Presidential Executive Orders in the US - Essay Example

The order played a crucial role in bringing security agencies such as the CIA into line with US Army Field Manual on Interrogation thus confining CIA interrogators to standardized humane techniques. Executive order number 13491 has played an important role in reducing the suffering of combat enemy detainees in US facilities (Maria et al., 2012).

President Obama, like his predecessors, has issued several executive orders since he assumed office. One such order is the Executive Order Number 13491 of January 22, 2009, which sought to ensure lawful interrogations for armed conflict detainees. The objective of this order was to ensure that people were treated safely, lawfully, and humanely in the government’s endeavours to gather intelligence data. In particular, the order targeted people under US custody within its borders and those US citizens held in armed conflicts. With this order, the Obama administration sought to comply with its domestic and international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions (Maria et al., 2012).

According to this order, the Army Field Manual would be the guide for interrogating persons under the watch of a US officer, employee, or agent in a US-controlled facility during armed conflicts. Even when applying the authorized interrogation techniques, a US officer must adhere to the principles, conditions, limitations, and processes prescribed in the Army Field Manual. This executive order also directed that the CIA close all the detention facilities it operated except those for short-term holding. Further, all US agencies and departments were directed to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross timely and notified access to armed conflict detainees in US custody (Thiessen, 2010). The order also sought to establish an inter-agency task force on transfer and interrogation policies. The task force’s membership included the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the CIA Director, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The implementation of Executive Order 13491 of January 22, 2009, has been marred by quite several challenges and criticism. Many stakeholders opine that the order has several loopholes that would allow torture to prevail during interrogations. Although the order initially caused celebrations and unrestrained enthusiasm among US citizens with many believing it was a giant step forward, disappointingly, the order has been described to contain torture loopholes and has certain implications (Maria et al., 2012). The first negative impact of implementing this order is that it only prohibits torture for those detained in armed conflicts. It should be acknowledged that it is not only in armed conflicts that US military and law enforcers may find themselves holding people in their facilities. In fact, in contemporary society, even private security firms and agents could detain a terror suspect in their facilities. Because of these loopholes, the media has continued to provide space and time for the weaknesses and effects of this executive order (Maria et al., 2012).

One issue about the order covered extensively by the media relates to the fact that the order closes only the CIA’s detention centres. What is more, those used for short-term holding or on a transitory basis were to remain operational. The media has since been awash with questions seeking the definition of “short-term” and “transitory” duration. Also extensively emphasized in the media are the implications of other federal agencies as far as the closure of all detention facilities is concerned since only the CIA was ordered to expeditiously shut its detention facilities. The National Security Agency, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Defense Intelligence Agency have loopholes to maintain their detention facilities in which they may execute torture on armed conflict and non-armed conflict detainees (Thiessen, 2010). Finally, abuses that the order and other rules do not define as torture may have continued despite this executive order being issued.

Generally, the implementation of Executive Order 13491 mainly had positive effects since more human and safe interrogation techniques are currently being used on detainees. Although some assert that these techniques are equally torturous, illegal, and controversial, the US military approves their use (Maria et al., 2012). These techniques include isolation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, stress position, sensory bombardment, cultural humiliations, and phobias in which prisoners are exposed to situations that make them panic.