<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:25 AM, g. crabtree <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jampot@roadrunner.com">jampot@roadrunner.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">And you are deliberately conflating the
mistreatment of prisoners by individuals with administration policy regarding
interrogation techniques.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Nothing that occurred at Abu Ghraib was illegal under the interpretation of torture advanced by the Office of Legal Council. Remember, under the OLC definition, torture must cause pain similar to that caused by death or organ failure; even if it does cause that pain, it isn't torture unless it also inflicts suffering, which is to say, ongoing effects that last for several years. S<br>
<br>Use of dogs, sexual humiliation, hooding, sensory deprivation, use of insects and coffinlike spaces, hypothermia, mock executions, use of nudity in interrogation, facial and body slaps, hypothermia and sleep deprivation were all techniques approved for use on Guantanimo prisoners; techniques which were carried over and used in Abu Ghraib (though to a greater degree) when military police were brought in to conduct interrogations. These techniques were only banned as elements of "fear up harsh" in 2006. The use of these techniques has made the Guantanamo terrorists incapable of being tried in any civilian court, or, indeed, even military courts.<br>
<br>Even if abuses were not approved, they continued with the full knowledge of the relevant parties. The FBI interrogators' 2003 report to the FBI's Office of Internal Council was received before Geoffrey Miller left Guantanamo. The White House had to have been aware that the FBI had flat-out refused to continue to participate in abusive interrogations, as most of the US's experienced terrorist interrogators were FBI Special Agents. Indeed, well after the submission of the 2003 FBI report, Geoffrey Miller, the general responsible for the interrogations at Guanatanamo, was reassigned to oversee and "Gitmoize" the main American prison in Iraq. Abu Ghraib.<br>
<br>Do you think it's a total coincidence that FBI interrogators complained of the same techniques later discovered to have taken place at Abu Ghraib? Do you think it's a total coincidence that those same techniques -- temperature control, nudity, sensory and sleep deprivation, mock executions -- were the techniques later used at Abu Ghraib? Do you think it's a coincidence that the same man oversaw both interrogation regimes -- and was promoted from running one interrogation program to running the other? What do you think the verb "to Gitmoize" means, if not to make one facility more like the other? <br>
<br>You keep telling me that you don't believe that there was a policy of torture. But you won't tell me, even having the evidence right in front of you, what you think the policy was. And while I'm at it, even under your interpretation, I've got another question for you: if you think the Guantanamo practices did constitute torture, would you approve of life sentences (the applicable punishment) for Geoffrey Miller and the Guantanamo interrogators?<br>
<br>-- ACS<br></div></div><br>