ABSTRACT
Most Americans think that the United States opposes, and does not practice, torture. After all, torture is prohibited under both U.S. and international law – the United States is a signatory both to the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention as well as to the United Nations Convention against Torture. Yet since September 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the line between unacceptable torture and acceptable conduct has blurred, with intelligence officers and military personnel both engaging in what was once considered to be torture. Many people now argue that the need to extract information from suspects in the new “war on terror” outweighs the concerns about torture. Practices like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, typically considered to meet the definition of torture, have been redefined in recent years in the United States as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” terms like “extraordinary rendition” have entered our vocabulary, and the television show 24 created a hero out of fictional character Jack Bauer, who saved the country over and over, often through the use of torture.
