U.S. Pledges to Avoid Torture

Washington Post ^ | 06/27/03 | Peter Slevin

[bedolido]

The Bush administration pledged yesterday for the first time that the United States will not torture terrorism suspects or treat them cruelly in an attempt to extract information, a move that comes as the deaths of two Afghan prisoners in U.S. custody are being investigated as homicides.

"All interrogations, wherever they may occur," must be conducted without the use of cruel and inhuman tactics, the Pentagon's senior lawyer wrote after members of Congress and human rights groups pressed the White House to renounce abusive tactics reported by U.S. government officials.

On a day when President Bush asserted that his administration intends to lead by example in a global fight against torture, Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II said that anyone found to have broken the law in the Afghanistan deaths will be prosecuted.

[Hodar]

The Bush administration pledged yesterday for the first time that the United States will not torture terrorism suspects or treat them cruelly in an attempt to extract information...

Exactly, how would we like it if our soldiers were treated that way ..... oh .... nevermind.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Don't we just send them to Jordan, so that the Jordanians can "help" us extract information? Isn't this common practice? Isn't this why K Sheik Mohammed is not on US soil, yet?

[Thane_Banquo]

How about we set this standard:

If the enemy tortures our soldiers or refuses to give them quarter when they surrender, we can do the same to their soldiers.

[monkeywrench]

""The president and Defense Department have today unequivocally rejected the use of any techniques to interrogate suspects that would constitute 'cruel' treatment prohibited by the U.S. Constitution," a group of human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Freedom House and the Center of Victims of Torture, said in a joint statement. They called on the administration to allow independent monitors to "assure the world that this pledge is being fully redeemed in practice."

They want sleep deprivation forbidden, even. This is an oldy, but, interesting. Oh, and next month is "U.N. Torture Victims Recognition Day".