Following the terrorist's attacks on September 11th, 2001 fear and terror spread nationwide. The Bush administration was quick to respond declaring war with the terrorists that were responsible, Al Qaeda, and all nations that harbored them. The Bush admin had Iraq especially in mind, convinced that Iraq held some responsibility behind the attacks and later pursued war Iraq, despite the lack of evidence in involvement (even as the war ended there was no evidence of Iraq involvement in acts of terror). As the US continuously fell short in locating Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda, tensions in the White House grew. The US granted substantial amounts of money to anyone who would turn in those suspected to be guilty of terrorism. Whether actually guilty or not anyone was subject to be captured and determined to have associations with Al Qaeda, with no authorization to trial. With a group of lawyers backing the Bush administration, a series of legal memorandums were written, granting incredible presidential power while also legally authorizing extreme measures of interrogation. Known as the Torture memos of 2002, John Yoo and Jay Bybee wrote 131 pages worth of legal memos that redefined torture in the most obscene of ways and lastly determined that torture must have been the overall objective to be considered torture. These memos legally justified interrogation methods such as waterboarding, stress positions, and physical, psychological, and sexual torment and abuse. Ironically, these exact methods were deemed illegal and considered to be war crimes under the Geneva Convention, which was heavily influenced by the United States in 1987 following the Korean War, when many American soldiers were tortured. These well-known torture memos that were written for the Bush administration are still active and can still hold up in the court of law today.
This is absolutely preposterous. These memos should be retracted immediately for several reasons.
For starters, torture has been proven to be completely ineffective. The excruciating pain sustained leads detainees to admit to false confessions, in hopes that submission will make the torture stop. However, even if it did work, it is evil, leading me to my next point, torture is completely inhumane and immoral. Torture does far more harm than good, no matter the circumstance. Lastly, revamping the laws on torture are of the utmost of importance for the safety of Americans, especially those involved in combat. The US justifying acts or torture will only lead to other countries permitting the same actions against American soldiers and civilians. Additionally, false admittances of Afghanistan detainees that were tortured included falsely admitting Iraq's connection to terrorism leading to the unnecessary Iraq war with over 4000 US casualties, over a hundred thousand Iraq casualties and billions of dollars. To save the face and people of the United States we must address this issue immediately, do away with these legal memos, and restructure our system to destroy these loopholes our politicians have capitalized on.
