When a reporter asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently to comment on allegations of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, he demurred. While he was comfortable with the word "abuse," he hesitated to use torture to describe what happened in Abu Ghraib. Instead he substituted another T-word: "terrible."

Rumsfeld is not alone; no one else in America seems able to say "torture," either. The media have picked up Rumsfeld's cue that while this is terrible, it isn't that bad - and further emphasize that it is neither as extensive nor horrific as that perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's regime.

Of course, under Saddam torture wasn't as extensive and horrific as in Nazi Germany. But does that mean that thousands of Iraqis weren't tortured? Clearly, no.

The truth is that we Americans simply don't get to make ourselves feel better by refusing to call what happened at Abu Ghraib torture or by characterizing it as "torture lite." Such an attitude ignores the accusations that some prisoners were sodomized or killed; it disregards the chilling photo of the hooded prisoner hooked up to wires; it discounts the reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross that many prisoners bear evidence of nerve damage. Indeed, it nurtures the culture that gives rise to incidents of abuse and torture.

Besides, even the argument that the events at Abu Ghraib consisted mostly of sexual "humiliation" instead of physical violence doesn't get us off the hook - and it suggests that few Americans are sufficiently aware how wounding this particular type of calculated humiliation is in Arab Muslim culture.

In any case, international law forbids "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." That not all of the harm inflicted was physical does not mean that it was not torture.

Of course it is not surprising that people are having a hard time using that T-word. After all, Private First Class Lynndie England, 21, seems an unlikely villain. Surely there must be some explanation for her actions? Why else would she have apparently been photographed leading a naked prisoner around by a leash?

Failing some compelling narrative that explains her actions, we build our own: England was pressured to do this by her superiors, we tell ourselves, or, as one man interviewed by The New York Times suggested, she and her comrades snapped under the pressure of seeing the bodies of their buddies dragged through the streets of Falluja (even though the accusations against them date from before that ambush).

We continue to offer these narratives because we simply don't want to believe that we can be as bad as the bad guys. It is Saddam who is evil; it is the Baath party that is corrupt; it is the insurgents who are "thugs and terrorists." And it is Americans who are "wonderful," as the Bush administration says, the model for all the world to emulate.

Like all generalizations, none of these comforting sentiments are true; I suspect we all know this, but it is easier to demonize and dehumanize our enemies while elevating our own status and motives. Yet it is the smug assertions of our superiority that gives rise to the lax oversight that permits instances of abuse and torture to go unnoticed, even as it is shamelessly documented in photographs and videos.

Interestingly, in an interview with Al Hurra, the U.S.-sponsored satellite television network in the Middle East, President George W. Bush did what Rumsfeld has not: he accepted the characterizations of these actions as torture. That is a good first step, albeit a tiny one. Bush and Rumsfeld must acknowledge that the army has uncovered evidence of widespread torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president must also order an international investigation of the interrogation practices being used on detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

But even if these suggestions are followed, they will not radically change things for all those being detained; if nothing else, this incident has demonstrated that the chain of command from the private to the commander in chief is both attenuated and fragile. It therefore falls to all of us to clearly and unequivocally condemn the abuse - the torture - of prisoners under our control.

Marcella David is a professor at the University of Iowa School of Law

Copyright © 2004 the International Herald Tribune

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