The cover page of a magazine I saw today focussed on torture - used by the United States particularly against so-called terrorists (against whom there is no evidence). I'll reproduce it here in full. It's not a pleasant read, but it is an example of what is happening. Many of these detainees have nothing to do with terrorist organisations - they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time - picked up by Pakistani officials who received money from the US government for every prisoner handed over.
Torture – Where do you draw the line?
A few grim numbers.
Ninety eight detainees are known to have died since August 2002 in the custody of US officials abroad. The US military itself classifies 34 of these deaths as suspected or confirmed homicides. But in half of all deaths, the cause was never announced or was reported as undetermined.
At least eight men, and as many as 12, were tortured to death.
In only 12 of the 34 admitted homicides have any military personnel or US officials been punished. In the cases of detainees tortured to death, only half have resulted in punishment.
The harshest prison sentence meted out to anyone involved in a torture-related death? Five months.
Numbers can be grim. Sometimes, however, they aren’t grim enough. These numbers only account for the extreme cases, the exceptions – the acts of torture that left behind a sort of gruesome inventory. What they fail to account for are those acts that don’t leave behind corpses or severed limbs. The sort of dubious interrogation tactics that we would have known nothing about if it weren’t for those infamous photos, the ones which, years later, we have seen only a tiny subset.
As these photos demonstrated, you can do a lot to a person without leaving a mark. The question is, in the pursuit of your own security, and the security of your family and your neighbors, how much is too much? When it comes to humiliation, discomfort, fear and pain, where do you draw the line?
“You nudge him awake with a barrel of a rifle. He says nothing, just stands in compliance, shivering in his underwear. You give him a pair of orange overalls. He puts them on. You shackle his wrists, then his ankles. Heavy boots for his feet, foam plugs in his ears, a hood over his head. You bag his hands in layers of thick fabric, bound tightly with tape. He says nothing, but his breath is uneven.
As you push him back against a wall, you have a chair brought in for yourself. He stands, you sit. After an hour, coffee is brought in for you. When he slumps, you shove him roughly back against the wall. If he slumps too frequently, you bring your gun up against his exposed throat. He can feel that. He stands up nicely.
On the fifth hour, while you’re having your meal, he urinates inside of his coveralls. You can see it as it saturates the fabric.
You turn on the bright, artificial lights in his holding cell. After two hours, you turn them off again. You continue – off, on, off, on – at random intervals. He asks you what time of day it is. You don’t tell him. Sometimes, you serve him two meals within an hour of one another. Sometimes, you wait eight hours. He keeps asking what time it is, what the date is. You don’t tell him. He asks for a blanket. You don’t give him one. He asks to see his family. You don’t answer. He asks to see a judge. You don’t answer.
After a few weeks, he stops asking for things, but you can still hear him talking – quietly – to no-one in particular.
When he refuses to eat, you put him in the restraint chair for force-feeding. When he throws up on himself, you make him remove his clothes and lay down on the concrete floor with his face in the vomit.
When he doesn’t remain perfectly still, or when he makes any noise, you bring out the dogs. When he tries to cover himself, you get the female guards to point at him, to taunt him, to straddle him and tell him that his mother and grandmother are whores. When he is uncooperative or insubordinate, you put him on a leash and make him wear women’s undergarments. When he falls asleep, you blast him with shatteringly loud pop music. When he asks to go to the toilet, you make him wait until he messes himself, then you force him to roll around in it while you take pictures of him.
You and your cohorts do this for twelve, sixteen, twenty hours at a time.
On the fiftieth day, you have him strapped to an inclined board, with his feet higher than his head. You explain to him that he is going to be executed. He whimpers. You lower his head into a tank of frigid water as he blubbers incoherently and jerks at the restraints.
You watch him carefully, making sure that he doesn’t drown, but getting him as close as possible before raising the board. He passes out more than once. Each time, you revive him and then dunk him again. Then you do it again. Then you do it again.
He begins to confess to impossible, nonsensical plots. He asks for you to kill him. He asks to be allowed to kill himself. You do neither.
You wonder how much longer it will be until he gives you some real information.”
You can do a lot to a person – you can utterly destroy a person – all without leaving a single visible mark. Torturers have their techniques, and you have yours. Hooding, exploitation of phobias, stress positions, sensory deprivation – you can do all of these things, and still you are not a torturer.
So do not worry. You will not be held accountable. You will not be punished. You are not a torturer. Not according to your superiors, and not according to your leaders.
But be warned: history – as well as your victims – may judge you more harshly.
United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave formal, written approval for all of these techniques, along with others normally proscribed by the Army Field Manual, in a December 2002 internal memo.
Source: Adbusters – Journal of the Mental Environment, May/June 2006
For more on American torture click the following links:
http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usai_torture
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511402002
See next entry for a record of US human rights.
