In light of this massive legal upheaval, the Bush administration asserted early in the War on Terror that the U.S. unequivocally "does not engage in torture."  Instead, Administration officials such as CIA chief Michael Hayden have consistently supported enhanced interrogation techniques which he claims "remain[] within the bound of the law".  So just what is 'enhanced interrogation'?  One controversial technique is the practice of 'waterboarding.'  Waterboarding consists of immobilizing a person on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages – inducing the threat of death.  Last year, the former Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, issued a critical report entitled, Educing Information-Interrogation: Science and Art which basically concluded that the U.S. government has not in any scientific manner studied the effectiveness of its methods of interrogation since the end of World War II.  Thus, the U.S. is still using the same unproven techniques, including waterboarding.

Congress was concerned about these practices when it passed the McCain Amendment in 2005 banning "cruel, degrading, and inhuman" interrogations.  However, although the President approved the legislation and ultimately signed the bill into law, he issued a "signing statement", reserving the right to use whatever methods necessary to protect the homeland.  Therefore, many critics suggest that the report of the CIA's destruction of a 2002 tape of suspected terrorists being waterboarded falls perfectly in line with the Administration's previous extrajudicial actions.  Requests by both the 9/11 commission and a federal court to view the tapes were denied and the origin of the decision to destroy the tapes remains hazy.  In the wake of this scandal, Congress has again tried to assert its authority over the issue and some members have called for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the decision to destroy the tapes.

The United States could learn a lot from Israel, Britain, and other countries with decades worth of experience interrogating terror suspects.  Careful, professional, and, most importantly, lawful interrogation can be used to foil terrorist plots and save lives.  Unfortunately, as evident by its handling of the waterboarding tapes, the CIA has exhibited an outmoded level of secrecy.  This scandal supports claims that the CIA was fully aware that its actions were illegal.  It also raises the possibility that the tapes could be considered evidence that the President, or whomever made the decision to destroy the tapes, was acting illegally.

The Bush Administration's policy of enhanced interrogation and the practice of holding accused al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, clearly divides Americans in the War on Terror.  Most Republicans believe that we should be free to detain and interrogate anyone that poses a threat to this nation, while most Democrats insist that we must protect human rights and ensure that detainees are given due process and humane interrogations. However, when exposed to the realities of torture, nearly all Americans are repulsed.  Some have suggested that if the CIA interrogation tapes were made public, the country's outrage would have defined the controversy and silenced the critics in the same fashion as the Abu Ghraib prison photos.

Although torture has been around forever, one strand of truth runs through each society's use of mental and physical harm to obtain information: the lack of accuracy.  We can never be sure of the information wrought from 'enhanced interrogation,' and it will take an independent panel, or a blue ribbon commission similar to the 9/11 Commission, to finally outline a legitimate form of enhanced interrogation.