Getting Away with Torture
Global Governance 11 (2005), 389–406
REVIEW ESSAY
Getting Away with Torture
Kenneth Roth
The Bush administration’s use of torture and inhumane treatment has undermined one of the most basic global standards governing how governments can treat people under their control. Contrary to the efforts of the administration to pass this abuse off as the spontaneous misconduct of a few low-level soldiers, ample evidence demonstrates that it reflects policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Repairing the damage done to global standards will require acknowledging this policy role and launching a genuinely independent investigation to identify those responsible and hold them accountable. The creation of regulated exceptions to the absolute prohibition of torture and mistreatment, as suggested by several academics, will not redeem the tarnished reputation of the United States or restore the global standards that the Bush administration has so severely damaged. KEYWORDS: torture, Abu Ghraib, Guatánamo, interrogation, cruel treatment.
B’Tselem, “Legislation Allowing the Use of Physical Force and Mental
Coercion in Interrogations by the General Security Service,” B’Tselem
Position Paper, January 2000, 80 pp.
Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on
Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 592 pp.
Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat,
Responding to the Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002), 288 pp.
Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The
Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 1,284 pp.
Philip B. Heymann and Juliette N. Kayyem, Preserving Security and
Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (Cambridge: Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, 2004), 195 pp.
Human Rights Watch, The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Human
Rights Watch, 2004), 37 pp.
Sanford Levinson, ed.,
REVIEW ESSAY
Getting Away with Torture
Kenneth Roth
The Bush administration’s use of torture and inhumane treatment has undermined one of the most basic global standards governing how governments can treat people under their control. Contrary to the efforts of the administration to pass this abuse off as the spontaneous misconduct of a few low-level soldiers, ample evidence demonstrates that it reflects policy decisions taken at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Repairing the damage done to global standards will require acknowledging this policy role and launching a genuinely independent investigation to identify those responsible and hold them accountable. The creation of regulated exceptions to the absolute prohibition of torture and mistreatment, as suggested by several academics, will not redeem the tarnished reputation of the United States or restore the global standards that the Bush administration has so severely damaged. KEYWORDS: torture, Abu Ghraib, Guatánamo, interrogation, cruel treatment.
B’Tselem, “Legislation Allowing the Use of Physical Force and Mental
Coercion in Interrogations by the General Security Service,” B’Tselem
Position Paper, January 2000, 80 pp.
Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on
Terror (New York: New York Review of Books, 2004), 592 pp.
Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat,
Responding to the Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002), 288 pp.
Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel, eds., The Torture Papers: The
Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 1,284 pp.
Philip B. Heymann and Juliette N. Kayyem, Preserving Security and
Democratic Freedoms in the War on Terrorism (Cambridge: Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs, 2004), 195 pp.
Human Rights Watch, The Road to Abu Ghraib (New York: Human
Rights Watch, 2004), 37 pp.
Sanford Levinson, ed.,