Controllers of the Torture Policy

I found my research on a Human Rights Movement website. They had a long article on the world report of the torture policy and the progression and setbacks it has made. The way they describe it was as if the words "humane treatment" and "torture" were up for grabs in terms of definitions. President Bush is the man in control of the United States' policy on treatment of prisoners. He proclaimed to the public that we were not torturing the prisoners however his statement was not believed. The United Nations’ widely ratified Convention against Torture defines the term as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.” Yet as of August 2002, the administration had defined torture as nothing short of pain “equivalent…to that…associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result.” In December 2004, the administration repudiated this absurdly narrow definition, but it offered no alternative definition.
The CIA began allowing water-boarding beginning in March 2002 as one of six “enhanced interrogation techniques” for certain terrorist suspects. President Bush’s declarations on torture ironically avoided mention of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. That is because, in a policy given publicly by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2005 the Bush administration began allowing use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as long as the victim was a non-U.S. citizen held outside the United States. Certain governments force detainees to similar treatment or worse, but they do so quietly. The Bush administration is the only government in the world known to claim this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful.
While continuing to allow the power to subject particular detainees to “inhuman” treatment, Bush also managed to insist that the government, specifically his administration, would treat all detainees “humanely.” He never publicly addressed the obvious contradiction. In the administration’s view, the term “humane treatment” is not “susceptible to a succinct definition.” In fact, he explained, the White House has provided no guidance on its meaning.
The Bush administration’s tried to prevent Congress from outlawing abusive treatment. Particular figures who oversee the CIA, explained to human rights groups in August that U.S. interrogators have a duty to use all available authority to fight terrorism. “We’re pretty aggressive within the law,” he explained. “We’re going to live on the edge.”