La interdicción de la tortura de Bush es llena de escapatorias

El presidente ha publicado una orden ejecutiva para parar la Cia de usar tortura, pero la interdicción es inaplicable.

Por David Cole

Érase una vez, un E.E.U.U. condenación del funcionario de tortura era una declaración del principio moral. Hoy, es una oportunidad para la ofuscación. Lo hemos aprendido que cuando presidente Bush dice, “no torturamos,” somos importantes leer la impresión fina. Estaba tan de nuevo el 20 de julio, cuando Bush publicó un esperado desde hace mucho tiempo orden ejecutiva purporting to regulate interrogation tactics used by the CIA in the “war on terror.” According to a White House press release, the order provides “clear rules” to implement the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of detainees in wartime — rules the administration insisted did not even apply to the “war on terror” until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise last summer. But while the new rules reflect a significant retreat by the administration from its initial torture policies, they are anything but “clear,” come far too late in the day, and in any event are unenforceable.

The executive order prohibits the CIA from using torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, sexual abuse, denigration of religion and serious “acts of violence” in its interrogations. While one might have thought that the impermissibility of such tactics in official U.S. interrogations would go without saying, it has not been so since 9/11. This is an administration that narrowly defined “torture” to permit the use of sexual abuse, stress positions, injecting suspects with intravenous fluids until they urinate on themselves, prolonged sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme heat and cold and “waterboarding,” i.e., simulated drowning. This is an administration that adopted as official legal policy the counterintuitive and deeply immoral position that international law’s ban on “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” did not apply to foreigners held by the U.S. outside U.S. borders. And this is an administration that opined that the president could order torture itself if he so chose as a way of “engaging the enemy,” notwithstanding a federal criminal statute and ratified treaty banning torture under all circumstances, including war.

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