Prisoners and War

The United States is ignoring some of the international rules for detaining prisoners in the war against terrorism, according to a remarkable recent news story. The Washington Post uses first-hand accounts from U.S. officials Thursday to describe beatings, sleep deprivation and prisoners kept kneeling or standing for hours in black hoods while others were bound in painful positions. The prisoners suffered at the hands of the CIA, which was trying to elicit information about al-Qaida. Most seriously, according to the story, these officials acknowledge the United States knowingly sends its prisoners to countries where interrogators often use even more drastic forms of torture.

The U.S. detention centers examined by Post reporters Dana Priest and Barton Gellman are operated by the Central Intelligence Agency beyond this country’s borders – at Guantanamo or in Afghanistan, for instance – and potentially beyond the rules of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which describes treatment for prisoners of war. The suspected terrorists, the targets of the war on terrorism, however, have not been accorded POW status.

It is hard to doubt a get-tough policy with people determined to kill Americans, but the United States has in previous wars recognized basic standards of treatment of those it captured. This time, however, apparently is different. The Post story explained it this way:

“According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, ‘We don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries to they can kick the [expletive] out of them.’ Some countries are known to use mind-altering drugs such as sodium pentathol, said other officials involved in the process.”

The other countries include nations that have repeated shown up in U.S. States Department reports for their mistreatment and torture of prisoners. Jordan, Egypt and Morocco are among the places the CIA has sent suspected al-Qaida members and, in at least one case, Syria. U.S. officials told the Post that they use these countries to take advantage of cultural affinities that might allow the prisoners to speak more freely.

Certainly the CIA has every motive for trying to get these prisoners to talk about al-Qaida’s plans and, certainly, the question of whether these prisoners should be treated as prisoners of war merely provokes lengthy debate that may be pointless. What is clear is that the United States must observe a minimum of regard for the treatment of the prisoners and, having taken them captive, assume responsibility for them by keeping them under U.S. watch.

It is too easy to say the United States cannot become like its enemies; the Post story also makes clear the danger of becoming like its friends.