Torture: America After 9/11

The events of 9/11 have truly changed the country as we know it. Mostly this change has come in the way of how America acquires information from Middle Easterners.  After the events that occurred, America became a country that did whatever they wanted to get the answers to the questions that they had. Even telling untrue facts to Americans along the way, by doing this the government had Americans believe that the methods that they were using were necessary when in all actuality they were unnecessary methods in some cases. In Mark Danner's "Our State of Exception" , he points out elements that causes one to think if the actions that America has taken since 9/11 are truly moral, and necessary, actions.

In his essay, Danner keeps referring to the torture that American used on Abu Zubaydah. Americans did whatever they could to get information out of him. According to the government, He was supposed to be the right hand man of Osama Bin Laden. Later it was learned that when the government told American people that he was second in-line of Al-Queda that it was a lie. Zubaydah was essentially nowhere near that high in the chain of command. Danner wrote that Zubayah was more of a "very rich prize."  I start to think when I hear this, how can our government torture an individual that is completely innocent or the charges in which they are accusing him? How is it morally, or just, to torture an individual who had absolutely no role into what happened to American on September 11th? The answer to both of those questions is that our government overstepped the boundaries and just did whatever they wanted to Abu Zubaydah.

The torture in which Zubaydah endured is inhumane and unjust and yet the U.S. government seen absolutely no problem with the techniques they were doing on a INNOCENT man. The one detail Danner included that stuck out to me the most was  when he wrote about the waterboarding Zubaydah received.  He writesin the words of Zubaydah:

"After the beating I was then placed in the small box. They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply…. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed…. I was then dragged from the small box, unable to walk properly and put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my  was very painful. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to horizontal position and the same torture carried out again with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress."

This sounds like absolute torture, If this man was associated to 9/11 and was withholding vital information of another attack then maybe this would be necessary, however in real sense it is not! It was even documented that Zubaydah gave up information to authorities before being tortured, So if he was willing to give up information peacefully then what was the need for the torturing? They even talked about the SERE system, which is a system that is used to prepare U.S Air Force pilots who are captured by enemies for the pain and techniques that they will endure. This difference in doing that in the Air Force versus in the real world is the fact that the pilots can say stop at any time, whereas the individuals enduring it in the real world cannot! Within his essay, Danner writes : SERE training, as one former instructor told the Senate Armed Services Committee, from whose report I am quoting, was “based on illegal exploitation…of prisoners over the last

fifty years." If a person within our own Armed Forces believes this to be illegal then why the hell do we still do it?

This is a supreme case of American overstretching its power and doing something absolutely inhumane! It's crazy to think out government saw absolutely nothing wrong with this and continue to let this occur and go on. I'm all for getting answers about future attacks on our soil and everything, but the way in which America treated Zubaydah was completely unnecessary and completely uncalled for. By the events of 9/11 it has forced the U.S. to believe that torture is the only way to acquire vital information when it actuality sometimes torture is not needed at all!