On October 15, 1999 a law was formulated that “forbids prison guards from extorting confessions by torture, insulting prisoners’ dignity, and beating or encouraging other to beat prisoners” (Egendorf 93). However, laws as such have not stopped police and other elements of the security system from resorting to degradation and torture when dealing with detainees and prisoners. It has been declared by many officials involved with interrogation “that systematic abuse was designed to break the will of detainees until they confessed” (Egendorf 95). For years, enhanced interrogation has been hidden, proclaimed immoral, justified, and used by many governments to obtain information from the enemy. The politics and history behind enhanced interrogation …show more content…
Multiple violations of human rights involving torture by the U.S. have incurred strong condemnation worldwide. At a press conference in 2012 held by the UN, the Commissioner for Human Rights, Louis Arbor, sharply criticized the U.S. for “infringing human rights by setting up secret prisons and transferring terrorism suspects without going through legal procedures” (Egendorf 108). Even with laws in place that argue for human rights, “the threat of terrorist attacks on innocent Americans, however, has been deemed too serious” (Cheney). Which is what lead defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to the approval of a list of “aggressive interrogation techniques that could be used at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay” (Martin 62). Some of the techniques approved were things such as intimidation with dogs, forced nudity, twenty hour interrogation, and force of physically stressful positions. After the continuation of techniques, other methods were formulated such as denial of food and clothing and keeping prisoners awake for as long as ninety-six hours (Martin 63). Official policy publicly denounced the use of torture, however, each national security official “defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary” (Martin …show more content…
After further investigation on the particular subject it was deemed likely that the brutal techniques used by interrogators on terrorists in Guantanamo, had somehow found its way to Iraq. The torture in Iraq resembled that in Guantanamo in ways such as the forced nudity, dog intimidation, and hooding of prisoners. The dogs brought in by military staff were supposed to be for drug searches, weapons, and explosives. Yet, one military intelligence officer told investigators that “intimidating prisoners with unmuzzled dogs had been recommended by a two-star general” (Martin 64). The claim was that unmuzzled dogs would have better effect at setting an atmosphere in which information will be more easily retrieved. The Abu Ghraib scandal is just one of the many violations by torture that are yet to be proclaimed as inhumane. No matter how unacceptable the use of enhanced interrogation may seem, throughout much of the world's history it has remained a part of legal practice in most