. The practical result of Bush’s finding (if heeded) is that US officials could not be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act for subjecting Al Qaeda or Taliban members to torture or inhumane treatment. In the press release of February 7, 2002, announcing his decision, President Bush stated, “As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely.”[32] The internal memos prove that this assertion was insincere. In his memo to Bush, Gonzales explains that the reason for denying POW status to Al Qaeda and the Taliban is to shield government officials from prosecution under the War Crimes Act for interrogations methods that might be perceived as inhumane. “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war… The nature of the new war places a high premium on …… factors such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians…… [The proposed finding] substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441)…… Punishments for violations of Section 2441 include the death penalty…… Some of the language of the [Geneva Convention] is undefined (it prohibits, for example, ‘outrages upon personal dignity’ and ‘inhuman treatment’) and it is difficult to predict with confidence what actions might be deemed to constitute violations of the relevant provisions of the [Convention] …… Your determination would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”[33]

So much for the Third Geneva Convention. What about the Torture Convention and the Federal Torture Act? A 50-page memo from Bybee to Gonzales dated August 1, 2002, explicitly addresses this question, and delivers a remarkable set of findings. [34] The memo delivers an innovatively narrow definition of torture: “Physical pain amounting to torture,” it determines, “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.” Therefore, many interrogation methods that constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, do not fall under the Torture Act. The memo goes on to suggest that the use of torture as a means of interrogation might be justified on grounds of necessity, self-defense (meaning defense of the nation), or by the claim that the infliction of pain and suffering was not the “specific intent” of the interrogator. Finally, in case there was any doubt, the memo declares that the President, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, is constitutionally permitted to order torture if he deems it necessary to protect the nation in time of war. In other words, any treaty or congressional statute that forbids the President from using torture is constitutionally prohibited. Here’s what Jay Leno had to say about the matter: “According to the New York Times, last year White House lawyers concluded that President Bush could legally order interrogators to torture and even kill people in the interest of national security - so if that’s legal, what the hell are we charging Saddam Hussein with?”[35] Jay Bybee, the memo’s author, is now a Federal Appeals Court Judge for the Ninth Circuit.

The so-called torture memo was written in secret, its findings studiously concealed from the public. When it was leaked last June, Justice Department officials admitted considerable embarrassment and disowned the memo’s findings. But President Bush was noticeably reluctant to renounce the prerogatives bestowed on him by the torture memo. Here is an exchange he had with a reporter last June:

James Harding (Financial Times): “Mr. President, I want to return to the question of torture. What we've learned from these memos this week is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Pentagon lawyers have essentially worked out a way that US officials can torture detainees without running afoul of the law. So when you say you want the US to adhere to international and US laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question: Is torture ever justified?”

President Bush: “Look, I'm going to say it one more time. ...Maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at these laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions...from me to the government.”[36]

Only after two more weeks had gone by did President Bush bring himself to say that he did not condone torture and had never ordered torture.[37]

The abuses committed in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram are not new. They closely resemble, for example, the forms of “physical force” used by the Israelis in the occupied territories, and the “five techniques” used by the British in Northern Ireland in the early 1970’s.[38] These methods have been passed from government to government, and the United States has long been a party to such exchanges. A Honduran officer reported in 1988 that his Battalion had been instructed in similar methods of torture by the US Army and the CIA.[39] Abuse inside US prisons is a persistent problem. The United States used torture in the Vietnam War, and maintained close relationships with Latin American dictatorships that practiced torture on a wide scale. The contemporary US human rights movement arose largely in reaction to revelations about US policy in Vietnam, Central America, and the Southern Cone. It pushed through a series of reforms that were supposed to prevent what is happening now.

Off the record, administration officials like to cite the ticking time bomb scenario, a staple of pro-torture arguments. In the now familiar story, torture should be permitted as a last resort against a terrorist who refuses to tell us the location of a bomb that is set to kill a large number of people. In this scenario, torture is made to appear an act of pure self-defense against a wicked individual who is bent on our destruction and who can spare himself simply by giving us the information that will avoid a horrendous crime. But the ticking bomb scenario is a fantasy. When admitted as a justified instance of torture, it will lead, and in fact has led, to widespread torture of the innocent. In the imagined scenario, we know beyond a certainty that our captive has information that if revealed will prevent a bomb from exploding. When can we know this beyond a certainty? The story supposes we have certain knowledge of every relevant fact except the location of the bomb. This kind of “all-but omniscience” is enjoyed by readers of novels but is not to be had in real life. That is why I call it a fantasy. The temptation will always be to ascribe the life-saving information to prisoners who deny having it, and to see their denial as further proof of their guilt.

