Arizona Senator John McCain (R) has spoken strongly against the use of torture as an interrogation technique, citing his experience of being tortured as a POW in Vietnam in the reasons for clarifying US Law against torture. His main 3 points are as follows:
First, subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence, because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop.
Second, mistreatment of our prisoners endangers U.S. troops who might be captured by the enemy - if not in this war, then in the next.
And third, prisoner abuses exact on us a terrible toll in the war of ideas, because inevitably these abuses become public. When they do, the cruel actions of a few darken the reputation of our country in the eyes of millions. American values should win against all others in any war of ideas, and we can't let prisoner abuse tarnish our image.”
Given his stance against torture, in October 2005, Senator McCain introduced what was commonly referred to as the "McCain Amendment" and is now known as the Detainee Treatment Act. Its purpose was to limit treatment of detainees under the effective control of the Department of Defense to those techniques and treatments listed in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. The amendment would also ban “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” for any individual in the custody or physical control of the U.S. government, regardless of their location.
Though this amendment faced strong resistance from the White House, it eventually passed the Senate 90-9. Unfortunately, the version that passed ignored the part about how anyone in US custody, regardless of location, must be treated in a humane manner.
Even though the Prisoner Treatment Act passed, it is not the comprehensive torture ban that we would have hoped for:
First, President Bush issued a signing statement that indicated he would follow this law when it did not conflict with national security.
Then, the Graham-Levin Amendment passed, which indicates that information gained through coercion can be used as evidence in a court of law. Additionally, it denies the right of habeas corpus to anyone held in US custody in Guantanamo Bay.
Finally, this new law indicates that the Army Field Manual must be followed, but while the army field manual indicates that international law regarding the treatment of POW must be followed, it clearly differentiates between POWs and “others” such as the enemy combatants in the War against Terrorism - and there are no international laws regarding the humane treatment of enemy combatants, because that is a distinction that was created specifically for the war against terrorism. In addition, the Army Field Manual has been edited to include 10 additional, classified pages on approved torture techniques.
Essentially, then, the Prisoners Treatment Act does nothing to protect the rights of the detainees
Following the Detainee Treatment Act, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which is covered in more detail in our report on Habeas Corpus.