To a large degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival. While the Vietnamese rarely abided by the rules, the international pressure on them to do so forced them to walk a line that ensured they did not perpetrate the sort of shocking abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Life in a Vietnamese prison was hell, but I was never subjected to such degrading sexual humiliation. The human body can withstand enormous physical pain and recover. But the human mind is different: One seldom fully recovers from ruthless psychological or sexual torture. I am certain my treatment would have been worse had the Geneva Conventions not been in place and had the world not insisted that Vietnam abide by them.

Having survived the ordeal of a POW, I never believed I would have to revisit the issue of prisoner treatment. But when I learned that the
administration had created a new prisoner status for persons captured in Afghanistan after 9/11, I sensed something was drastically wrong. Labeling prisoners "enemy combatants" instead of POWs was an apparent ploy to circumvent the Geneva Conventions and deny them the right, at the very least, to a review to determine their status. . . The flippant, disrespectful view of the Geneva Conventions within the administration was reflected again in the zealous advice given to President Bush by his top legal adviser, Alberto Gonzales.

The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.

Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective.

I don't see anyone in a leadership position in the Democratic Party (except maybe Howard Dean) who is addressing the gravity of the situation. On the contrary, it seems that most of what the Bush Administration has done has been implicitly accepted by the Democratic Party.

The truth, as any dominatrix will tell you, is that torture produces only compliance - telling you what you want to hear. It has little or nothing to do with the truth, and it never will.

Worse yet, no one will prosecute these thugs because the next regime will want to keep all the power they have carved out for themselves...

In another section of the article it says Bradbury's opinion was unprecedented because it authorized using two techniques, neither of which by themselves amounted to torture, at the same time. The article goes on at length about this saying the interrogators were confused about whether they could do this.

Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.