International Law

The Post Editorial Page suggests today, that the torture in Iraq was a direct result of the Bush Administration's elastic view of International Law.

"SLOWLY, AND IN spite of systematic stonewalling by the Bush administration, it is becoming clearer why a group of military guards at Abu Ghraib prison tortured Iraqis in the ways depicted in those infamous photographs. President Bush and his spokesmen shamefully cling to the myth that the guards were rogues acting on their own. Yet over the past month we have learned that much of what the guards did -- from threatening prisoners with dogs, to stripping them naked, to forcing them to wear women's underwear -- had been practiced at U.S. military prisons elsewhere in the world. Moreover, most of these techniques were sanctioned by senior U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the Iraqi theater command under Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez. Many were imported to Iraq by another senior officer, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller...

...Several of the techniques that were banned in Guantanamo were adopted in Iraq. In late August and September 2003 Gen. Miller visited Abu Ghraib with the mandate to improve interrogations. Senior officers have testified to Congress that he brought "harsh" techniques from Guantanamo. Gen. Sanchez's command then issued a policy that included the use of stress positions and dogs, along with at least five of seven exceptional techniques approved by Mr. Rumsfeld in the revised Guantanamo policy. After further objections from uniformed lawyers, Gen. Sanchez modified the policy in mid-October, but interrogators and guards at Abu Ghraib went on using the earlier rules. They were committing crimes, but they were not improvising: Most of what they did originally had been sanctioned by both the defense secretary and U.S. Central Command.

It's not clear why interrogation techniques judged improper or illegal by a Pentagon legal team were subsequently adopted in Iraq. Nor is it clear what those standards are today, either in Iraq or elsewhere -- breaking with decades of previous practice, the Bush administration has classified them. Congressional leaders who have vowed to get to the bottom of the prisoner abuse scandal still have much to learn; they will not succeed unless the scale and pace of their investigations are stepped up."

The issue of torture needs to be brought to the forefront of public discourse. As a free and democratic society we as a nation need to decide if we condone the use of torture under any circumstance. I believe that we should follow our staunch ally in the Middle East's lead. When faced with routine suicide bombings and while under the constant threat of attack, the Israeli Supreme Court delivered this opinion,

"The State of Israel has been engaged in an unceasing struggle for both its very existence and security, from the day of its founding..[but a] democratic, freedom-loving society does not accept that investigators use any means for the purpose of uncovering the truth." The "destiny of democracy" is often to fight "with one hand tied behind its back," the opinion eloquently concluded, and "not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it."