Abstract

Outlaws on Torture

The "war on terrorism" is in trouble, and at the very moment the United States President George W. Bush Administration needs it most--election season in 2004. Bush has decided to stake his campaign on his ability to protect us. But this strategy may well fail. Take the Justice Department's revelations about José Padilla, the U.S. citizen it has held as an "enemy combatant," without charges or trial, for two years. Everything the government disclosed about Padilla's alleged activities would be inadmissible in court. That is because it is all the result of coerced confessions, which are notoriously unreliable. In June 2004, the "Wall Street Journal" and "Washington Post" disclosed the existence of two legal memos from the Defense and Justice departments arguing that the President is not subject to the international and federal bans on torture whenever he acts "pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority" and that military officials are also immune from prosecution if they believe they are following orders. Meanwhile, at home and abroad, the detention of people having no connection to terrorism has become routine. The Justice Department admitted that it had erroneously locked up a United States lawyer of Muslim faith, Brandon Mayfield, as a "material witness." Of the more than 5,000 foreign nationals jailed in the United States since September 11, 2001, in anti-terrorism "preventive-detention" measures, only three have been charged with any terrorist crime. Military intelligence officers told the Red Cross that 70 to 90 percent of the people locked up in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.