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Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft contemplates the “authorized interrogation techniques” used on high-value prisoners by the CIA—the euphemism for this practice is “stress-and-duress interrogation”—and arrives at an interesting theory:
Looking at the list of “authorized techniques”, I can see her point. Here they are, courtesy of ABC News:It’s been widely reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh were subjected to these techniques. Bush now wants to send them to Guantanamo for military trials. Under Bush’s proposed rules, they could be excluded from being present at their own trials.
My interpretation and shorter version: Mohammed and Binalshibh are now vegetables but we’ll never know because they will be tried without anyone ever seeing them.
Those mostly sound innocuous to you? They aren’t, not a one of them. Think about it: most of us have been slapped, or shaken, or cold and wet, or sleep-deprived, at some point in our lives. It wasn’t all that awful, right? Thing is, it also wasn’t enough to make us start babbling all our secrets. Therefore, what the CIA interrogators are describing can’t be comparable experiences.1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
As always during stress and duress interrogation, the point of using these techniques is to induce a prisoner to say things he wouldn’t say otherwise. If they didn’t produce that effect, interrogators wouldn’t use them. Innocuous methods don’t get that result. The word for what we’re talking about here is torture. And if it’s being applied with caution and restraint, that’ll be a first for this administration.
Note that there are no specifications as to how often or how long or how repeatedly the “authorized techniques” can be used. That makes all the difference in the world. One light blow on the soles of your feet is no big thing. Administering many such light blows is called bastinado, and can be screamingly painful.
Let’s look at the specific techniques:
The use of the word “attention” here is meretricious. Consider: the prisoner has been completely in your power for months, held without formal charges, legal counsel, or other outside contact. Throughout that time, you’ve been the biggest, scariest, and most powerful thing in his universe. Now you’re interrogating him. His life is in your hands. How can you not have his attention?1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
Answer: if he’s already so far out of it, or so distracted by physical pain, that it takes a strong stimulus to refocus his attention on your questions. That is: if he’s already been significantly abused.
An interrogation technique that “causes pain and triggers fear” is torture, plain and simple.
Onward. Rough or extended shaking, slapping, or other treatment that sharply jars the victim’s head will produce serious and lasting injury. A glancing gunshot that actually enters the skull and plows through a shallow bit of brain can do less damage, unless it happens to hit one of the really essential bits.
Your brain, as it’s floating there in its cerebrospinal fluid, has the structural strength of a fairly firm molded jello. A sharp, jarring movement will bounce it around. This is bad. Mechanisms of injury: scraping and bruising against your skull’s internal structures. Cavitation in the cerebrospinal fluid. Shearing between layers of the brain itself.
Potential injuries: Diffuse axonal injury, in which the shear forces produced in the brain break the axons off your nerve cells. This is a nasty one. Concussion, which causes bleeding and swelling, plus a different kind of axonal damage. Coup-contrecoup injuries. Sinus fractures. Retinal damage. Hearing loss. Dementia. If there’s a further brain injury before the previous one has healed, the consequences can be much more severe.
Any closed head injury can cause the brain to swell, particularly if it’s a re-injury. Inside the skull, there’s no place for swelling to go. If intercranial pressure goes high enough, two things can happen. One is that the pressure rises until it matches the rest of the body’s blood pressure, at which point no more blood will enter the brain, and the brain will die. The other is that the pressure can jam the brain stem down into the spinal column, and the brain will die. This sucks. So does non-fatal brain damage caused by intercranial pressure.
In general? Don’t hit people in the head.
Again, this phrasing is disingenuous. Any pain not permanent is temporary, but that doesn’t mean it’s of short duration, or bearable. Even more deceitful is the assertion that this is not meant to cause internal injuries. Unless you strictly limit yourself to the chest and buttocks, any time you hit an area of the trunk that’s not supported by bone, you risk internal injuries. It doesn’t matter how you hold your hand. If you’re hitting in this area at all, “not meaning to cause injuries” amounts to wishing it were possible to cause that much pain without consequences, and ignoring the fact that they exist.3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
For information on matters like this, best go to the experts: BDSM how-to pages. I recommend Soft Tissue Damage and Strike Zones by “Shaun”, who obviously knows what he’s talking about:
There’s less muscle covering the abdominal area, and more organs to damage. Here’s Shaun’s map of the human body, showing where you can and can’t hit them. Areas in red are off limits. Any BDSM 101 site will tell you that anything more forceful than trailing the ends of your flogger across the abdomen is unacceptably dangerous.While bruises may not sound serious there are injuries that are more serious and still be just a bruise. … When making any blow to an area where the body has a bone, the energy is absorbed. Strikes to the body without this protection will transfer the energy to the organs hidden from view. For example: Our kidneys are located approximately in our back along the spine covered only by a thick layer of muscle. A blow to this area will transfer the energy of the strike to the kidneys, possibly causing injury to them. A bruised kidney may manifest itself by bloody urine, localized side pains, even kidney failure which can lead to a very painful death.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn discusses this one in The Gulag Archipelago, in the section on NKVD tortures. He, too, says this one always works. Keep anyone awake long enough and they’ll break. My question is: if this one works so well, why have interrogators been using other methods that have far more potential for lasting physical harm?4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
I refer you to last winter’s post and comment thread on hypothermia.5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
Great. Water torture. Shades of the Inquisition.6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
When you use a “technique” that your toughest guys can’t stand for more than fifteen seconds, one that instantly reduces prisoners to abject begging, you’re not using “stress and duress interrogation” or “alternative interrogation methods” or “authorized interrogation techniques”. It’s torture, pure and simple.According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda’s toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
“The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law,” said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
See this image of the Inquisition? They’re using water torture on the guy at center back. The guy on the right who’s up in the air at the end of a rope is undergoing strappado. We use that one too.* The session on the left looks to me like bastinado. Why do these old tortures keep turning up? Because if “getting people to confess to anything you want to hear” counts as working, they work.
How water torture works: You may have heard of drowning fishermen clambering on top of each other in their struggle to get a breath of air. You may also have heard that the dead in concentration camp gas chambers always formed a pyramid, because the poison gas was heavier than air, so people blindly fought to get closer to the ceiling. It’s the same phenomenon in both cases: the blind unreasoning reflexive panic of someone who’s running out of air.
