Confirmed: Under Bush, America Tortures

What does the law say about torture? U.S. Code (18 USC 2340-2340A) provides the legal definition of torture in the United States of America:

1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from–

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(C) the threat of imminent death;

The intentional infliction of severe suffering, the application of procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality, and the threat of imminent death each qualify an interrogation technique as torture.

The New York Times, in anonymous interviews with more than two dozen government officials, has revealed the existence of a Justice Department document approving each of these:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Under George W. Bush, the United States of America has become a torture nation. Tell me again about American moral superiority.

(Source: New York Times October 4 2007)