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motherjones.com - 4/17/2009

Defining Torture Down

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Reading the OLC torture memos is enough to make you ill. The techniques in question are plainly and instinctively abhorrent by any common sense definition, and the authors of the memos obviously know it. But somehow they have to conclude otherwise, so they write page after mind-numbing page of ...

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In The Wake Of War Crimes
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan — ... kind that proceeded the September 11th attacks. At that time, the country was still reeling from those attacks. The agency believed it had in custody enemies planning catastrophic terrorist attacks against our country and were urgently seeking information. The C.I.A. sought legal counsel and complied with the advice. Subjecting people to prosecution under those circumstances would be a dangerous politicization of difficult choices made by those serving our country. Drum: Reading the OLC torture memos is enough to make you ill.  The ...

Some Perspective
Comments from Left Field — ... … What Obama did yesterday — whether by design or not — provided the most potent tools yet to create the political pressure for prosecutions.  As Kevin Drum makes clear, no decent human being reading those memos would be anything other than repelled by what was in them.  Polls already found that ...

A Breakthrough at the New York Times
The Moderate Voice — ... “harsh tactics some critics decry as torture”?  Why are the much less brutal methods used by the Chinese on Fischer called torture by the NYT, whereas much harsher methods used by Americans do not merit that term?  Here we find what is clearly the single most predominant fact shaping our political and media discourse:  everything is different, and better, when we do it. In fact, it is that exact mentality that was and continues to be the primary justification for our torture regime and ...

NPR's Ombudsman: Why We Bar the Word 'Torture'
Commondreams.org Views — ... as waterboarding. Nobody argues that "all interrogation could be classified as torture," so what's the point of denying a claim nobody makes?  The point is that extended sleep deprivation, prolonged forced nudity, hypothermia and waterboarding someone 183 times -- particularly when done together -- are all unquestionably, indisputably "torture" under every relevant authority.  The U.S. has prosecuted those acts as torture in the past .  Multiple media outlets and even the U.S. Government have routinely described those acts as "torture" when used against ...

Tortured Logic II: or How To Be Tortured To Death
Crooks and Liars — ... The interrogation and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least. While some of those deaths were the result of "rogue" interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others. Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be "torture" when used by others — because they inflict ...

Torture and Accountability
The Moderate Voice — ... and detention regime implemented by the U.S. resulted in the deaths of over 100 detainees in U.S. custody — at least.  While some of those deaths were the result of ”rogue” interrogators and agents, many were caused by the methods authorized at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including extreme stress positions, hypothermia, sleep deprivation and others.  Aside from the fact that they cause immense pain, that’s one reason we’ve always considered those tactics to be “torture” when used by ...