Torture by U.S. Government absolutely must stop

Capital Eye by Randi Bjornstad

We as a nation lost some of our innocence after the disgusting photographs taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq hit public view, showing some of our young men and women in uniform mistreating prisoners in their charge in sickening, cruel, even sadistic ways.

Many of us probably assumed that the exposure of this torture – a clear violation of the United Nations Human Rights Declaration signed clear back on Dec. 10, 1948 by most of the countries in the world – had led our government and its military to halt the practice and reaffirm their commitment to abide by international law and behave according to a high moral standard.

But, no. Now we find that the situation may be even worse than we thought. On top of everything else, the Central Intelligence Agency – obviously with high-level approval and assistance – allegedly has been running a network of secret prisons used to hide people suspected of terrorist activity away from scrutiny where they can be battered at will in an effort to extract damning information from them.

There are several problems with this.

First of all, it doesn’t work. As Sen. John McCain of Arizona has said – and keep in mind he was held captive and brutalized by the North Vietnamese for years during the Vietnam War – the information gathered from torture victims is notoriously faulty because of the duress under which it is obtained.

That’s not McCain’s only reason for abhorring the practice of torture, however. He also believes that torturing people is something that bad guys do, not we who live in the United States of America where individual rights are supposed to be sacred and protected.

McCain feels so strongly on the subject that he introduced an amendment to a recent military appropriations bill that would ban “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under the custody or control of the United States Government.”

His amendment obviously touched a chord with his fellow U.S. senators, because it passed 90-9 the first time it was brought up – before the news about the secret CIA prisons – and again by a voice vote of the Senate after the disclosure.

The bill with this amendment attached hasn’t come up yet in the House of Representatives, but the Bush Administration has indicated it may veto the appropriation bill as long as the amendment remains intact.

What has happened to us as a nation? Rep. Charles Rangel of New York says government policies that allowed Abu Ghraib to happen, as well as similar awful – and sometimes fatal – incidents of torture by U.S. troops and contractors in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “shame us all.”

He’s absolutely right. It’s almost unimaginable that we’ve come to the point that Amnesty International last May named the United States as one of the major human rights violators of the preceding year. We should not only be ashamed, but angry at ourselves for allowing anyone to commit atrocities in our name.

Some members of the U.S. Congress have been trying to rectify this situation and put the country back on the right path.

Earlier this year, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced H.R. 952, the “Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act,” to prevent our government from the hypocrisy of sending prisoners to third countries to carry out torturous acts for us.

Even before that, Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey sponsored H.R. 112, to require video recording of all interrogations or other interactions between prisoners and their U.S. captors as well as unfettered access to prisoners by international human rights organizations to monitor their treatment.

These bills – and all others that aim to protect the rights of prisoners in U.S. custody to humane treatment – should be wholeheartedly endorsed by every citizen of this country.

After all, we hardly can look down our noses at other countries and governments which mistreat their own citizens or foreign prisoners if we’re participating in the same kind of human rights violations ourselves.

And we also have to keep in mind that in today’s world, “an eye for an eye” more often than not takes precedence over “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If other countries see us as barbaric, they certainly will treat us in the same way.

We need to remember also that the United Nations Human Rights Declaration didn’t say torture was okay some of the time. It says clearly and simply: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

That means you, me, everybody. Period.