Alan Dershowitz is the most well-known proponent of the ticking time bomb argument. His favorite example of the ticking bomb is a story reported by the Washington Post of the use of torture by Philippine agents in 1995. The Filipinos, Dershowitz says, “probably under our direction, tortured somebody and stopped 13 or 11 airplanes from being exploded over the Pacific Ocean and may have saved the life of the pope.”[40] But Dershowitz has manipulated the story. According to the Post article he cites[41] (December 30, 2001), all the relevant information about these two plots was contained in the prisoner’s computer files already available to Philippine investigators. It’s not clear whether the 67 days of savage torture added any reliable or useful information. And how many other people were uselessly tortured by Philippine authorities under this rubric? Dershowitz is a Harvard Law School Professor and world-famous litigator with an army of research assistants at his disposal. Evidently this is the best example he can find.

Torture is a poor means of gathering information. Interrogators cannot easily distinguish true information from false. They are liable to mistake false confessions as true, and dismiss true confessions as false.[42] Yet despite its obvious disadvantages, torture is an all-too tempting crutch for stymied officials who want to prove that they are “doing something,” and want to report results, however meaningless, to their superiors. Torture, once introduced, tends to spread and become routine. It preempts more challenging but also far more valuable methods of gathering intelligence that rely on the recruitment of voluntary informants. Indeed it sabotages such efforts by converting potential informants into diehard enemies.[43]

Israeli officials claim that information gained from using “physical pressure” – that is, torture – against Palestinian detainees has helped stop some terrorist attacks. This could be true. But the point is that Israelis had to torture their way through thousands of innocent Palestinians to get this information. The experience surely converted many of the victims, their friends and relatives into agents or supporters of terrorism.[44] (We should remember that Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s “brain,” was severely tortured during the three years he spent in Egyptian prisons in the early 1980s.)

The ticking bomb scenario is a red herring. Torture is an unfathomably cruel act. Its harm does not end when the torturer stops his activity. Victims of torture remain tortured for the rest of their life. Torture destroys the lives of torturers as well. As the political scientist Darius Rejali remarks, “torture, like incest, is the gift that keeps on giving, affecting families and children.”[45]

It so happens that torture is prohibited by international and domestic law. But that is not what makes torture wrong. Torture would be wrong, unacceptably wrong, even if it were not prohibited by law. Nonetheless, we need a legal prohibition against torture to protect ourselves from people who are not deterred by morality alone.

Since 1945 the human rights movement has fought strenuously to prohibit and criminalize torture under international law. Today the prohibition of torture is absolute and emphatic. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares simply, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” The language was deliberately crafted to block any resort to a narrow definition of torture as a means of justifying inhumane treatment.[46] The prohibition reappears verbatim in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the US. Under the Convention, the prohibition may not be suspended even during a public emergency that threatens the life of the nation. The same prohibition appears in numerous other international treaties, and forms the basis of the Torture Convention. The 1999 Pinochet decision by the British Law Lords held torture to be an inherently criminal act incapable of official legitimation. The prohibition against torture is widely recognized as a jus cogens norm that cannot be overridden even by treaty or international custom.

The Bush administration launched a direct attack on this 50-year legacy. We must hope that its efforts left no impact on the law itself. There are a number of things to note about the administration’s approach. First there is the novel experiment in secret law-making. The administration drew up legal arguments (especially in the “torture memo”) that it knew could not survive the light of day, and that were discredited as soon as they became known. (John Ashcroft still refuses to release the administration’s legal memos dealing with torture, and it is believed that some significant memos have yet to be revealed.) The administration’s conduct has disclosed, in addition, the following attitudes:

■ Anything not explicitly prohibited by law is permitted. There is no recognition that human rights limit government action even in the absence of legal prohibitions. If the law permits torture, then torture is okay.

■ The only legal prohibitions to be taken seriously are those accompanied by a criminal penalty under US law. If we can do something (such as torture) without being punished for it, then it’s okay.

■ The legal prohibition against torture is not the expression of a moral commitment, but an inconvenient obstacle to be overcome, if possible, through clever legal arguments. The lawyer’s role is to maximize the universe of actions permitted to the President.

■ The Constitution is an empowering rather than a limiting document. It authorizes the President to do anything he deems necessary for national security.

These attitudes cohere with the administration’s overall understanding of the Global War on Terror. Early on, the enemy was defined not as al Qaeda, but as Terror – that is to say, as an abstraction, akin to the abstraction of evil. We have been encouraged to imagine our enemy as evil itself – an entity that is patient, ubiquitous, remorseless, unlimited in its malice and its potential to wreak harm. It is not an enemy consisting of actual human beings, with the multiple facets that actual human beings possess, but rather an abstract force animated by the sheer desire to destroy.

