USA and torture???

Question

If the USA was gulity of torture, what could international organisations do about it? and the torture victims? Due to the fact that they have signed up to all these treaties...im a bit confused a to how they are consistent with usa state sovereignty etc. Thanks

Answer 1

Under Bush administration USA is violating state sovereignty.

For instance, international organizational, European Council has declared:

http://www.derechos.org/

SECRET DETENTION CENTERS IN EUROPE

A report by the European Council confirms the existence of secret detention centers in Eastern Europe operated by the CIA.

I add here an article that could help you

"A Washington Post story on Dec. 26 detailed allegations of torture and inhumane treatment of some of the thousands of suspects the U.S. has apprehended since the Sept.11 terrorist attacks. U.S. Army Special Forces often “soften up”—that is, beat up—Al Qaeda captives held at the CIA interrogation centers overseas before interrogating them, according to the front-page report. Interrogators have also thrown suspects against walls, hooded them, deprived them of sleep, bombarded them with light, and bound them with duct tape in painful positions. Referred to by officials as “enemy combatants,” the prisoners have no access to lawyers, reporters, and most outside agencies, including Amnesty International.

Such methods, at the least, constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and may rise to the level of inflicting “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,” the official benchmark of torture set forth in the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

In some cases, Washington prefers to distance itself by outsourcing interrogations. The Post also reported that since 9/11 Washington has transferred approximately 100 suspects to U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia and Morocco, whose brutal torture methods have been amply documented in the State Department’s own annual human rights reports.

“We don’t kick the [expletive] out of them,” one official told the Post. “We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them.”

U.S. complicity in torture goes back at least to the 1970s when police and military forces trained by Washington engaged in the widespread torture and ill-treatment of leftists in countries such as Brazil and Uruguay. It was one of the cold war’s most sordid (and hidden) chapters. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, hopes arose that such abuses would be relegated to the past.

Reports on the re-emergence of the practice have met with a strong response by a coalition of organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The coalition fired off a letter to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, calling on the Bush administration to unequivocally denounce torture and clarify that the United States will “neither seek nor rely upon intelligence obtained” through such practices.

US is bound to the agreement of prohbition on torture codified in the 1975 international “Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Oxford professor Henry Shue, a specialist in international relations, describes how torture spread “like a cancer” through the French security apparatus as it tried to suppress the Algerian anti-colonial struggle in the 1950s. French officials justified torture as a rare measure to prevent imminent assaults on civilians, but Shue says, “The problem is that torture is a shortcut, and everybody loves a shortcut.”

For the United States to blur the line on torture at this particular moment seems particularly short-sighted. “When you are conducting a war in the name of the rule of law and at the same time violating the most fundamental rule of law, you are clearly handing fodder to your adversaries, who will then say, ‘Look, all this talk about freedom and ideals and justice is just wind,’ ” says William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

By denouncing torture while softening the rules when its own interests are at stake, the United States sends a disturbing message: that it applies a different standard to its enemies than to itself.

One standard shared by those who practice terrorism and those who torture is a belief that the ends justify the means. They both explain away violence by framing it as a necessary “last resort.” And they obscure the human impact of that violence by refusing to recognize the humanity of their victims.

As a tool for collecting information, moreover, torture is notoriously ineffective (since people in pain have the unfortunate habit of lying to make it stop), and has done little to solve long-term security threats. In fact, Hafiz Abu Sa’eda, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, argues that torture can actually promote terrorism. “Torture demonstrates that the regime deserves destroying because it does not respect the dignity of the people,” he told the London Guardian.  

The abuses irreversibly transform not only the victims but those complicit in torture themselves. “[T]o this day, when I sleep at night, I hear [the screaming] inside my ears all the time,” said an Israeli soldier who stood guard over tortured prisoners. “It doesn’t leave me, I can’t get rid of it.”

In January the International Secretariat of the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), a coalition of non-governmental organizations from more than 65 countries, urged the U.S. government to allow the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit the Bagram base in Afghanistan, where the practices described by the Washington Post are taking place. The OMCT’s recommendation was met with stony silence, not only by Washington but also by the U.S. media.

“For better or worse, the United States sets precedents and examples,” Oxford scholar Henry Shue says. “We’re very visible. If the most powerful country in the world has to torture, how are we supposed to convince anyone else that they shouldn’t torture?”

Answer 2

Are you desprate to know this? If not, don't post it millions of times. Also they should start with you if they were doing it.

Answer 3

Probably the same thing the United nation could do to Saddam.

Answer 4

How many times are you planning on posting this?

Answer 5

The agreements The U.S.A. has signed on to are agreements on how to treat people when The U.S.A. is at war. These agreements are The Geneva Convention Agreements and while the agreements have no impact on sovereignity they do indicate that to treat other prisoners of war well would make it more possible that the opposing side might also treat their prisoners well .  If question about how sovereignity in original term as a King or such would apply it does not  anymore when people speak of Sovereignity and so while it does seem odd this is what people mean by it.

Answer 6

I don't think it's really a question of "if", because they most certainly ARE guilty of torture. Guantanamo, anyone?

Countries such as France and Germany have opposed U.S. policy on the treatment of the "terrorists" but so far nothing has been done... so I guess international organizations can't do anything.