Waterboarding triggers that I am drowning! reaction, but you’re immobilized and helpless so you can’t do anything about it. You also can’t fortify yourself against it in advance, because having your hindbrain screaming for air trumps all your cognitive processes. What it does is dump you straight into abject terror and the imminent fear of death. Fifteen or thirty seconds of that and you, too, would be begging to confess whatever your captors wanted to hear.
Isn’t this great? Isn’t this fine? We’ve traded the respect and good will of the other nations of the world for the right to torture prisoners into making worthless confessions.
I know this story is a downer. I’m afraid it’s about to get worse. From Martini Republic: Bush speech brags of success in torture of insane man:
They got all kinds of intelligence out of Zubaydah after that. There was just one problem. As Martini Republic quotes from Ron Suskind:Bush describes the capture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah in today’s speech, making it a focal point of his defense of his administration’s program of secret prisons and interrogation:
Within months of September the 11th, 2001, we captured a man known as Abu Zubaydah. We believe that Zubaydah was a senior terrorist leader and a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden. Our intelligence community believes he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained, and that he helped smuggle al Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan after coalition forces arrived to liberate that country. Zubaydah was severely wounded during the firefight that brought him into custody—and he survived only because of the medical care arranged by the CIA.After he recovered, Zubaydah was defiant and evasive. He declared his hatred of America. During questioning, he at first disclosed what he thought was nominal information—and then stopped all cooperation. Well, in fact, the “nominal” information he gave us turned out to be quite important. For example, Zubaydah disclosed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—or KSM—was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and used the alias “Muktar.” This was a vital piece of the puzzle that helped our intelligence community pursue KSM. Abu Zubaydah also provided information that helped stop a terrorist attack being planned for inside the United States—an attack about which we had no previous information. Zubaydah told us that al Qaeda operatives were planning to launch an attack in the U.S., and provided physical descriptions of the operatives and information on their general location. Based on the information he provided, the operatives were detained—one while traveling to the United States.
We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives, but he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.
Here’s another story about Abu Zubaydah from Salon. Among other things, he appears to have fingered Jose Padilla. The intelligence gathered from him has been a major source of George W. Bush’s worldview.Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3—a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.” …
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety—against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each … target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”
See what happens when you set policy first, then look for intelligence to back it up?
And one more story, this one from today’s Washington Post:
It’s good of Bush & Co. to make it clear that they knew exactly what was going on, and that it was illegal. It’ll make certain things easier in the future.Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance
Plans Fund Defense In Anti-Terror CasesCIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing, according to current and former intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the program.
The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They worry that they will not have Justice Department representation in court or congressional inquiries, the officials said.
The anxieties stem partly from public controversy about a system of secret CIA prisons in which detainees were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including temperature extremes and simulated drowning. The White House contends the methods were legal, but some CIA officers have worried privately that they may have violated international law or domestic criminal statutes. …
Terrorism suspects’ defense attorneys are expected to argue that admissions made by their clients were illegally coerced as the result of policies set in Washington. …
As part of the administration’s efforts to protect intelligence officers from liability, Bush last week called for Congress to approve legislation drafted by the White House that would exempt CIA officers and other federal civilian officials from prosecution for humiliating and degrading terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. Its wording would keep prosecutors or courts from considering a wider definition of actions that constitute torture.
Bush also asked Congress to bar federal courts from considering lawsuits by detainees who were in CIA or military custody that allege violations of international treaties and laws governing treatment of detainees.
Slander! The CIA's version is *totally* different from the Inquisition's.
...
When they weren't using funnels, the Inquistors used linen for their simulated drowning. Not cellophane!
You know, I was just listening to a rebroadcast of Junior Evil being interviewed by Matt Lauer. Junior Evil was being asked about torture, and kept insisting that he "was doing everything he could to protect Americans", and that he had to use what ever means necessary to get information from people "taken on the battlefield." Battlefields like Detroit, and Buffalo, and JFK Airport, I presume.
Jeralyn's list is disquieting, but I note that it leaves out my favorite of all the "techniques" used by the US to "control prisoners". That would be the "knee strike".
Army pathologists said the two detainees, identified as Habibullah and Dilawar, died as a result of repeated kneeings to their legs. The men died Dec. 4, 2002, and Dec. 10, 2002, respectively.Brand, who's charged with involuntary manslaughter in Dilawar's death, said in a sworn statement read at the hearing that sharply kneeing a suspect in the legs was a common technique used to subdue prisoners. He said he'd used the technique to gain control of more than 20 detainees during his 10-and-a-half months of service in Afghanistan.
(snip)
Medical examiner Lt. Col. Kathleen Ingwersen said the forced immobility might have contributed to the blood clot that caused the 30-year-old Habibullah's heart to stop. According to an Army investigation, Habibullah was so badly hurt by repeated knee strikes that "even if he survived, both legs would have had to be amputated."
Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the pathologist who examined Dilawar, 35, testified via telephone that the severe beating might have aggravated a pre-existing heart condition. She said the tissue in Dilawar's legs had been so damaged by repeated blows that "it was essentially crumbling and falling apart."
http://sumoud.tao.ca/?q=comment/reply/230
I haven't seen any evidence that this "technique" has been prohibited.
I can't say how I feel about this, the language has no words.
I can say that what I know of torture makes this list far less innocous to me than it seems to many.
"The Stand-up" (making a victim stand for long periods of time) can lead to death. The legs swell, from being vertical, and the muscles get tired and the veins start to back up (which adds to the pain), and then a clot happens, and the person has a stroke.
People who will do these sorts of things are evil.
These have all been in the news for years, BTW. I've been saying for years that every time Bush claims that we don't torture, he's lying his ass off.
And of course, there's the torture that even falls under the "causes permanent damage to organs" type that we outsourced.
Speaking of waterboarding: I took a course in kayaking while I was in Scotland. Playing a game (this was an army deal, we, having mastered the basics of getting from A to B were now playing keep away with a plastic shark) I was flipped over.
I had been trained in what to do, how to clear the skirt, and bail-out of the boat and swim to clear space and surface.
For a split second I panicked. I'd known I was going under, took a big breath and then realised I was stuck, underwater. I managed to regain my rational mind and do the drill (so that the next time I got flipped it was old hat).
So I, trained to deal with it, knowing I was about to be underwater, still had the lizard-brain kick in.
Waterboarding is torture.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn discusses this one in The Gulag Archipelago, in the section on NKVD tortures. He, too, says this one always works. Keep anyone awake long enough and they’ll break. My question is: if this one works so well, why have interrogators been using other methods that have far more potential for lasting physical harm?
