The Torture Debate in America

Front Cover
Karen J. Greenberg
Cambridge University Press, 2005 M11 21 - 414 pages
As a result of the work assembling the documents, memoranda, and reports that constitute the material in The Torture Papers the question of the rationale behind the Bush administration's decision to condone the use of coercive interrogation techniques in the interrogation of detainees suspected of terrorist connections was raised. The condoned use of torture in any society is questionable but its use by the United States, a liberal democracy that champions human rights and is a party to international conventions forbidding torture, has sparked an intense debate within America. The Torture Debate in America captures these arguments with essays from individuals in different discipines. This volume is divided into two sections with essays covering all sides of the argument from those who embrace absolute prohibition of torture to those who see it as a viable option in the war on terror and with documents complementing the essays.

From inside the book

Contents

IV
13
V
25
VI
35
VIII
84
IX
98
X
111
XI
118
XII
136
XX
236
XXI
241
XXII
247
XXIII
253
XXIV
256
XXV
261
XXVII
267
XXVIII
283

XIII
151
XIV
162
XV
183
XVII
203
XVIII
223
XIX
229
XXIX
317
XXX
361
XXXI
377
XXXII
395
XXXIII
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Page 104 - torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent...
Page 155 - Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law ; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
Page 178 - While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Page 329 - Declaration, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted...
Page 156 - Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.
Page 342 - Although the five techniques, as applied in combination, undoubtedly amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment, although their object was the extraction of confessions, the naming of others and/or information and although they were used systematically, they did not occasion suffering of the particular intensity and cruelty implied by the word torture as so understood.
Page 303 - ... the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

About the author (2005)

Karen J. Greenberg is the executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. She has a Ph.D. in American political history from Yale and teaches in the European Studies Department at NYU. She is a former Vice-President of the Soros Foundations/Open Society Institute and the founding director of the Program in International Education. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of numerous articles on the United States and Europe during World War II and an editor of the Archives of the Holocaust, Columbia University Series. She is the co-editor of the recently published The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.

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