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Lately President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been speaking out concerning the torture of American prisoners. Cheney was quoted as saying that they had lawyers in the Justice Department review the matter and determine, essentially, that it is ok to torture people who are not members of a recognized armed force of a nation that signed the Geneva Accords. Cheney further claimed that “water boarding” is not torture.

Shame on them and shame on us for allowing this practice.

Water boarding has been specifically named as torture in international law for many years. The Geneva Convention, at the request of the United States, does not just talk of prisoners of war, it talks about moral behavior, and condemns torture of anyone, regardless of their military status. The United States insisted upon trying war criminals after World War II, and convicted several of “Water boarding”.

As I wrote in a commentary this summer, The New York Times reported July 3rd that the United States government used an old study from the 1950’s to establish their interrogation procedures for prisoners in the “war on terrorism.” Seems that the Chinese, during the Korean conflict, developed techniques to get American prisoners to confess to “war crimes”. The Chinese were able to force American POWs to confess to crimes they did not commit (like mass use of poison gas).

What possible reason could lead any American official to exploit such materials? The excuse would probably be utilitarian – it worked for the Chinese. But did it? The Chinese purpose was propaganda not intelligence gathering. Some government officials claimed that using these techniques would provide valuable information and save American lives. I fail to see the logic. How could we make the inductive leap of suggesting that techniques useful for obtaining admission of false information would be successful in gaining accurate (true) information? And how would we check the validity of information gained?

Vice President Cheney claimed that torturing one prominent terrorist provided “most” of our actionable intelligence concerning terrorist threats. FBI sources recently verified that more that 90 percent of the information gained by torture led to “false leads” that wasted valuable time. Further, the FBI director reluctantly stated that to his knowledge torture yielded no security benefit for the US and did not prevent any terrorist actions.

The larger concern, however, is ethical and moral. The American nation has long seen itself as an inspiration. We have democracy, freedom, protected human rights, and the rule of law. Ever wonder how that image is now viewed abroad?

As a people, we must stop this activity. Maybe a prisoner will tell us tales after being isolated, subjected to cold, starvation, ridicule, and “water boarding”. Could the information obtained be worth our becoming like our enemies, possibly worse than our enemies?

American soldiers are taught about the Geneva Convention rules, but Cheney never served and Bush probably missed the class. Neither the Vice President nor the President has the authority to revise law – they “administer” laws passed by congress, and if congress passed a law authorizing torture, I can’t find it (neither can Senator McCain). Is it possible that a sitting American President can violate the law? Can the President be tried and found guilty of a crime? It may be possible to prosecute this case, but will that fix our new reputation abroad?