Granted I had no internet access during the Clinton Administration, but I sure as hell don't remember being outraged by some political act every damn day like I have been since January of 2001 (technically, I suppose, since December of 2000 or whenever the Supreme Court decided Bush could be Emperor President).
Today it's the news that not only is my country detaining people unlawfully in Cuba, but it's using Chinese Communist interrogation techniques on those prisoners. Apparently the guidelines were taken verbatim from a study written by a man named Albert Biderman.
Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”
The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”
Hannah Arendt wrote of the Nazi's "banality of evil." I wonder what she'd say about this.
Posted by Linkmeister at July 2, 2008 11:07 AM | TrackBack