Torture
Jonathan Turley makes a troubling report in his column today:
In Afghanistan, it is hardly surprising to find two dead bodies with signs of torture. This week, however, a shocking U.S. military coroner’s report also suggested that the most likely suspect in the homicides was the U.S. government. Even more disturbing is emerging evidence that the United States may be operating something that would have seemed unimaginable only two years ago: an American torture facility.
Credible reports now indicate that the government, with the approval of high-ranking officials, is engaging in systematic techniques considered by many to be torture.
The cable news networks were quite excited, of course, to ask their viewers whether torture was ever appropriate after the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Let’s put aside, for the moment, the violations of the Geneva Convention. Or the moral arguments. For a nation preparing to go to war soon, torturing captured enemy agents is quite risky. As Turley notes, we are increasing the danger to any U.S. soldier captured in the future.
Worse, we are turning our backs on our nation’s traditional (albeit imperfect) fights against torture and on behalf of human rights.
Instead of continuing our long fight against torture, we now seek to adopt more narrow definitions to satisfy our own acquired appetite for coercive interrogations. If the U.S. is responsible for the deaths of the two men in Afghanistan, it is more than homicide. It would be suicide for a nation once viewed as the very embodiment of human rights.
Is Bagram AFB a Torture Facility?
Georgetown Law Professor Jonathan Turley writes about reports that Bagram Air Force Base in Afganistan is being used as an…