Torture Report

There is a detailed discussion with excerpts from the Inspector General's report on torture in an article by Glenn Greenwald in Salon entitled "What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report". For me, the key bit is this:

...the Report notes that many of the detainees who were subjected to this treatment were so treated due to "assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence" -- meaning there was no real reason to think they had done anything wrong whatsoever. As has been known for quite some time, many of the people who were tortured by the United States were completely innocent -- guilty of absolutely nothing.

This says to me that when the corner store is robbed, the police should go down Main street, grab every 4th person, take them in waterboard them, hang them up by shackles, threaten to kill them, tell them they will rape their sister, their mother, or daughter because this is the best way to get "actionable intelligence".

Think about it. Is this how you want to police the streets of America? Then why are you doing these very acts around the world?

Here is an added note by Glenn Greenwald. I've bolded key bits:

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.

As I wrote rather clearly, numerous detainees died in U.S. custody, often as a direct result of our "interrogation methods." Those who doubt that can read the details here and here. Those claiming there was no physical harm are simply lying -- death qualifies as "physical harm" -- and those who oppose prosecutions are advocating that the people responsible literally be allowed to get away with murder.