Leader of Minnesota "Center for Victims of Torture" says it applies to US treatment of people in Iraq.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040530/ts_alt_afp/us_iraq_prison_torture&cid=1506&ncid=1480A Tortorous Path Around the "t" Word
In a fiery speech this week attacking the current administration, Gore spoke of the creation of an "American gulag ... with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even -- we must use the word -- tortured."
A 1994 law makes torture committed by Americans outside the United States a crime. The law defines torture as the infliction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering.
The Minnesota-based Center for Victims of Torture finds the semantic arguments surrounding the abuse in Abu Ghraib both diversionary and morally bankrupt.
"Mistreatment, abuse, prison scandal. Let's be perfectly clear," said the center's executive director, Douglas Johnson. "The images and descriptions we see and hear coming out of Iraq (news - web sites) are torture. Defining the acts as anything less than that is wrong."