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The culture of torture.

Article Excerpt
Since September 11 the debate on whether to engage in torture in order to save 'citizens and 'civilisation' has been openly considered within the United States--within its media and academic institutions, as well as its frontline military, intelligence and political institutions. There have also been sufficient numbers of serious reports of the practice of torture by elements of the US military and intelligence to suggest that it was only a matter of time before the largely hidden reality became accepted fact. Certainly reports about practices at Cape Delta in Guantanamo Bay were convincing if lacking the graphic detail of what we now know about Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

It would be quite naive to think that torture is entirely novel for US agencies. Even so, the devastating impact of September 11 has shattered the sense of invulnerability of the United States. This in turn has tended to encourage it to cast aside many of the commitments to civilising norms in the treatment of prisoners--both legal and moral--previously taken for granted.

The investigative disclosures of Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker are a case in point. He performed a crucial service in disclosing the astonishing array of images of torture and humiliation within Abu Ghraib. In his account, the Pentagon, in conjunction with the White House, established extra legal 'access' teams in response to September 11. National sovereignty was no constraint upon the "A" teams, while assassination and torture as means to truth and security were tools of trade. In their mission they answered to the Commander in Chief.

Hersh admires the role and success of these global missionaries. In his view they are professionals of the highest order, intervening to save liberty...

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