Among the various treaties to which the United States is a signatory are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Geneva Conventions (1949), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the U.N. Convention Against Torture (1985), all of which stipulate that no one may be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
The Convention Against Torture defines torture as "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."
It notes that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Those Americans who are familiar with the U.S. Constitution will note this language echoes the Eighth Amendment prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishments."
Despite these treaty obligations, our government under the Bush administration has engaged in torture on a wide scale. Sometimes it has been carried out by our own agents, for example at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sometimes by agents of other countries after we have flown the victims to these countries for that purpose. It has almost certainly been done at the recently exposed secret CIA gulag in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The practices documented by Human Rights Watch and other organizations include vicious beatings, sexual degradation, sodomy, near-drowning (aka "waterboarding"), near-asphyxiation and mock executions, all illegal under the treaties mentioned above.
More than 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody, many as a direct result of torture. These facts are now well-known around the world, and the Bush administration's protestations that "we do not torture" have fooled no one. To our great shame, the United States of America is no longer seen as a beacon of liberty and decency but as a brutal, lawless agent of violence.
Congress has done little to halt this descent into infamy. Most notably, it has failed to bring Mr. Bush to account through the constitutional process of impeachment.
The grounds for such an action are clear: Bush took an oath to faithfully execute the laws; in condoning, if not instigating, torture, he has violated both U.S. and international law and thereby violated his oath of office, bringing disrepute to our entire nation in the process. Therefore, he should be impeached.
The fact that he hasn't - when his predecessor was impeached for far less - is due only to partisan politics.
With an election looming, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressured Congress into passing legislation that would "reinterpret" international law in an attempt to decriminalize their actions over these past five years. But international law cannot be changed unilaterally and arbitrarily, and it remains, as noted above, the Supreme Law of the Land.
Congress caving in yet again to Bush and Cheney's pressure aids and abets their criminality. We can only hope that in November the American people will have the good sense to put a stop to this madness and start the long journey back to morality, decency and world respect.
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* TOM HUCKIN is a professor of English at the University of Utah and a resident of Salt Lake City.
