HUMAN RIGHTS AND TORTURE
The war on terror is a perfect state of psychosis within which the darkness (of torture) can extend itself. It has no defined boundaries, no fixed territorial enemies: it takes what yesterday were deemed to be simple crimes, and extends them mentally to incriminate whole populations, social groups or religions.

There is only one antidote to this creeping sickness: the insistence upon universal human rights, within whose spirit torture was outlawed by the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. Forbidden are any officially sanctioned acts "by which severe pain or suffering,whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person".
Guardian