The existence of such an enemy justifies the indefinite expansion of the conflict around the world. Because the enemy is everywhere (it is a Global War on Terror) we are advised to open up new fronts to anticipate its maneuvers. Hence the war in Iraq. Iraq is now the “central front in the War on Terror.” If you think that this was a mistake, that it created havens for international terrorism where none previously existed, you are “naïve” (a favorite epithet), trapped in a “pre-September 11 mindset” (another favorite epithet). In a Global War on Terror that makes the entire world a potential battleground, we might as well choose the battle sites ourselves, rather than leaving that choice to the terrorists. The War in Iraq seems a tragic blunder only to those who fail to see its place in the “comprehensive strategy” (as Bush likes to say) for winning the War on Terror.[47]

To win, we must ratchet up the conflict. Things will get worse before they get better. There will be more violence, spread over more of the Earth’s surface, we will generate more terrorist recruits, drive them to commit more desperate and deadly acts, until the decisive moment arrives and we achieve our final victory. (“Bring them on.”) We should expect nothing less in the Battle between Good and Evil. The fact that this battle is waged with few tangible sacrifices asked of most Americans – no tax increases, no draft (except for those who believed they had fulfilled their National Guard duty) – makes it easier for us to fantasize it as an apocalyptic encounter.

It goes without saying that in this epic struggle we need to shed our normal legal and moral inhibitions. Extraordinary times call for “extraordinary measures.” Time moves on, we must set our faces bravely forward as we approach the denouement. Those who look backwards – who subscribe to the “obsolete” and “quaint provisions” of the Geneva Conventions (Gonzales’ terms) or who have not shaken themselves loose of their pre-September 11 mindset – are to be pitied but not taken seriously. New times, new rules, and the new rules do not include the prohibition of torture.

History records that torture epidemics are a common feature of societies that see themselves engaged in an apocalyptic struggle against evil. Examples include the Albigensian crusades of the thirteenth century; the witch hunts in early modern Europe; Stalin’s terror.[48] These episodes should be a warning to us.

The Bush administration’s decision to license torture has brought terrible costs. It encourages other governments to use torture by citing our example. It discredits our efforts to condemn torture committed by other governments. It inspires new attempts to justify torture. It creates new enemies for the United States, and swells their rage, leading many of them (let there be no doubt about it) to join the ranks of the terrorists. The centuries-old fight against torture has been set back. The Global War on Terror is “hard work” indeed. It is especially hard for the hundreds, possibly thousands, of individuals who have suffered the unspeakable, life-shattering damage of torture because of our administration’s bold rejection of moral restraint.

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[1] The best general discussion of the US government’s responsibility for torture is the Amnesty International report, “Human Dignity Denied: Torture and Accountability in the ‘War on Terror’” (October 2004).

[2] For an indispensable discussion of Abu Ghraib, see the essays and documents in Mark Danner, Torture and Truth (New York: New York Review Books, 2004). Seymour M. Hersh’s reporting in the New Yorker and in his new book, Chain of Command (New York: Harper Collins, 2004) is also crucial.

[3] The "Taguba Report" On Treatment of Abu Ghraib Prisoners In Iraq: Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade. See also Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War and Other Protected Persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq During Arrest, Internment and Interrogation, by Delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross, February 2004. Both documents appear in Danner, Torture and Truth.

[4] Charles J. Hanley, “Early Iraq Abuse Accounts Met with Silence,” Associated Press, 8 May 2004.

[5] Darius Rejali, “A Long-standing Trick of the Torturer’s Art,” Seattle Times, 14 May 2004; Adam Hochschild, “What’s in a Word? Torture,” New York Times, 23 May 2004.

[6] Douglas Jehl and Eric Schmitt, “Officer Says Army Tried to Curb Red Cross Visits to Prison in Iraq,” New York Times, 19 May 2004.

[7] Included in Danner, Torture and Truth, op. cit. pp. 225-48. The quoted passage is on p. 227.

[8] See Human Rights Watch, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” June 2004, . See also Thom Shanker, “U.S. Army Inquiry Implicates 28 Soldiers in Deaths of 2 Afghan Detainees,” New York Times, 15 October 2004.

[9] Dana Priest and Barton Gellman, “U.S. Decries Abuse But Defends Interrogations,” Washington Post, 26 December 2002.

[10] Human Rights Watch, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” op. cit.

[11] Shanker, “U.S. Army Inquiry Implicates 28 Soldiers,” op. cit.

[12] Dana Priest and Joe Stephens, “Pentagon Approved Tougher Interrogations,” Washington Post, 9 May 2004.

[13] David Rose, “’They Tied Me Up Like a Beast and Began Kicking Me,’” Observer, 16 May 2004.

[14] Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, Open letter to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, 13 May 2004, quoted in Human Rights Watch, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” op. cit. See also Tani Branigan and Vikram Dodd, “Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay – The Story of Three British Detainnees,” Guardian, 4 August 2004. Two indispensable books on Guantánamo Bay are David Rose, Guantánamo: The War on Human Rights (New York: The New Press, 2004), and Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray, Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green, 2004).

