The Justice Department and the UN Convention Against Torture

According to the Department of Justice the Geneva Conventions doesn’t broadly define what some words in the statute mean. For example there is no clear definition what “severe means, and doesn’t really contain any definition of physical pain or suffering.” After looking and analyzing, the Justice Department wanted to come up with a way that the language of the Geneva Conventions would be interpreted clearly. John Yoo and the Justice Department would come up with a clear definition for the statute saying that physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent to severe pain accompanying “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” One critic stated that “all this defined was exactly what Saddam Hussein was doing in his prison cells.” Another critic said “it was stunning, and couldn’t believe that it wasn’t burned and buried, that it should not see the light of day.”