About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

41 U. Tol. L. Rev. 1 (2009-2010)
Waterboarding, Counter-Resistance, and the Law of Torture: Articulating the Legal Underpinnings of U. S. Interrogation Policy

handle is hein.journals/utol41 and id is 3 raw text is: ARTICLES WATERBOARDING, COUNTER-RESISTANCE, AND THE LAW OF TORTURE: ARTICULATING THE LEGAL UNDERPINNINGS OF U.S. INTERROGATION POLICY Dana Carver Boehm * N EARLY five years ago, photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison became public.' These images saturated worldwide news coverage for weeks and fueled long-standing accusations that the United States Government was, in contravention of U.S. and international law, sanctioning widespread torture in the name of its war on terror.2 President Bush maintained that the abuse captured in the Abu Ghraib photographs, though disgraceful and a terrible disappointment, did not amount to torture under U.S. or international law. As early as 2002, the Bush Administration adopted a narrow definition of torture, propounded in detail through a series of legal memoranda from the Departments of Justice and Defense. Relying on this narrow definition, President Bush maintained throughout his presidency that, while aggressive interrogation tactics were fully justified in combating terror, he had never ordered torture and he never * Associate, Hogan & Hartson, LLP. B.A., Brigham Young University (2000); J.D., Harvard Law School (2005). 1. See Scott Higham & Joe Stephens, New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge, WASH. POST, May 21, 2004, at A01, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43783- 2004May20.html. According to the Taguba Report, issued by a Pentagon-sponsored commission specially convened to investigate Abu Ghraib, 'numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses' were inflicted on Abu Ghraib prisoners between October and December 2003. Roberta Arnold, The Abu Ghraib Misdeeds: Will There Be Justice in the Name of the Geneva Conventions, 2 J. INT'L CRIM. JUST. 999, 999 (2004) (citing Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade (The Taguba Report on Treatment of Abu Ghraib Prisoners in Iraq), http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/docs/iraq/tagubarpt.html). 2. See, e.g., Seymour M. Hersh, Torture at Abu Ghraib, NEW YORKER, May 10, 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fafact; Rebecca Leung, Abuse of Iraqi POWs by GIs Probed, CBS NEWS, Apr. 28, 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/ 04/27/60II/main614063.shtml. 3. Jon Ward, Bush Accepts Some Blamefor Abu Ghraib, WASH. TIMES, Dec. 7, 2008, at A01 available at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/07/bush-takes-some-responsibility- abu-ghraib/. 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most