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It's time to decide if torture is the U.S. way
If our lawmakers haven't been seriously questioning what U.S. policy is in regard to suspected terrorist detainees, they need to start doing so right now. A revelation by the Washington Post that the United States Central Intelligence Agency is operating a secret global internment network where detainees are being held without any oversight whatsoever should raise red flags in a country that claims to pride itself on humane treatment of prisoners.
The newspaper's report, citing U.S. and foreign sources familiar with the operation, says that high-profile terrorist captives are being held in a Soviet-era prison compound in Eastern Europe. We don't take issue with important al-Qaida suspects being detained, but considering that there is every indication these suspects are being tortured in an out-of-country Gulag by employees of the United States flies in the face of supposed American decency.
The revelation of this network of prisons may shed new light on a request to Congress by Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss to exempt CIA employees from legislation - already signed by 90 U.S. senators - that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. The CIA contends that in order to protect the United States, it must be permitted to detain and question suspects without restrictions imposed by U.S. law, or, for that matter, by military tribunals such as those held for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison.
This prison network, which the Post reported was conceived shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several Eastern European democracies. These "black site" locations are known only to a few U.S. officials and leaders of the countries in which they are located. They provide an opportunity to incarcerate prisoners indefinitely and for agents to interrogate them using whatever techniques they deem necessary.
The obvious reason these prisons were set up is because the government cannot legally hold prisoners in total isolation within the confines of the United States. Under U.S. law, even foreign enemy combatants cannot be denied minimum legal rights. And, for that matter, a number of the countries in which these prisons have been established have signed a pact, as has the U.S., prohibiting torture or degrading treatment.
It's decision time. The United States must decide whether or not it is going to take the high road in treatment of prisoners, or whether it will continue to look the other way as the CIA uses "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" (torture) to extract information. For the record, torture should not be the American way.
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