[15] “Leaked Red Cross report alleges torture at Guantanamo,” ABC News Online (Australia), 1 December 2004: “The lawyer for an Australian inmate at Guantanamo Bay says a leaked version of a Red Cross report alleging torture at the prison camp is consistent with inmate statements.” See also the two books on Guantánamo cited in footnote 13.

[16] Neil A. Lewis, “Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo,” New York Times, 30 November 2004.

[17] Neil A. Lewis, “F.B.I. Memos Criticized Practices at Guantánamo,” New York Times, 7 December 2004.

[18] Neil A. Lewis, “Broad Use of Harsh Tactics Is Described at Cuba Base,” New York Times, 17 October 2004.

[19] Quoted in Andrew Buncombe, “US Torture at Guantanamo 'Increasingly Repressive,’” Independent, 1 December 2004.

[20] New revelations of torture appear almost daily now. The bland assertion in the Schlesinger Report (released last August) that there was no pattern of abuse in Guantánamo has become increasingly preposterous.

[21] Rose, Guantánamo, op. cit., chap. 3.

[22] Human Rights Watch, “The Road to Abu Ghraib,” op. cit.

[23] Quoted in Danner, Torture and Truth, p. 43.

[24] Esther Schrader and Greg Miller, “U.S. Officials Defend Interrogation Tactics,” Los Angeles Times, 13 May 2004.

[25] James Risen, David Johnston and Neil A Lewis, “Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations,” New York Times, 13 May 2004.

[26] Human Rights Watch, “U.S.: Detained al-Qaeda Suspects ‘Disappeared,’” 12 October 2004.

[27] Dana Priest and Joe Stephens, “Secret World of US Interrogation: Long history of tactics in overseas prisons is coming to light,” Washington Post, 11 May 2004.

[28] Risen, Johnston and Lewis, “Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited,” op. cit.

[29] Dana Priest and Charles Babington, “Plan Would Let U.S. Deport Suspects to Nations That Might Torture Them,” Washington Post, 30 September 2004. The administration later withdrew the proposal in response to public outcry.

[30] Mike Allen and Dana Priest, “Memo on Torture Draws Focus to Bush,” Washington Post, 9 June 2004.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Fact Sheet: White House on Status of Detainees at Guantanamo, 7 February 2002.

[33] Memo to President Bush from Alberto Gonzales (Counsel to the President), re: Application of the Third Geneva Convention to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, 25 January 2002. Included in Danner, Torture and Truth, pp. 83-87.

[34] Memo from the Office of Legal Counsel to Gonzales re: standards of Conduct of Interrogation under the Federal Anti-Torture Act, 1 August 2002. Included in Danner, Torture and Truth, pp. 115-66.

[35] “The Tonight Show,” 10 June 2004.

[36] New Conference, Sea Island, Georgia, 10 June 2004, quoted in Danner, Torture and Truth, pp. 45-46.

[37] “Bush: ‘I Have Never Ordered Torture,’” , 23 June 2004.

[38] See John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People (New York: Knopf, 2002). See also Israeli Supreme Court, Judgment Concerning the Interrogation Methods of the General Security Service (1999); and Ireland v. United Kingdom, European Court of Human Rights (No. 25), 2 E.H.R.R. 25 (18 January 1978).

[39] Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, op. cit., p. 36.

[40] CNN interview, May 18, 2004.

[41] Matthew Brzezinski, “Bust and Boom,” Washington Post, 30 December 2001. Dershowitz discusses the case in his book Why Terrorism Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

[42] See the sworn statement of Abu Ghraib victim Ameen Sa’eed Al-Sheikh: “After I told them the truth they accused me of being lying to them.”

[43] See Rejali, “Torture’s Dark Allure,” , 18 June 2004. See also Dexter Filkins, “General Says Less Coercion of Captives Yields Better Data,” New York Times, 7 September 2004.

[44] For a discussion of torture by Israeli security forces, see Roni Amit, Justice Without Borders: International Human Rights in Domestic Courts (University of Washington PhD dissertation, April 2004), chapter 5.

[45] Rejali, “Torture’s Dark Allure,” op. cit.

[46] Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 42-43.

[47] This is how Cheney put it in the vice-presidential debate: “I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it. I feel very strongly that the significance of 9/11 cannot be underestimated. It forces us to think in new ways about strategy, about national security, about how we structure our forces and about how we use U.S. military power. Some people say we should wait until we are attacked before we use force. I would argue we've already been attacked. We lost more people on 9/11 than we lost at Pearl Harbor. And I'm a very strong advocate of a very aggressive policy of going after the terrorists and those who support terror.”

[48] See especially Malise Ruthven, Torture: The Grand Conspiracy (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978).

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