What Glenn said:
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.
And, of course we continue to pretend that people were not murdered.
This is perhaps the best thing I’ve read about the inhumanity of torture, specifically, that interrogators threatened to kill the detainees children…
Does anyone remember the interrogation scenes from In the Name of the Father? We’ve been down these roads before…
The thing is, none of this comes as news – or at least it shouldn’t to those of us who have been paying attention. Threats of rape of wives, sisters, mothers, daughters are routine matters for American interrogators in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and who knows where else. Ditto threats of harm or death to detainees’ children and other family members. There have been credible reports of detainees’ children being abused and tortured in front of their faces.
I have not yet read the report, but everything I have heard about its contents so far has been pretty much routine for the U.S. at least since 9/11, and for the Israelis for much longer than that. In fact, it is likely that the U.S. took some of their techniques straight from the Israeli playbook, just as they took many of the aspects of occupation, and techniques for collective punishment.
‘…degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.’
Add: perverted.
I would like to see how this relates back to Abu Grahib Prison because it now appears the soldiers were telling the truth.
A chilling thought that came to me yesterday as I watched the evening news coverage about the release of the report. Almost every segment mentioned the power drill, and threatening the children, and threatening rape of the detainee’s mother. In from of him. And all the while this shop of horrors was being described, canned video of the hardcopy report would scroll by, showing page after page of redactions. Whole paragraphs and whole pages of nothing but black, and all of it presumably worse that the bits we’ve been told about. And then it hit me: if killing my children and raping my mother are the parts we’re allowed to know about, what horrors are they still keeping secret?
Chilling, yes. Terrifying too. Now, you have got me scared also. Sometimes, though, fear can be a good thing. Like here. We can’t change what we don’t know or continue to deny.
Political conservatives defend this sick and twisted shit? Shame on em’! They’re a disgrace to the rest of us! Don’t want anything to do with em’ don’t even want to know em’. An outright disgrace. D-i-s-g-r-a-c-e.
Wasn’t there a diary posted a while back written by the people who interrogated the nazis during the War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg?
They didn’t torture anyone-and people were executed as a result of the evidence submitted. Got everything they needed-no torture necessary. As if it ever is-really. No excuse for it-ever-any time- anywhere-any place.
McVeigh and Nichols weren’t tortured either. Surely, the level of hypocrisy over the feared “ticking time-bomb” scenario is very apparent-here.
No one will ever convince me what a politically- conservative-fundamentalist-christian-fanatical-oil-worshipping administration did in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay did not have something to do with “skin-color,” the “muslim faith,” and the fact that this was a “third world oil rich country.”
It was racism, bigotry, greed, and a warped view of christianity. They’re sick, sick puppies-frankly.
They can take a big, fat, suck of my liberal ass!
What they did in their torture chambers not just in Iraq-but the world over (as we are sadly finding out) I have neither patience nor the inclination to suffer these fools.
“Bipartisanship” will have to be somebody else’s area of expertise.
Not interested. And-yeah-I know it’s counter-productive-but when I think of what these people did to others-children included-they can go to hell. Not interested.
Add to all of this-their completely inexplicable embrace of the facist policies from the Bush White House-in my book they’re traitors, torturers, criminals, and malcontents.
If they’re so unhappy with their country-they’re showing up at healthcare forum townhalls carrying high-powered weapons-why don’t they just pack and go?
This old liberal won’t miss em’ at all!
Wow, did that feel good!