THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The US was a strong supporter of treaties and laws against torture. We jailed and even executed those who used torture. We proudly codified treaty provisions as US law. Sadly, those times are no more and now we are a nation that believes torture porn like "24" is the greatest reality show ever.

Three decades after the U.N. Convention Against Torture imposed measures to eradicate the practice, torture still happens in 141 countries — many of which are signatories to that convention — according to Amnesty International’s annual report on torture released Tuesday.

According to the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” That agreement, as well as the various Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, have all dictated an absolute ban on torture for any purpose — even in times of war.

And yet, in police headquarters, secret prisons and CIA black sites, detainees across the globe report being subjected to torture as a means of extracting information or confessions, silencing dissent or simply as punishment. The Amnesty report details 27 categories of torture reported in the past year, including electric shocks, mock executions, water torture, rape and sexual violence and the pulling of teeth.

Despite overwhelming opposition to torture in most of the world’s countries and the litany of international conventions expressly forbidding the practice, an Amnesty poll found that 44 percent of people worldwide still are not confident they would be safe from torture if taken into custody by authorities in their country.

That number was 32 percent in the United States, where details of the CIA’s now-terminated “enhanced interrogation” practices and rendition programs are soon to be revealed in a Senate Intelligence report.

Manfred Nowak, the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, told Al Jazeera that the U.S. — once viewed as a vanguard in the fight for human rights worldwide — has opened the door for other countries to engage in torture under the auspices of fighting terrorism. In the post-9/11 world, Nowak and others say many countries have followed the U.S.' lead and cited national security interests and the “ticking time bomb” rationale to justify the use of any means necessary to extract information from suspected terror suspects.

Former CIA director George Tenet said in 2007 that the agency's rendition program had prevented terror plots against the U.S. and saved countless lives, concluding that the "enhanced interrogation" of suspects at secret CIA facilities was "worth more than the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

The saddest part about the introduction of torture by the Bush administration is that it never saved any lives. Any useful information was obtained from skilled interrogators using non coercive techniques. The torture amounted to nothing more than kicking the dog as they left.