(emphasis mine)
I'm certain #4 isn't benign at all, considering that there have been reports of video gamers in Korea and China dying from staying up too long to play their video games. (Reportedly, 50 hours in the case of the Korean video gamer.) Certainly, by itself, and in smaller chunks of time, it has less cause for damage perhaps. But combined with the other treatment, it seems a recipe for heart failure or other issues.
Although The "water cure" could kill outright, as testimony by US soldiers before a Congressional committee revealed.
And Dilawar's death shows that not even blows on bone are safe...
100 years, 1902 - 2002.
It's just torture with an extra requirement--you have to be able to phrase its description in such a way that most Americans can convince themselves it's not torture, exactly. "We're not torturing them, we're just keeping them up all night, letting them get a little chilly, and dumping some water on their heads."
The standard here is really intuitive. If the Iranians captured some Americans, and subjected them to this, what would we call it?
So much for the high road. These sick f-ing bstrds built a gawddamn subway and tunneled the country straight to hell.
Last week, Bush gave his "Oh! you mean THOSE secret torture camps" speech.
He's proposing changing the law to make coerced confessions admissible in his new Star Chamber courts.
Which means that he has admitted that his prisoners were tortured into confessing, and could not otherwise be convicted in an American court.
And he made it sound as if he was personally involved with approving the exact techniques of 'interrogation' used. Which ends his pretence of plausible deniability: George Bush knew of and approved of torture.
Which we can now add to his war crimes indictment.
Hence the feds' interest in Terry Schiavo: if you can get the courts to agree that someone who's in a 'persistent vegetative state' can actually respond to sounds and make intellible mumblings, you can have a trial with someone who's brain-dead, and get away with it.
It's torture. Having a trial for someone who is brain-dead is not a way to avoid war crimes trials. Having trials without a real defense (witnesses, cross-examination, the whole nine yards) doesn't do it either, IMO.
I continue to wait for people to notice what the medical literature says about the various causes of hyperalgesia.
If Muhammad and Binalshibh ever go on public trial, they'll gladly confess to masterminding the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites, and then beg to be shot.
What's really saddest about this nonsense is this:
Torture can make anyone talk. What it cannot do is give the interrogator any assurances that the victim is telling the truth, or telling the truth without a bodyguard of lies... or that the victim really knows what is of interest to the interrogator.
And the less said about interrogator presuppositions of what the victim has to say, the better. Even civilians engaging in only "third degree" understand that; ever heard of a false confession?
PJ in 43,
I would think the Bush administration's interest would lie in preventing the trial of the brain-dead, considering who's heading it.
Will the first act of the next President be an indictment of this one, or an undated pardon (just in case)...
Nancy C, I don't think they've noticed yet. He is still walking around, after all. (How he does it is another question.)
(By the way, I saw those light-up needles at Michael's. The big ends must be for the bulbs. Maybe they need to look at LEDs or wheat-grain lamps instead.)
>4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
>Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn discusses this one in The Gulag Archipelago, in the section on NKVD tortures. He, too, says this one always works. Keep anyone awake long enough and they’ll break. My question is: if this one works so well, why have interrogators been using other methods that have far more potential for lasting physical harm?
As someone else noted above this is as much torture as the other techniques. First - keep someone in the same position especially a standing position for a long period of time (40 hours!) and you do immense physical and psychological damage.
Professor Alfred McCoy author of “A Question of Torture" in an interview on Democracy Now Feb-17 2006
http://democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/17/1522228
>Oh, it's very simple. Dr. Donald O. Hebb of McGill University, a brilliant psychologist, had a contract from the Canadian Defense Research Board, which was a partner with the C.I.A. in this research, and he found that he could induce a state of psychosis in an individual within 48 hours. It didn't take electroshock, truth serum, beating or pain. All he did was had student volunteers sit in a cubicle with goggles, gloves and headphones, earmuffs, so that they were cut off from their senses, and within 48 hours, denied sensory stimulation, they would suffer, first hallucinations, then ultimately breakdown.
>And if you look at many of those photographs, what do they show? They show people with bags over their head. If you look at the photographs of the Guantanamo detainees even today, they look exactly like those student volunteers in Dr. Hebb’s original cubicle.
>Now, then the second major breakthrough that the C.I.A. had came here in New York City at Cornell University Medical Center, where two eminent neurologists under contract from the C.I.A. studied Soviet K.G.B. torture techniques, and they found that the most effective K.G.B. technique was self-inflicted pain. You simply make somebody stand for a day or two. And as they stand -- okay, you're not beating them, they have no resentment -- you tell them, “You're doing this to yourself. Cooperate with us, and you can sit down.” And so, as they stand, what happens is the fluids flow down to the legs, the legs swell, lesions form, they erupt, they suppurate, hallucinations start, the kidneys shut down.
>Now, if you look at the other aspect of those photos, you’ll see that they're short-shackled -- okay? -- that they're long-shackled, that they're made -- several of those photos you just showed, one of them with a man with a bag on his arm, his arms are straight in front of him, people are standing with their arms extended, that's self-inflicted pain. And the combination of those two techniques -- sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain -- is the basis of the C.I.A.'s technique.
The first comment on the article about waterboarding:
Typical for ABC News. Go ahead and trot out a picture (probably faked based on Brian Ross' record) to go along with a story from unnamed sources and provide NO verification of facts. Your efforts to terrorize the American public based on distortion and misrepresentation are clearly coordinated with Terrorsts. I hope you achieve your desired state of gratification the next time a few thousand Americans die as you seem to hope for.
You make me sick!
...I'm led to wonder: Does it hurt to be that stupid?
Annalee, I think it hurts to be that stupid and fear that you've been terribly mistaken in your leaders and ideology.
What happens when that cognitive dissonance gets resolved? When the evidence becomes too hard to ignore?
Maybe it never does.
It seems like either we get a horrifying backlash from this stuff, or we get a national blind spot that will persist for years.
I can see three reasons that sleep deprivation isn't popular with torturers: one, it takes time and patience, two, the victim will hallucinate, making their information of questionable value, and three, permanent harm is probably possible after all.
Torture can make anyone talk. What it cannot do is give the interrogator any assurances that the victim is telling the truth, or telling the truth without a bodyguard of lies... or that the victim really knows what is of interest to the interrogator.
That's why you have to do it to a lot of people, then see if their stories match up. I mean, to be thorough.
Annalee, I think it hurts to be that stupid and fear that you've been terribly mistaken in your leaders and ideology.
