Anyone who isn’t uncomfortable by this needs to seriously consider where their humanity has gone.
What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report
UPDATE II: To those blithely dismissing all of this as things that don’t seem particularly bothersome, I’d say two things:
(1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.
(2) As I wrote rather clearly, numerous detainees died in U.S. custody, often as a direct result of our “interrogation methods.” Those who doubt that can read the details here and here. Those claiming there was no physical harm are simply lying — death qualifies as “physical harm” — and those who oppose prosecutions are advocating that the people responsible literally be allowed to get away with murder.
If you feel that these acts were justified because we have people threatening our society and terrorizing our people, I’d suggest you not tell me so unless you’re sick of hearing my voice or having my respect. Indeed, I would agree that a person who supports these horrifying acts even on the guilty, even at the danger of imminent death (which there never was), has embarked for the world populated by sociopathic serial killers – they’ve turned our society into everything we have ever revolted against.
It does seem reasonable to me that people will say absolutely anything in order to get out of torture, valid or otherwise.
I seem to recall a video clip from a Larry King interview with, of all the possible notables, Jesse Ventura about extraordinary rendition and the “torture memos”; The Body’s reply was to the effect that if you gave him half an hour in a small room alone with Dick Cheney, Ventura could get Cheney to confess to the Sharon Tate murder.
— Steve has pointed out to many, many people of late that torture is mainly useful in extracting confessions quickly… not that the confessions are likely to be accurate, or contain anything like real intelligence. Torture is just a speedy way to convince yourself that you’re right, whatever the facts of the matter.
Anyone who feels that way is also an idiot, because THESE METHODS DO NOT GET RELIABLE INFORMATION OUT OF PEOPLE ANYWAY!
Sorry, it needed to be shouted for all the morons out there who think that it’s possible to justify this on a cost-benefit basis. When there’s no actual benefit, your cost-benefit analysis isn’t getting off the ground. There’s no actual benefit to torturing prisoners, because they’ll confess to anything to get you to stop. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these poor bastards confessed to the Kennedy assassination.
The (fallacious) arguement I usually hear from torture apologists, is that it is no less than the terrorists would do to our soldiers if caught.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” –Mahatma Gandhi
Someone needs to stand up and exhibit morality, and you can’t expect the enemy to do it first. You can’t beat an enemy by becoming them, in doing so the enemy has won.