What the Torture Memos Tell Us

摘要

On 16 April 2009, US President Barack Obama, responding to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act request, released four Bush-era documents belonging to a series of papers known collectively as the 'torture memos', which outline the US government's legal analysis and policy decisions for interrogating terrorism suspects in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks. In the years since the release of the Abu Ghraib photographs and the subsequent reports into detention and interrogation policies in the 'war on terror', the public has been made generally aware of the content of these papers. Beginning in summer 2004, we have been able to read many of the major documents, including the infamous memo of 1 August 2002 that redefines torture; the Alberto Gonzales memo of 25 January 2002 that called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint and obsolete'; and Donald Rumsfeld's letter signing off on the enhanced interrogation techniques that would create a law-free zone at Guantanamo Bay for six weeks from early December 2002 until January 2003.