No Exceptional Circumstances Whatsoever... May Be Invoked as a Justification of Torture

[merrily]

51. To be fair, we did

resist becoming party to the UN Convention Against Torture. That did not happen until 1994, while we were engaging in "extraordinary rendition," aka offshoring torture.

During the United States war on terror, President Clinton initiated the program and, under the administration of President George W. Bush, the term became associated with US practices of abducting and transferring terrorism suspects to countries known to employ torture for the purpose of interrogation. The process has continued and expanded under the Barack Obama administration, though new rules have been put in place that claim to prevent torture of abducted individuals; in August 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder accepted the results of the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies that the U.S. will be limited to seek "assurances from the receiving country" as such.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition

And

The Convention requires states to take effective measures to prevent torture within their borders, and forbids states to transport people to any country where there is reason to believe they will be tortured.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_against_Torture


The full name of the Convention Against Torture is "The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Think about devout Muslim males in Abu Ghraib, forced to be naked before both males and females. And of Chelsea Manning, involuntary nudity usually being especially painful for a transgender person.

Then again, if we're going to torture despite (finally) becoming parties to the convention, maybe it was not good to become parties. Maybe it was only hypocrisy.