Just over a year ago, legal scholars and pundits posed the question, "Is torture justifiable in the post-Sept. 11 world?"

Now the unthinkable has come to pass. According to a report published in The Chronicle last month ("U.S. uses tough tactics on silent terrorists," Dec. 26), some CIA and U.S. military personnel are tolerating and encouraging physical abuse and torture as part of the "war on terrorism."

The article, by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, graphically reveals how U.S. interrogators at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, and at other overseas sites, have brutally treated al Qaeda and Taliban forces in a "brass-knuckled quest for information" to uncover future terrorist plots. "Take-down teams," consisting of U.S. Army Special Forces troops, FBI and CIA agents and Northern Alliance troops, disorient and intimidate suspects by blindfolding and beating them, throwing them into walls, binding them for long periods in contorted positions and depriving them of sleep for days at a time.

The teams then "package" some prisoners by hooding them and duct-taping them to stretchers for transport. Approximately 100 have been extradited for interrogation in countries with notorious human rights records, including Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia - all of which have been cited by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department for their brutal treatment of prisoners - including torture.

These detention centers (including the Bagram and Diego Garcia facilities) are off limits to independent agencies such as the Red Cross, which might monitor prisoner conditions and treatment. Although the CIA officially prohibits torture, the Bush administration has largely ignored the treatment of extradited prisoners.

In September 2002, Cofer Black, then head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, told House and Senate intelligence committees that "there was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off."

Torture appears as the preferred means of eliciting confessions during humankind's most depraved moments: the Dark Ages, the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazi Third Reich. It conjures up macabre images of torture racks, scourges and branding irons. Yet in the late 20th century, some of the most ruthless torturers were death squads and dictatorships funded and trained by the CIA in its zealous Cold War counterinsurgency campaigns.

William Blum, in his book "Rogue State," documents the key role U.S. intelligence agencies and military advisers played in supporting operations carried out by right-wing Latin American and Vietnamese torturers from the 1960s to the 1980s. In Central America, their efforts included the creation and distribution of technical manuals for applying physical and psychological torture. These described where to place electrodes on human bodies for "optimal" results and how to create despair through intimidation and humiliation.

But torture - including torture by proxy - directly violates international humanitarian laws such as the Geneva Conventions (which set minimum standards for the treatment of the sick, the wounded and prisoners during wartime), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention Against Torture (ratified by our country in 1994). Among other things, the latter specifies that "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war of a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."

The idea that torture is acceptable in the wake of Sept. 11 - or any other circumstances - is dangerously flawed. History shows that once a society justifies its use on even a limited scale, it tends to thoroughly infect the judicial system.

These techniques also send a terrible message to the entire globe: that torture is acceptable and the rule of law can be ignored. In the eyes of the world, the Bush administration's refusal to endorse the International Criminal Court will surely be viewed as further evidence of a growing American contempt for the rule of international law.

A horrifying element of allegations of the CIA's outrageous use of torture by proxy is that it has provoked little controversy or indignation. The fact that some intellectuals have recently debated the propriety and efficacy of techniques perfected by medieval and fascist societies signals a deepening moral corrosion - an utter loss of humanity.

Attempting to rid the world of terrorism should never justify its use. As citizens, we should insist that Congress investigate reports of torture and physical abuse by U.S. officials and allies, and we should demand that such practices end immediately.

The rule of international law is all that we have to prevent the world from slipping into absolute lawlessness. Without it, brute force and militarism reign supreme. It will indeed be a bitter tragedy if the "war on terrorism" obliterates what remains of the American commitment to the rule of law.

Roberto J. Gonzalez is assistant professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and editor of the forthcoming book, "Anthropology Goes Public: Cultural Critique of American Empire" (University of Texas Press, 2003).

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