Torture Me

I was recently I was engaged in a discussion about the war in Iraq and the question about the U.S. torturing prisoners came up. My take is that torture should be clearly defined by the U.S., and outlawed. Bush has been unwilling to do either of these, and won't even state that the U.S. won't torture as a matter of policy. This is bad for two reasons: firstly, it makes the U.S. no better than other countries that torture people. We're supposed to have the moral high ground. We're supposed to be the good guys. We're the ones who should be setting the standard for how POWs are treated. If we can't treat other POWs well, how should we expect others to treat ours?

The second, and more important reason, I want to see an anti-torture policy is that not having one puts U.S. soldiers at risk. (I'm hoping that our Sr. military officer family member will eventually weigh in on this.) I'm not going to suggest that torture of American POWs will end when we have a an anti-torture policy. But our enemies may be less inclined to torture as freely and willingly an enemy who is known to treat their own POWs compassionately and fairly. It also fans the flames of anti-U.S. hatred, which makes it easier for terrorists to recruit more terrorists. The more terrorists there are, the more U.S. troops are going to get killed. So if you connect the dots, I think Bush is causing harm to U.S. troops by not agreeing to a torture ban. John McCain said that we need to have clear interrogation guidelines, and that by not doing so we are harming, rather than helping, the war on terror, and I agree with him.

"But wait," you say. "Bush signed a bill last year that included the McCain anti-torture language." Yes, he did. But he also didn't. McCain attached language to an appropriations bill that tried to define what torture is, what interrogation
practices the U.S. would use, and made breaking these rules a crime. While McCain was trying to win support for his torture ban, Bush had threatened to veto any legislation that would restrict what interrogation techniques the U.S. could use. And Cheney worked to get the Senate to drop their support for McCain's language. But in the end McCain prevailed and the bill passed with 90 votes in the Senate.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement that effectively granted him the right to set aside the McCain provisions whenever he wants to. So Bush signed a bill that outlawed torture, but then immediately issued a signing statement saying that he could repeal that law and torture people on an as-needed basis.

The McCain language referenced the Army Field Manual interrogation practices. After Bush signed the bill, the Army issued a new field manual with some of these techniques blacked out as classified information. Did they change the content, or just hide some of it? Bush was clearly not interested in defining torture or in stating that it was not something the U.S. would engage in, and U.S. troops are going to suffer more at the hands of our enemies because of it.