I’m sorry, this doesn’t reach the level of what I would call torture:
Al Qosi claimed they were strapped to the floor in an interrogations center known as the Hell Room, wrapped in Israeli flags, taunted by female interrogators who rubbed their bodies against them in sexually suggestive ways, and left alone in refrigerated cells for hours with deafening music blaring in their ears.
When professionals interrogate someone, they know that physical pain rarely does anything but make the person being interrogated say what he thinks they want to hear. Little information of any value ever comes from it except in movies. The Americans tortured in Hanoi weren’t being asked for real information. Their captors simply wanted them to be pliable and provide a propaganda tool.
Interrogators in this new war want real information. Making a prisoner uncomfortable is now equated to torture. It follows the decline of what sexual harrassment once was. If someone “feels uncomfortable”, it must be torture and the offending party must cease.
I don’t advocate torture, but not out of sqeamishness. It doesn’t work. I do advocate making detainees uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.
It’s not like they’re cutting anybody’s limbs off, or such. Let alone HEADS from POOR DUMB BASTARDS like NICK BERG.
Sorry for the all caps.
PS: The interrogation dynamic is very, very interesting, and I’ll leave it there for now.
Comment by Paulie at The Commons — January 9, 2005 @ 7:38 pm
Bunker…
I couldn’t agree with you more! Rather than post what’s already sitting on my blog…hope you don’t mind me linking to it.
MajorDad1984
See y’all on the high ground…and the Texas Blogger’s Convention if you and Jim can pull it off.
Comment by MajorDad1984 — January 9, 2005 @ 7:39 pm
Of course this is torture.
Humiliation is a key ingredient in interrogation and ultimately torture.
What can be more humiliating to an Arab than being wrapped in an Israeli flag, or taunted by a dominating female.
And obviously sticking someone in a cold locker subjected to deafening noise is torture… that’s a no-brainer.
Yes, the definitions are changing. But one must realize that as a civilized society we are bound by the rule of law. And that rule of law extends to our military forces.
Ask yourself this… would these methods be acceptable in obtaining information from a criminal at a police station?
Of course not.
Comment by Chris — January 10, 2005 @ 10:01 am
Humiliation is not torture, and these are neither criminals nor military forces. The Geneva Accords apply only to countries who have signed and agreed to them. That doesn’t apply here, either. We follow them because we are a civilized society.
And why would being wrapped in an Israeli flag be humiliating to people who have no sense of nation? A flag is simply a piece of cloth.
Making someone uncomfortable isn’t torture. Causing hypothermia or ruptured eardrums would be, but that isn’t happening. I was subjected to worse in Survival School and suffered no ill effects.
If this is the worst they can cite, I’d say we’re doing a pretty good job of being sensitive.
Comment by Bunker — January 10, 2005 @ 11:35 am
The sad thing is that, according to the independant journalism (as opposed to the simple recounting of prisoner complaints we have here) we aren’t even going that far. The worst MI is allowed to do now (seperate from the CIA) is question them for a really long time. Like, over 15 hours. And they have to have Rumsfield’s specific permission. (Really.)
Comment by Phelps — January 10, 2005 @ 3:12 pm