Torture Porn in the U.S.A.

I’m a squeamish horror fan at best, preferring suspense to torture-porn, so I haven’t followed U.S. forays into torture since 9/11 as closely as one might, but this is a story that should not be missed. An assortment of security officials are sitting around a table in ’02 establishing policy. Hundreds of enemy combatants have been apprehended but no one knows what to do w/ them. After some talk, it’s decided that b/c they’re Muslim fundamentalists the only form of interrogation they will respond to is extreme terror. Some guy at the table knows somebody in a U.S. military unit that submits special operations military trainees to torture techniques they might face if captured. So, some legal documents are drawn up and authorized by Bush and Cheney, a manual is distributed, and interrogators start going to town on detainees w/ waterboarding, etc. Six years later NOTHING substantial comes out of these interrogations. And, after some recent investigation by some NY Times reporters, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, it turns out the torture techniques were long discredited relics used by communists during the Korean War. Evidence abounds that the techniques used rarely elicit truth but, in fact, tend to drive detainees to confabulate stories. The mix of hubris and extreme stupidity in this story is astounding. It’s like something right out of the Manchurian Candidate and yet not completely surprising when the ruling ethos of American leadership in crisis is more concerned w/ appearing to be doing something, anything, appearing to be men of action, rather than actually taking the time to do the right thing. It’d be funny if it wasn’t for the torture victims and the shameful human rights example this episode has presented to the rest of the world. Meaning, it's not very funny at all.

In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into their Past Use