I was being forced to stand up continuously—sometimes they’d make you stand up or sit on a stool for a long period of time. I’d stood up for a couple of days, with a respite only because one of the guards — the only real human being that I ever met over there — let me lie down for a couple of hours while he was on watch the middle of one night.

That’s McCain’s account.

The CIA sources described a list of six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques…

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

If that isn’t enough or if you perhaps consider those who committed acts of torture at Abu Ghraib to be a few bad apples who disobeyed orders, one can easily find the litany of memos from Bush advisors regarding the Geneva Convention and the need for “enhanced” interrogation. (Gonzalez’s, Taft’s and Yoo’s from ‘02, and the Defense Dept. task force memo from ‘03 which stated “that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal anti-torture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation’s security.” There are also the memos between the CIA and the Office of Legal Counsel from ‘02 to ‘04 which discuss the intent of interrogators (and how if their intent is not to harm the individual, then, essentially, it’s not torture) and also waterboarding. There’s also Jay Bybee’s memo, which defines torture so narrowly, that only if the detainee dies or suffers organ failure would the acts committed by his interrogator be considered torture.

Things, of course, get murky. We will likely never know exactly what happened in Jose Padilla’s final interrogation, as the DVD was “lost” and, thus, not offered as evidence in the trial against him. We do know that he was considered a “high profile” detainee and that techniques such as stress positions and sleep and sensory deprivation could and likely would have been used on him.

We’ll likely never know what truly happens as a result of Extraordinary Rendition, created under Clinton, and continued under Bush. But the nature of the program, should worry anyone concerned about the use of torture if not directly by military personnel but at our government’s behest.

Defenders of torture seem to want to have it both ways. They want to be able to torture but they also want the moral high ground, with ticking clocks and 24-style tension. They want to say, well, yes, torture has taken place, but only a few times. And they want to do the opposite of what the Bush administration has done. They want to now define torture much more strictly so that things that were considered torture when done to American soldiers (like John McCain) now no longer count. And they want to pretend that it works. Ask John McCain or maybe get in a time machine and ask him before he started running for president. It doesn’t work. It just conditions you to say whatever it is you think will make it stop.

Brian…would you consider the techniques used on John McCain to be torture?

Sure.

And, if you do, would you consider those techniques to be torture when used on anyone else by an other individual?

Sure.

If not, was John McCain then not tortured?

No.

Should we adopt the modern vernacular and say that McCain’s interrogation was merely “enhanced?”

I don’t understand this question. Are you implying that the US is treating captured combatants the same way John McCain and others were treated in Hanoi?

If so, where is your physical proof?

It’s the same today. Most people in the military oppose torture. Unfortunately, the corrupt few who support it include the President.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen such a poll, and I don’t know how such a question could be asked of US service members. Would you qualify the question by referencing only the 2-3 al Quada who have actually been water boarded? Would you qualify “torture” as the humane treatment that enemy combatents have been receiving at Gitmo?

How was the question asked, lgm?

On August 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm, lgm said:
nyc123me said (#22):

lgm, why do you and your ilk always seem to whine about US ‘torture’, yet you never mention about ‘insurgents’ drilling holes in people’s heads,……..
Because I care about my country than about theirs.

Some of you should watch the movie again. Jack Nickolson is the bad guy. “You can’t handle the truth.” is an excuse for a murderous coverup.

lgm, caring for you country starts with supporting our troops and military at all times. The “torture” and “mistreatment” you bitch about, is a small price for your freedom.

Because I care about my country than about theirs.

But to the point where you “care” enough to consistently trump up the charges against your own Country, while allowing your silence to speak volumes about how you downplay the savagery exhibited by your own enemy?

Something doesn’t add up with your equation, lgm.

In ‘A Few Good Men,’ even Lt. Weinberg (aka Rob Reiner) eventually conceded that the majority of the US Military were acting honorably on the behalf of his freedom, and that the character of Colonel Nathan Jessep was the exception and not the rule.

lgm, why do you and your ilk always seem to whine about US ‘torture’, yet you never mention about ‘insurgents’ drilling holes in people’s heads,……..

Because I care about my country than about theirs.

Some of you should watch the movie again. Jack Nickolson is the bad guy. “You can’t handle the truth.” is an excuse for a murderous coverup.

BTW, for the massively uninformed around here, there are many ex-military corporate lawyers walking the halls of the big white shoe firms in this country.

Turture at Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Graib and other places is a disgrace to America. Even McCain said so, until he started shifting right.

But no more a disgrace than the “turtered” expression on the corpse of a fellow American who landed just south of Liberty Street, right after Tower One was hit. (What evidence of “turture” do you have at Gitmo that rivals what I saw downtown, “Mr. Human Rights Now?”

This is probably the last thing I’ll get a chance to write about the Gitmo lawyers.

Probably because they will in all likelihood close Gitmo down in the wake of Boudemine.