I seem to remember a poster from my first-grade classroom that said "An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."
But hey, if the right wingnuts had ever gotten that memo, creationism would have gone the way of the dinosaur over a century ago.
"Our FOUR chief weapons are surprise, fear, ruthless [in]efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the [government]."
William Gibson tells a little story about interrogation.
#8 albatross: The standard here is really intuitive. If the Iranians captured some Americans, and subjected them to this, what would we call it?
Last night on The Price of Security Ted Koppel posed this very question to to [Maj. Gen.?] Harris, the current commander at Guantanamo, and he said it wouldn't be torture then either.
Which is horseshit.
Randolph sez: I can see three reasons that sleep deprivation isn't popular with torturers: one, it takes time and patience, two, the victim will hallucinate, making their information of questionable value, and three, permanent harm is probably possible after all.
I think we've already determined that by their methods of interrogation, torturers don't care about points two and three. If they cared about accurate information, they wouldn't be forcing confessions in the first place. The time factor might be a bit of a turn-off though, particularly if you're the sort that wants to see visible results immediately.
Randolph (#23) Sleep dep is a popular tool with a lot of interrogators, because as tortures go, it's mild. It's also one which the person who still has some scruples can convince themselves isn't really torture (because being in the Army, esp. in a combat zone, one gets to enjoy a lot of time spent with inadequate sleep). Hell, done with great judition it might not be torture, but the amount of oversight would have to be serious, and I still have a problem with it. But it does work, keep someone awake and a lot of the resistance they have breaks down, without actually imposing enough threat that they are afraid. They become more tractable, without becoming as unreliable.
DonBoy: (#24) Give me an agenda, and the right to apply torture, and everyone I talk to will tell a story so similar that it must be true.
Nell (#27) While the general is correct (and shows a pleasant consistency) you are right to say the politicians, and citizenry would think these practices to be torture, were the practised on us. Hell, we have a track record of calling most of them torture, and that in the recent past.
Assuming you don't know anything important, or even if you think you do, can anyone think of a good reason not to immediately agree to, sign, admit or recant whatever an interrogator wanted to hear (something plausible, but not true) the nanosecond you got Shown the Instruments? It was good enough for Galileo.
The interesting thing is that these are all a certain *kind* of technique. I'm reminded of some things taught to me in a self-defense class once. (Bear with me. I'll have a point.) They taught moves like using knuckles to pinch hard (knuckles can pinch with some powerful crushing force) at certain nerves and soft spots--extremely painful, potentially damaging to nerves--with the note that, well, what are they going to say? 'Officer, she pinched me?' It'd be laughed off. It sounds like nothing.
An open-hand slap? That sounds like nothing--they're not *punching* the guy, Officer. I mean, what, he's whining about a little slap to the face? :ole he'd get from being too forward on a date? To get his attention? (No mention that it's probably a lot of slaps, and that slaps to various places--abdomen, say, or temple, or ear, or kidney--can do permanent damage, especially administered by a trained professional. Sometimes more than a closed fist.)
Making a guy stand in one place for a while? Oh, man, yeah, sure, that's not torture. What're they going to complain about next, *loud noises*? My neighbor's kid plays loud music. I have to stand in one place at work. That's clearly not torture, either, right? (No mention of blood clots, or days on end, or psychological damage. No mention that the CIA's definition of loud noises and bright lights and sleep deprivation are different than your neighbor's kids'.)
Dunking a guy in water? I do that all the damn time at the pool. It sounds like taking a shower. What are these people complaining about? Whine, whine, whine. Next thing you know, they'll be calling tasteless jail food torture, or yelling. Liberal pansies can't stomach doing what it takes--they can't even stomach little bitsy things like making a guy--a terrorist!--stand still!
...and so on, ad nauseam. It's not just the euphemistic names for these torture techniques; it's using ones that can be summed up in a way that not only can they be dismissed with a laugh by people who don't understand what's going on, they make anyone arguing against the use of torture look really, really foolish. C'mon, Officer, I just pinched the guy. Big strong guy like that? It's not like I eviscerated him and stuck him in an Iron Maiden, right? I did something much more sophisticated and psychologically damaging. You wimps keep calling that *torture*, you'll call anything torture!
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Vian (#30): No. The problem is, for certain values of problem, that they might expect you to know things you don't, and you won't have a clue what they are.
But yes, given a certain expectation of torture for tellig the truth, and nothing to be gained from refraining to answer, then talk.
The trouble comes when the interogator is certain that 1: torture give reliable results, and (this is where torture gets really ugly) only by the use of torture can results be obtained.
In that circumstance, though it seems counterintutive, one ought to bear up for just long enough to convince the sick bastards, that it was the torture (and not merely enlightened self-interest) which caused you to talk.
Otherwise they will feel the need to get creative.
Terry:
"The trouble comes when the interogator is certain that 1: torture give reliable results, and (this is where torture gets really ugly) only by the use of torture can results be obtained.Correct me if I'm wrong on this. I've always assumed that in cases where the interrogator thinks torture is necessary, what you do is pick out the story you want him to wind up with, and reluctantly tell it third.In that circumstance, though it seems counterintutive, one ought to bear up for just long enough to convince the sick bastards, that it was the torture (and not merely enlightened self-interest) which caused you to talk."
Re sleep deprivation: I wonder whether you could produce that effect by feeding your captive Provigil at appropriate intervals? The stuff doesn't keep you awake so much as it makes it difficult or impossible to sleep.
I'm reminded of a rather grim piece of advice, namely "If you are caught, lie often, lie repeatedly, mix the truth in with the lies, so by the time you can't help but tell the truth, it will be impossible to tell what is truth and what is a lie."
albatross #8 & Nell #27 "If the Iranians captured some Americans, and subjected them to this, what would we call it?"
Wasn't it something similar that the North Koreans were alleged to have done to prisoners during the Korean War, and were vilified for?
The 'mirror method' is very useful sometimes. Just swap over characters playing roles and see if your attitude changes, eg, having UN inspectors in to audit the US nuclear, biological & chemical arsenal.
(I don't know if/how many Australians, or other nationalities in the UN forces, were captured, or even the numbers the different countries deployed. Like the Malayan Emergency, it has largely slipped under the radar of popular historic consciousness, which tends to leap from WWII to Vietnam via a generalized 'Cold War' in the fifties.)
I can''t figure out why they don't use scopalomine, or whatever the name for "truth serum" is. Probably illegal, and requires skilled interrogation, but seems to me to be less immoral than torture.
