Text 13821, 67 rader
Skriven 2005-06-29 23:36:50 av EARL CROASMUN (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av BOB SAKOWSKI
Ärende: Re: Durbin
==================
-> -> But that's Afghanistan and Iraq.  Your above point 
-> -> was about Gitmo. What has been done THERE that would 
-> -> be accurately described as "torture?"

-> That which appears in the FBI memo.  The same memo that says the
-> military interrogators using these methods identified themselves as
-> "FBI" probably with an idea that if the story did come out it would
-> be the FBI that took the heat.

That's it?  Turning the air conditioner down low?  Turning it off?
Playing loud music?  By that standard, I have been tortured many times
and most others here have as well.  A few days ago I posted a story on
Iraqi torture rooms that were discovered by US troops.  Did you read it?
THAT was torture.  Two weeks of beatings and electrocutions.  Most of
the victims dying.  A manual on the positive aspects of decapitating
"infidels."  Not quite the same as being forced to listen to loud music.

The memo also mentions a "couple of occasions" where a prisoner was in a
fetal position with chained hands and feet for as long as a day.  That
is clearly worse than the loud music, and it probably shouldn't have
been done.  But for crying out loud it is still well short of TORTURE!
I'm not sure that it would even be considered "cruel" if done in a
US prison, under the prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment."

Last week I read some interesting discussion of an example that is
closer to the Guantanamo situation than Durbin's absurd comparison to
Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.  Thirty years ago the British were fighting
IRA terrorists.  On occasion they used interrogation methods similar to
or a bit worse than those described in the Caproni memo.  The Irish
government took action through the European Court of Human Rights,
claiming that the actions violated Europe's Convention for the
Protection of Human Rights.  The Court condemned the interrogation
methods as degrading, but by a vote of 13 to 4 found that they did not
constitute "torture."

The Convention in question is not one that the US is a party to, as best
I can tell.  But the parallels of the situations are fairly close.  So
if you want to call cutting off the AC and playing loud music "not very
nice," that would be fine.  But it ain't "torture."

The British interrogation methods in question, by the way, were:

"(a) wall-standing: forcing the detainees to remain for periods of some
hours in a "stress position", described by those who underwent it as
being "spreadeagled against the wall, with their fingers put high
above the head against the wall, the legs spread apart and the feet
back, causing them to stand on their toes with the weight of the body
mainly on the fingers";

(b) hooding: putting a black or navy coloured bag over the detainees'
heads and, at least initially, keeping it there all the time except
during interrogation;

(c) subjection to noise: pending their interrogations, holding the
detainees in a room where there was a continuous loud and hissing
noise;

(d) deprivation of sleep: pending their interrogations, depriving the
detainees of sleep;

(e) deprivation of food and drink: subjecting the detainees to a
reduced diet during their stay at the centre and pending
interrogations."


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