Comments on: Torture: What’s in a Name? It Was Never Just “Sleep Deprivation”

By: wesgpc

wesgpc — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:01:20 +0000

I knew four people who were in the towers that day, and fortunately they all made it out (one just barely, who was badly injured). But that is not the point.

Even if torture were moral and legal, I think it should be a crime to use it because the overwhelming majority of experienced interrogators that I am aware of say it does not work. So, why go any further on the issue? Why pay attention to TV fiction, and ignorant self-interested politicians and media gasbags?

Even if torture were legal and moral, I for one would still want investigations, and if warranted, prosecutions, because using it goes against the best evidence about sound policy for gathering vital intelligence. On grounds of malfeasance alone, there should be sanctions for using torture.

If it turns out to be true that some of the torture was used in an attempt to confirm false suspicions of a al Qaeda-Iraq link, then that should be prosecuted also.

to Jeff Kaye: thanks for the update.

By: rara4183

rara4183 — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:13:26 +0000

Did any of you lose any one when the towers fell? Do you think they cared if we lost any sleep? or do you think they gave a second thought about the thousands upon thousands they murdered or the families still being tortured because their loved one died a horrific death… no

By: kevsters

kevsters — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:22:54 +0000

It’s all about the art of re-framing the argument.

Reframe the Argument…Win the Debate On Torture…

http://progressnotcongress.org/blog/?p=517

By: Knut

Knut — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:35:07 +0000

I guess basically racking somebody and calling it “sleep deprivation” was the American innovation.

We have always been known for our labour-saving devices.

By: Jeff Kaye

Jeff Kaye — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:50:26 +0000

Hello readers: I hope that you go back and check out the update I left in the article, noting (with link) an article that Spencer Ackerman wrote on this same subject late last month. I can’t believe I missed it. While it covers much the same ground (though not entirely), I think it has rather more news in it, as it is a work of journalism, and mine the blog, and is very much worth reading.

By: Jeff Kaye

Jeff Kaye — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:47:04 +0000

You are right, scribe, in that I did not know that. It amplifies the awfulness of what was already bad. Thanks for bringing up that point, for I thought I was stretching the point when I wrote the prisoners were subjected to “slow starvation”. I hadn’t realized how prescient that characterization was.

By: MarkH

MarkH — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:50:51 +0000

Can’t you just imagine it now, when daddy goes home and his children ask him what he did to fight the terrorists?

By: jhwoodyatt

jhwoodyatt — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:21:27 +0000

Please investigate the possibility that combining sleep deprivation with exposure to temperature extremes is a method of inducing hyperalgesia.

By: prostratedragon

prostratedragon — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:17:44 +0000

How I’ve thought of them for some time. All ingredients are there except large-scale roundups of citizens, and the groundwork for that was clearly being laid. (I suspect some quiet heroism on the part of civil servants and maybe some appointees to be what saved us there.)

By: oldoilfieldhand

oldoilfieldhand — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:50:08 +0000

It has been obvious for a long time that the party that sold Dick Cheney to us as a “responsible adult” has propagandized all news from the government. “Yoo” can’t believe a word the Bush Administration has written or said for public consumption…