For Torture-in-a-Pill ... Some months ago I was prescribed Erythromycin, a common antibiotic, for an inner-ear infection. Took one tablet. One at a time, pain receptor centers in my brain fired-off, briefly, in rapid, random, rotation. For about four hours. I figured out what must be happening (none of the muscles or organs cramped or emitted unusual heat, or sparks), didn't go to the ER, and remained ...erm... about as sane as I usually am, but anyone who can find & replicate the cause for this extremely-unusual drug reaction could sell it to the Secretary of Torture for a fortune. (Unless, of course, those guys simply enjoy physically torturing people.) After the first administration, the threat of another would, I think, cause anyone to admit anything.
Teresa: Yes, sort of. What I'd do (and this was a slightly less than theoretical problem for me) is wait until the questions started to get me hit when I didn't answer, and then steer the answers to fit the new questions; from the follow up to positive responses.
Pretty soon I figured I'd have to start lying, so I studied up on the subjects I thought would be likely to be of interest, so the lies would be credible.
For things about which no truth was possible (say war crimes I had committed, or other propaganda sorts of things) one just has to roll with it, and decide how much principle is worth how much abuse.
A painful calculus to be sure.
At times it's pondering a quick death, versus a long one; which is part of why torture is evil.
Don Fitch Scope, and Sodium Pentathol don't make one tell the truth, they make one want to be agreable. As such they take amazing amounts of training to use at all well, and the results are still only moderately reliable (because one can't know what little tics, turns of phrase and other subtle responses will cause the subject to think that's what one wants to hear).
That's part of why they aren't allowed in the collecting of evidence for trials.
The other reason is people who believe in torture don't see torture in the same way (as making someone tell you what they think you want to hear), and so it's seen as reliable.
I don't want to trivialise what is a very serious and necessary discussion but I thought you all might be interested in the following.
My younger son was telling me over breakfast what they'd done in English class yesterday. They'd been working collectively on Wanted posters. Which had featured a raft of storybook baddies and popstars - and by popular agreement, George W Bush, for crimes against humanity.
Once I'd stopped choking on my cereal, I thought about that. A class of ten and eleven year olds in prosperous rural central England isn't going to come up with this based on in-depth knowledge of all the facts and facets of events going back to when they'd barely started school. But it's going to be a reflection of what they catch in passing on the TV news and primarily what they overhear their parents and grandparents saying at home.
David Cameron*, current Conservative leader is the local MP. This is about as mainstream-right wing an area as you'll find in the UK, old-style Shire Tories and die-hard Thatcherites all round.
And this perception of the current Bush administration is sufficiently prevalent locally for ten and eleven year olds to have picked up on it.
*Conservative canvassers knocking on our door asking if they can rely on our vote can expect to be told, 'not while there's breath in my body'.
Thank you, Juliet. That's a great thing to wake up to.
Terry: my own personal reaction to sleep deprivation, with which I am entirely too well acquainted, is pretty thoroughgoing crankiness; "tractable" isn't in it, though poor judgement definitely is.
I daresay the reason torture is preferred to drugs (apart from simple sadism, of course) is that pain is more trusted than pleasure.
#37: Terry, that thought about pre-researching plausible lies: just imagine what a science-fiction fan might come up with.
"There was this guy from the CIA, and he had us trying to guess which of some funny symbols he was thinking of..."
It makes you wonder about some of the Cold War defectors and their stories.
Darius Rejali describes how tortures like forced standing were developed to leave less evidence, not to be less brutal.
This law review article describes how Bush's legal eagles are as dishonest as they are depraved. The author of the infamous Bybee Memo developed a definition of "severe pain" - the "organ failure or death" standard - from statutes regarding health insurance benefits.
To look at this in a somewhat different light, this is why I think that a Democratic win this November or even a Democratic president in 2008 is not going to solve things. The rot is too deep to cure just by changing governments. At best, a lot of people will need to be fired or arrested as well, at worst a full scale revolution is needed.
Martin,
I pray for a revolution at the ballot box.
Martin Wisse is right. We've had this rot since McCarthy, and arguably since colonial days.
Already we're getting the usual calls for "national reconciliation", "moving on", and "Democrats have to show they are better than that".
Well, no. Before we move on, we need to reestablish justice in the United States of America. That means impeachments, trials, prison sentences, asset confiscations, and lifetime banning from public office.
Let's consider the, ahem, logic of the Shrub maladministration:
(1) We are the good guys.
(2) They are the bad guys.
(3) They want to hurt us.
(4) We have to stop them.
(5) So that we can get reëlected (for some values of 'we').
(6) Therefore we have to find out what they plan.
(7) They don't want to tell us.
(8)So we have to make them.
(9) Because they're the bad guys it's perfectly okay to hurt them.
(10) Because we're the good guys we have a right to defend ourselves by any means we believe necessary (the sound you hear is Malcolm X rolling in his grave).
(11)Since we're the good guys, God is on our side.
(12)If we have to do any harsh or cruel thing to defend ourselves God will forgive us.
(13) It's okay to torture because we're the good guys and God will forgive us.
And...
(14) In any case when we do it it isn't really torture.
(The tremor you are now feeling is the result of John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Martin Luther King simultaneously rolling in their graves.)
(11a) Because we are born again and saved, we are predestined to go to heaven, so like good vulgar Calvinists we may do what we will without consequence.
John Meltzer #47: Good point!
Note: I suspect this predestination interpretation is not what Calvin himself believed, but what he did believe is really a subject for another thread.
Call me paranoid, but I read
medical care arranged by the CIA
combined with
They withheld medication.
and I'm wondering what exactly they're getting people hooked on, and what it would get written up as if they didn't survive withdrawal.
It's interesting to me (as a foreign observer) that some Democrat sympathists seem to almost believe no Muslim in the world means harm to the US, yet they paint all Republicans as bloodthirsty sadists who will gladly torture anyone just for fun.
Don't you think some of those folks might genuinely believe this could yeild valuable information that could help save lives?
You seem to have missed the one blatantly obvious bit of torture... standing for 40 hours.
(Come to think of it, there's one other issue that's missing from all of these discussions. How is prisoner compliance enforced? These are interrogation methods... but what if the prisoner refuses to stay standing? How is that enforced? If prisoners are beaten for refusing to stand, then beating up a prisoner isn't, technically speaking, an "interrogation" method.)
