Voyage to the Dark Side: The Tortured Path of United States' Detainee Interrogation Policy

摘要

This paper examines the development of the United States detainee interrogation policy during the conduct of Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). This paper asserts that the President's statements concerning the inapplicability of the Geneva Conventions to Al Qaeda and Taliban personnel in Afghanistan created an environment of uncertainty of proper standards for the treatment and interrogation of detainees. The decision to not apply the Geneva Conventions was driven by tactical gain at the expense of great strategic loss and retreat in the critical war of ideas. The discovery of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib subjected interrogation techniques to greater scrutiny, prompting the enactment of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 by Congress and intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, all disruptive to the President s efforts in the war against terror. The President s reaction to the Congress actions and the Supreme Court decision of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld indicates that there will be instances where enhanced interrogation techniques are employed by agencies outside of the Department of Defense. While the U.S. military has embraced the Rule of Law with its revised interrogation policy, a different set of rules apply for enhanced interrogations conducted by the CIA. This paper will suggest that the inconsistency in the United States interrogation policy is unacceptable and that a single policy advancing the Rule of Law will allow the United States to once again fight from the moral high ground and win the critical war of ideas.