The Brandeis College Democrats hosted a discussion panel with Prof. Andreas Teuber (PHIL) in the Shapiro Campus Center atrium on last Tuesday. Titled "What's Wrong With Torture: The prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay," the discussion was the first in a series of talks sponsored by the Democrats that will feature Brandeis professors.

"The major goal [of this event was] to spark a discussion on campus around this issue and have people understand why maintaining human rights standards is so important," said David Fried '06, the outreach and social events coordinator for the Brandeis Democrats. "We want a foreign policy which promotes democracy and social justice."

Teuber said that upon hearing on CBS about the Abu Ghraib scandal, he was shocked to find out that Americans practiced torture. Teuber said that according to the Geneva Conventions that the United States has signed, prisoners of war have rights such as regular visits from the Red Cross, freedom from interrogation or torture and imprisonment only for the duration of the war.

However in the case of Abu Ghraib, according to Teuber, the prisoners were deemed "unlawful combatants" so these rights were denied to them.

"One of the most revealing things that Professor Teuber brought to my attention was how early members of the current administration began doing research on ways in which the ban on torture could be evaded," said Sam Siegel '06, the president of the Brandeis Democrats. "I agree that we are in a war, a war on terror; however, our prisoners deserve the same rights and treatment of the POW's of every other war the U.S. has fought in the modern era. Torture is just out of the question."

Teuber said that during the Six-Day War, Israeli soldiers were instructed to shoot terrorists but to not touch civilians because that is blood beyond their hands. According to Teuber, the rules of engagement in war were strictly followed and that was considered a just war.

Teuber contrasted this with the thousands of people that the U.S. rounded up-"unlawful combatants" as well as civilians-and loaded into metal crates. Teuber said that the soldiers fired into the crates to make breathing holes when the prisoners could not breathe. Food and medication was withheld, and the prisoners were short-shackled to the floor naked.

"As laid out by Professor Teuber, you can trace the brutal tactics from the prisons in northern Afghanistan to Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib by following the movement of Jeffrey Dahmer, who visited each site to teach, 'interrogation techniques,' " Siegel said.

Teuber also said that often the information that the soldiers received from the interrogations either wasn't information that they could have used or were false confessions.

"This story is still in the making," said Teuber. "We're coming in right in the middle"

Teuber said that although the soldier in the field has the right to appeal the orders of his/her commander and the duty to the law, the states of mind of the soldiers may have been compromised.

"[The American soldiers in the Army] are your age," Teuber said. "They come from poor families [and] they don't have your kind of education," said Teuber, "They should be talked to about this."

Teuber said that the overlooking of international treaties and codes compromises the army's strength and integrity.

"My own view is that violations of treaties and international instruments like the Geneva Convention and the U.N. Convention against torture reveal an astonishing disrespect for the rule of the law," Teuber said. "[This] only makes the treatment on American soldiers, if and when they are captured during combat, all the more worrisome and unpredictable.