#51: Don't you think some of those folks might genuinely believe this could yeild valuable information that could help save lives?
No. Because it doesn't work. It gives you bad information. It gives you bad information, that in the best case, wastes valuable time and manpower and in the worst case leads to thousands of needless deaths.
And either they know this and are doing it for fun or show or they don't, and are criminally negligent.
And even if it did work (which it doesn't), a basic part of morality is not doing things that might be convenient or useful because they are wrong.
Teresa in #33: Re sleep deprivation: I wonder whether you could produce that effect by feeding your captive Provigil at appropriate intervals? The stuff doesn't keep you awake so much as it makes it difficult or impossible to sleep.
Not necessarily-- when I was prescribed the stuff a year or two ago for hypersomnia, at first 50mg/day kept me alert and active instead of asleep all day. After several months, even 200mg-doses weren't keeping me awake anymore. But it's probably a bit much to expect most (or even any) of the prisoners to have the same wonky brain chemistry as me.
#51 - Nice little straw man you have there.
I don't know any democrats who believe that there doesn't exist a muslim in the world who means harm to their nation. But bombing the crap out of and torturing those of that population who meant your nation no harm quickly changes their indifference to hatred. And that's what the current US administration has done. The western world is less safe than 5 years ago, the US is turning into a war-criminal-harbouring police state, and people who call themselves "good republicans" are going along with it. Pathetic little dupes.
Meagen, because even Moussad has disavowed torture and they've actually been in the 24 Hour to Detonation scenario (as unlikey as it is).
Sure there are people who mean us harm. Shoot them on the battlefield. Fire until you run out of ammo or the body stops moving. But once they're in your custody they are your responsibility.
I could write a book about terrorist goals and methodologies but one of the terrorists mid-term goals is to force their target to violate their basic principles to prosecute their struggle against the terrorists. This gives the terrorists advantages. This proves the moral "decline" (for lack of better word) of their target.
In short, being stipped of/abandoning our rights, violating our basic humanity and acting in a barbaric manner, all serve the goals of the terrorists. I'm not being sarcastic here. By igniting a "War" against them gives them political standing (proof that their ideas have some power we have to stop), changing our behavior this way, abandoning basic standards, begins the breaking of the social contract between the governed and the government. This is a terrorist goal.
If you say "The Muslims are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all" on a public forum, people will call you racist, or at least say you're vastly oversimplifying the question.
If you say "The Republicans are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all", a disturbing number of people will agree with you.
Also, it's interesting how word choice can make something seem different. You say "stress-and-duress interrogation" and it brings to mind the image of the movie cop beating the movie arsonist until he confesses which school the bomb is under. You say "torture" and it brings to mind American soldiers coming back from Vietnam with their fingers cut off and their legs horribly broken.
#58 - The movie cop beating the arsonist is just a way to de-sensitize the population to the use of torture. It's a fantasy put forth by the worst kind of writer. In fiction torture always seems to produce correct information, except when applied to our hero, who nobly resists then misdirects.
US "approved" torture techniques kill and permanently maim people. There are at least two recorded deaths of prisonners in US hands dying to having their knees repeatedly kicked. Lovely. And popular televison (can anyone say "24"?) just re-inforces the stereotype that torture is acceptable when done by the "good" guys.
I'm looking forward to seeing a change back to civility.
If you say "The Republicans are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all", a disturbing number of people will agree with you.
Few of them are here, though.
I know a number of Republicans who are perfectly reasonable people who hold views that are incompatible with my own--I'll not say "some of my best friends are Republicans", because honestly they aren't, but I know a bunch I can have a civil conversation with.
Then there are people like Carl Rove and Dick (never was a name more apt) Cheney. We can't have peace in this country until they and their ilk are no longer in power...and while I admit that, in my darker hours, killing them seems a fine way of removing them from power, I'd rather not go to the violent revolution stage just yet.
The difference between me and the morons currently botching up my country is that I can look at a person, know a few things about them, and reserve judgement*. I don't automatically assume that every Republican I meet is an evil, power-hungry bastard out to get me and mine. I judge people on their actions, not their thumbnail descriptions. And most of the people here also have this capacity.
This is a long way of saying that the denizens of Making Light are not going to oblige you in your attempts to paint us as knee-jerk Republican-haters. You'll get just as much excoriation for saying "all Republicans are evil" as you'd get for "all Muslims are evil".
*That and I have ethics--I never thought I'd say this, but thank you, Ann Coulter, for providing that phrase.
#57 : if you don't want us to say that "all Republicans are evil", then you, the "non-evil Republican", need damn well get the evil people out of your party and stop your party's evil actions.
Got it?
Meagen:
"If you say "The Muslims are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all" on a public forum, people will call you racist, or at least say you're vastly oversimplifying the question.I'll agree only on the grounds that it's disturbing to have anyone agree to that statement. I can't agree with the implicit equation of Muslims and Republicans in the matter of unreasoning hostility. Republicans mysteriously believe themselves to be constantly subjected to dreadful slurs and hateful treatment, when in fact very little of that actually happens. Statistically speaking, they are far more likely to be the source rather than the target of such behavior. Muslims, on the other hand, have been collectively demonized, no matter what they personally believe or where they come from.If you say "The Republicans are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all", a disturbing number of people will agree with you."
"It's interesting to me (as a foreign observer) that some Democrat sympathists seem to almost believe no Muslim in the world means harm to the US, yet they paint all Republicans as bloodthirsty sadists who will gladly torture anyone just for fun."I find that a bit offensive. Which "Democrat sympathists" actually believe that? Can you point to some? Likewise, can you point me to any who depict all Republicans as bloodthirsty sadists who randomly torture people for fun? Finally, if you can show me examples of both, can you identify the ones who qualify in both categories -- who, as you imply, simultaneously believe that no Muslim could ever want to harm the U.S., and paint Republicans as mindless sadists?
I'm sure you'd never mean to imply that anyone here holds views that even vaguely match that description.
"Don't you think some of those folks might genuinely believe this could yeild valuable information that could help save lives?"No. Not for a minute. Professional interrogators know that torture is worse than useless for getting good intelligence out of prisoners. I think they were under pressure to produce certain intelligence reports, and were willing to torture prisoners and falsify results in order to meet that demand.
I can point you to some older threads on Making Light if you'd like to learn more about how torture doesn't work.
It is not wise, nor ethical, to advocate killing people of different political persuasions than your own.
