ABSTRACT
It is by now generally accepted that the George W. Bush administration engaged in a systematic policy of detainee abuse that sometimes amounted to torture and often consisted of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, both of which are banned by the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1984, p. 2), signed by the United States. If there had been any doubt that U.S. detainee abuses were the result of a systematic policy, that doubt has surely been erased by publication of detailed reports from the Defense and Justice Departments Inspectors General (Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, 2006; Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, 2008), and the Senate Armed Services Committee (2008a, 2008b, 2008c; Levin, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c). Journalist Jane Mayer (2008) and others have placed the ultimate authorization of the most brutal of these abuses directly in the White House (Greenburg, Rosenberg, & Vogue, 2008a, 2008b).
