Nothing surprises me anymore about the Bush Administration and the depths it is willing to sink to in order to justify any action. The New York Times reported October 4 that in 2005 the Bush Administration drafted secret legal memos stating that certain techniques--water boarding, freezing, head slapping, etc.--may be used on terror suspects held in United States custody, in effect reversing its 2004 statement to the contrary. President Bush continues to assert that these techniques are not torture and furthermore are within legal limits prescribed by law.

What we have is a semantic game where the White House and its acolytes say "we do not torture" all the while using their own legal opinions to justify such practices. For instance, waterboarding--a technique that simulates drowning--is recognized to be an act of torture under the statutes that define such practices. While the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) indicated that this technique is no longer used, the Bush administration continues to maintain its legal right to use water boarding and other degrading, dehumanizing techniques under the guise of protecting America. Were the president actually concerned with protecting America, a good place to start would be following the laws that dictate proper treatment of detainees outlined in the Geneva Conventions.

In 1945, the United States and the other industrialized nations became principal signatories to a series of documents (31 in all) known as the Geneva Conventions. A major tenet of the conventions was to prevent what the committee called crimes against humanity, which are acts that seek to remove from other human beings the basic rights, dignity, and respect that each person should be accorded simply because they are a member of humanity. Torture is explicitly forbidden under the Geneva Conventions (Article 5, Declaration of Human Rights: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment") and countries that practice such techniques are criminals under the statutes.

Furthermore, Article Six of the United States constitution states that any treaty signed by our government becomes the law of our land. ("This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.") Therefore, the Geneva Conventions are a part of American law and as such our president--were the Geneva Conventions taken seriously by our government--should be hanged as a war criminal.

However, as with most things, the United States government refuses to apply to itself the same principles it applies to everyone else. Is there any question as to why we are so loathed?

--Robert Payne is a high school social studies teacher. He lives in Tacoma.