GET A CLUE: Killing someone associated with ~any~ movement tends to make the victim a martyr in the eyes of their fellows, and often others of different views will see them in this light as well, NO MATTER WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF THE INDIVIDUAL WHEN HE/SHE WAS ALIVE.
If you truly wish to invalidate these individuals you must find a way to publicly shame them.
I've wondered for a long time why, exactly, Saddam kept denouncing the authority of the government and specifically the judge trying him. That he's delusional, arrogant, or stupid all smack of a conqueror's egocentrism - how could someone like that arrive at power in the first place, or hold onto it in the manner that he has?
But it makes perfect sense if it's a legal defense technique. Consider this - if, as we're seeing, Bush Co. has been using torture and themselves are in human rights violations, then the war under international law is illegal. Therefore the new governmental authority is illegal. As long as Saddam never admits that the new government has the legal authority to try him, he has grounds for a... not sure of the term but mistrial seems to fit.
It's a very long shot (banking off of two walls and a cow), sure, but given what he's done it is his only out. Too bad these torture techniques are giving him the legitimacy he needs to pull it off.
Meagen:
If you say "The Republicans are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all", a disturbing number of people will agree with you.
If that's true - and I don't believe it is - it's only because a single person's agreement would be "disturbing".
What's up with the hate? I mean, I've never heard anyone, ever, under any circumstances, say anything worse than "defeat the Republicans in elections, and put those who've committed crimes in jail". So why the pretense that there's bloodthirstiness going around?
Oops. My logic brain is broken. I meant to include a bit about Bush being guilty of War Crimes in addition to an illegal invasion, which would add more weight to the argument that a government established by Bush would be biased at the least.
Still a stretch, but a slight bit more plausible.
#38 - Juliet, ever heard of proxy votes? I can assure you that Conservative Central Office has.
The War against Terror. Will someone please wake me up when we start fighting one, against ALL terror.
Torture - what the fuck are you talking about? It is illegal. The fruits of torture cannot be admitted in any court of law in any of our countries. Those who practice it are criminals. Those who authorise its use are criminals. Those who use any information resulting from it are criminally stupid, at the very least, and very probably criminals because they do not report the crime to the relevant law enforcement authorities (at least under our brand spaking new Anti Terrorism laws).
Those who use the tactics of barbarians make themselves barbarians. The lesson of Nuremburg is that ends DO NOT justify means.
#57 If you say "The Republicans are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all", a disturbing number of people will agree with you.
I'm getting really fckng sick and tired of these sorry attempts to change the subject by trying to push guilt buttons by tossing out strawmen and watching everyone scramble to prove that they are not the strawmen. You know damn good and well that no one thinks that. You're simply being manipulative.
The point is that torture is wrong. Even if it did help, it would remain morally wrong. The fact that it does not yield any true or useful information just makes the moral decision all the easier.
Meagen --
...some Democrat sympathists...
That's a fascinating phrase. Reminds me of people talking about communist sympathisers. Next thing you know, people'll start talking about fellow travelers. (I know, I know, this is obvious, I just like to point it out when even /I/ can recognize this sort of thing.)
I'm a "Democratic sympathist," and I absolutely do not doubt there are Muslims in the world who mean harm to the US. (More of them than before 9/11/01, but anyway.) I also do not doubt that doing unto them what was done to us in, say (since you brought it up), Vietnam... is really not much of a good idea.
Also, I kind of resent the idea that I'd want to kill me some Republicans. And, actually, I've never seen that suggested in any forum I've been in, so I'm sort of baffled.
Mostly, though, I'm thrilled (for some definition of that word) that we're getting someone in here to try and completely derail the point. Hi. Torture? Bad idea. Also, creates spiritual indigestion.
Where is Meagen, the "foreign observer," actually located?
#35: The 'mirror method' is very useful sometimes.
I'm waiting for the email or blog post to arrive that describes all the things that some Al queda people have done to american hostages, with a lot of ugly details, through and through, the tortures, the beatings, the humilations, the killings.
And at the end, switch it and say, "oop. sorry. that's what Americans are doing to other people."
Then let the rage that built in the reader's mind against these inhuman people all through the letter turn on the reader and eat their brain.
#51: It's interesting to me (as a foreign observer) that some Democrat sympathists seem to almost believe no Muslim in the world means harm to the US, yet they paint all Republicans as bloodthirsty sadists who will gladly torture anyone just for fun.
No one said there are no extremists out there out to do us harm. And no one said that all republicans are sadists. I yawn at your lame strawman, then spritz it with gasoline and watch it burn.
I find it telling that the unsaid basis of your argument appears to be "two wrongs make a right". That if someone, anyone, is out to kill someone from my country, that gives carte blanche to ignore rules of war, to lie about reasons for war, to hide the true costs of war, to chuck liberties for the people the government is supposed to represent, to chuck human rights that should apply to all people.
We've had worse and managed not to sell our souls.
Don't you think some of those folks might genuinely believe this could yeild valuable information that could help save lives?
Don't you think it interesting that these people are being tortured before they had any sort of trial? That people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time have been tortured and held captive for nothing more than being near someone of interest?
More importantly government should never weild the sort of power that allows it to treat humans as non-human.
#57: If you say "The Muslims are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all" on a public forum, people will call you racist, or at least say you're vastly oversimplifying the question.
And you would be the person who would know "oversimplification" when they see it. see "Democrats paint all Republicans as bloodthirsty sadists" comment by you.
If you say "The Republicans are all bloodthirsty murders and we can't have peace in this country until we kill them all", a disturbing number of people will agree with you.
Right because everyone here has been calling for the assassination of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. And a vast majority of posts explicitely call out for such action. Er, wait, no. I guess you just made that up.
#58: You say "stress-and-duress interrogation" and it brings to mind the image of the movie cop beating the movie arsonist until he confesses which school the bomb is under.
Right. Lets get rid of search warrants. Cops can be trusted never to abuse their power. And there's always a bomb under a school bus thats about to explode. In the movie theaters, anyway, which appears to be the limit of your edu-ma-cation.
You say "torture" and it brings to mind American soldiers coming back from Vietnam with their fingers cut off and their legs horribly broken.
Right, like John McCain surviving years of torture in Vietnam. He is a massive advocate of using torture against Al Quada. Oh, wait. No, you're just full of shit.
What are you, some new breed of moron?
Greg, the first thing that would happen to that letter would be that the "oops" line would be removed from the bottom. It would then be retransmitted into the aether, and would thereafter be cited by those who seek to justify America's current course of action. "See? They're animals! They deserve whatever we choose to dish out to them!"
