When your country is in a state of emergency, all you want is answers. The U.S. government, the Bush administration specifically, strove to find those answers. So the U.S. government resorted to torture. Top officials — TOP officials — okayed these tactics. Since 9/11, people deemed any sort of threat to national security — a terrorist — were detained in places like the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and tortured for information.
The New York Times has published conclusive evidence that the U.S. government has tortured people for information along with an analysis of a report done on torture practices and their results. The conclusion? That people were tortured and most of the information obtained from suspects proved unreliable. So essentially the torture was pointless. But who wouldn’t spit out random information if it meant an end to the torture?
In the end, all officials obtained was false information they had no power to verify. The prisoner was the very last suspect that could have known something useful. Is it worth inducing terror and pain on such suspects if it is found that what these people say is not true?
The most disturbing part of this the rhetoric the U.S. government has used for decades: We are the home of freedom and liberty and we are the best. This country has prided itself on being different from all the others where people are treated poorly daily. This report has made the U.S. appear hypocritical because so many of the government’s values seem nullified.
The damage to the suspect is also life long. The emotional damage is irreparable, and if the suspect was innocent, absolutely horrendous. There are ways of obtaining intelligence. Torture should never be an option, and speaking from a functional standpoint, it’s a waste of time because confessions are infrequently usable. This report will hopefully reinvigorate the torture debate. If and when people start talking about it, it may make bring about those who are accountable. And people need to be held accountable. Now that the report has brought discourse about torture out of the shadows, policy can change and torture by the U.S. can stop.
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