The Bush administration, in its war on terrorism, has only reluctantly backed away from the use of interrogation techniques that most consider to be torture. It still clings to a kind of torture by proxy—'extraordinary rendition,' the remission of suspected terrorists to nations that still practice torture.
Legislation has been introduced into both houses of the U.S. Congress to end this practice, which has been outlawed by international treaty. Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International and allied groups organized a teach-in in Washington, D.C., on June 25-26 to support this goal and lobby their elected officials to pass it.
'torture is an issue that goes to the very core of who we are a people and a country,' said Chris Anders, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union ( ACLU ) . That is why the nation was shocked to learn of the activities that took place at Abu Ghraib in Iraq
Those types of situations 'become possible because our men and women in uniform were given ambiguous instructions, which in some cases authorized treatment that went beyond what was allowed in the Army Field Manual, and because the chain of command chose to look the other way,' said Steven Xenakis, M.D. He is a retired brigadier general and currently is director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.
Congress reacted to Abu Ghraib by overwhelmingly reaffirming its opposition to those practices. As Arizona Senator John McCain, himself a victim of torture while a prisoner in North Vietnam, said in leading that debate, 'Our treatment of these men is not about who they are, it is about who we are.'
Meg Satterthwaite believes that U.S. law already prohibits extraordinary renditions through ratification of a 1984 treaty against torture. But the director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School said that some government agencies—most notably the Department of Defense and the CIA—have not adopted regulations implementing that policy.
Anders says, 'the very creative lawyers in the government have taken this absurd position that if you don't have someone on U.S. soil, then you are not returning them from anywhere, because they're not here. It is this bizarre interpretation that gets them out of the Convention Against Torture, in their view.'
Satterthwaite adds, when challenged in court, the administration has wrapped itself in the mantle of secrecy on the question of renditions. It says that the very act of confirming or denying conversations with other governments about renditions is a matter of national security that cannot be discussed. The courts have a strong tradition of deferring to the presidency on national security issues and so far have done so.
Because Congress voted last year on the McCain amendment on torture, most Congressmen feel that they have addressed the issue and are resistant to take on the associated issue of renditions. But Anders says there are other reasons to keep the pressure on. He says it is one reason why the former U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, did not get a promotion.
Physicians for Human Rights has written a 131-page report, Break Them Down: Systemic Use of Psychological Torture by U.S. Forces, that documents such abuses. The item is available at www.phrusa.org/research/torture/pdf/psych_torture.pdf.