#73: the "oops" line would be removed from the bottom.
The better to eat your brain with, my dear.
Such a post would have to be done with a skilled and subtle writer. The opening line would say something about al queda, and all the horrible things they are doing. Then it would slide into a list of evil deeds, but never actually attribute the deeds to al queda, just let the reader make the association/assumption. Then the letter would close with the "oh, that was all american stuff"
It would require a writer far more skilled than me. But the idea woudl be that if the surprise end is deleted, the remaining letter doesn't actually attribute the actions to Al Queda.
Not that some knuckleheads woudl still misread it and take it as truth, but you can't convince the knuckleheads anyway.
According to her livejournal, she's in Poland. She writes good English for a Pole. According to her deviantarts page she's only 21. Tcha, she's just a sprat, throw her back.
Sorry, my remark #75 was in answer to #70: "Where is Meagen?"
The Book of Margery Kempe has a detailed, first-person account of being waterboarded.
>..some Democrat sympathists.
If English is a second language for Meagan then I will phrase this correction more gently than I otherwise would have. "Democrat" is a term for a members of the Democratic party. When referring to he party itself the term would be "Democratic" ."Democrat" as an adjective (i.e. the "Democrat Party") was a usage deliberately spread by Republican partisans for a number of reasons. It is a lot easier to turn "Democrat" into an insult than Democratic (i.e. Dummycrat, Dimmycrat, Demoncrat etc.). Also they don't want the Democratic party able to associate itself with Democracy - hence trying to leave that party with only the shorted verion of the name. Generally replacement of term "Democratic" with the term "Democrat" is a sign of an abusive wingnut. Now that this has been pointed out to Meagan I'm sure she won't make that mistake again.
Someone asked 'how do you enforce keeping a prisoner standing for 40 hours?'
The answer is that you chain them up. Chain their feet to the floor and their wrists to a high bar. Alternately (see photos from Abu Ghraib) you wire them up to a car battery and put them on a small box in a pool of water. If they move, they get electrocuted.
Here's a question: how long is the US military permitted to keep a soldier standing at attention without rest?
Meagen made everyone jump through her hoop. When will we learn to just say "Cite one source that has said any of that," and ignore them completely until they do?
beth meacham @ 79
I'm told half an hour max, because soldiers will begin to fall out.
Sidenote: I wrote "Democrat sympathists" to stand as shorthand for "card-carrying Democrats, people who vote for the Democratic party, and people who live in other countries and thus can't be said to be either Democratic or Republican in the strictest sense but their opinions on US politics are heavily based on the Democratic worldview". Thank you for the correction.
Most people seem to have taken my comments as direct arguments or statements of fact. Um... to state the obvious, they weren't. They were my observations on the political blogosphere as I see it. If I say something like "I'm getting the feeling that some Americans hate their fellow Americans more than they hate the people who actually want to kill them", the proper response is not to cite your cousin Bob who hates terrorists and is actually friends with a Republican so your whole little strawman theory falls apart, you idiot!.
The proper response is to ask yourself: "How did this girl get the idea? Does she just read the wrong blogs? Maybe there's articles out there written by Democrats that aren't openly hostile towards Republicans? (if so, send me a link!) *I* know very well Bush is the worse President we've ever had, but how does this argument look from the outside?"
Back on the original topic. Torture is morally wrong, there's no question of that. The thing is, any country's army first priority is not morality, but rather doing anything they can to protect that country. Sometimes that means doing things that are morally wrong. Sometimes that means doing things that are morally wrong, and then finding out they were futile. I believe that it's better than not doing anything.
It occurs to me that the relatively recent Abu Gharib scandal may be still clouding the issue. If people assume what happened there is standart procedure (as far as I can tell, it was baisically some soldiers dicking around on duty), they would naturally come to the conclusion that the list of CIA-approved torture refers to things regularly done to any shmuck caught in the desert or stopped by airport security.
I think it's wrong to assume the torture is being applied indiscriminately, or serves as the primary or only source of intel. If you have some information, and you need more, and you think getting more information is necessary to save the lives of your countrymen, and you are quite sure this one guy has the information you need... well, some people would rather keep the moral high ground and put innocent lives at risk.
Most of those people are not in the army. For good reason.
Again, this is my *opinion*. If you start picking it apart and labelling things as "strawman" and "pushing buttons" and such, you're missing the *point*.
Martin: "To look at this in a somewhat different light, this is why I think that a Democratic win this November or even a Democratic president in 2008 is not going to solve things. The rot is too deep to cure just by changing governments. At best, a lot of people will need to be fired or arrested as well, at worst a full scale revolution is needed."
Absolutely. Nixon is 30 years gone but his evil minions, Rumsfeld and Cheney, are not only still around, they're running things. Simply kicking out Bush -- who, judging by past ventures, probably isn't even capable of coming up with the things his administration has attempted -- only addresses the surface of the problem.
I'm not sure of the solution, unless it's term limits for White House staffers, who are not elected and not directly accountable at the ballot box (when the process works, that is).
Teresa: "Republicans mysteriously believe themselves to be constantly subjected to dreadful slurs and hateful treatment, when in fact very little of that actually happens."
Interestingly, in "Spanking the Donkey," Matt Taibbi says much the same thing about right-wing Christians: they need enemies. They need something to fight against, some sort of adversity that tests faith, in order to feel "real." When there are no bogeymen to fight, they make up some, which justifies their position as "Christian soldiers" and their tactics as "self-defense."
I recommend that book, and his columns (many of which can be found online at Alternet).
Again, this is my *opinion*.
Right. And it's just my opinion that you're a serial killer, a pedophile, and that you like drinking baby's blood.
Whether it has anything to do with reality doesn't matter, because it's just my opinion...
Making assinine sweeping statements about the behaviour of a large group of people and hiding behind "Just my opinion" is something I'd expect from a grade schooler.
I just spent a weekend with some 10 year olds who had recurring conversations that went something like:
one: "You suck!"
other: "Mom!"
one: "Just kidding"
Let me know when you grow up...
No, Meagen, you're stating things as if they were facts and then claiming they're "just your opinion."
"Ovaltine is better than Moxie" is an opinion. "Democrat sympathists...paint all Republicans as bloodthirsty sadists who will gladly torture anyone just for fun" is not an opinion, but an inaccurate statement of fact, that is to say, bullshit.
And if you, after reading the posts here by professional military inte
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