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<div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia, serif">Dear Visionaries:</font></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia"></font><br></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia">For those not taking the Daily News, here is my column from today. Some of you may have seen previous columns, and they are at <a href="http://www.NickGier.com/Torture.pdf">www.NickGier.com/Torture.pdf</a> and /HumaneTreatment.pdf.</font></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia"></font><br></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia">Pope John Paul apologized, so when will the U. S. government (namely Congress) going to do the same? I hope that it does not take several centuries.</font></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia"></font><br></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia">It is one of the deepest moral stains in our national history.</font></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia"></font><br></div><div style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia">nfg</font></div><div align="CENTER" style="line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia, serif"><b>IT
WAS TORTURE THEN, AND IT IS TORTURE NOW</b></font><br></div>
<p align="CENTER" style="line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font face="Georgia, serif">By
Nick Gier, the Palouse Pundit</font></p>
<p style="text-align:left;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:0in"><font color="#252525"><font face="Georgia, serif">In A. D. 866 Pope
Nicholas I decreed that “n</font></font><font color="#252525"><font face="Georgia, serif">either
divine nor human law allows for torture, since a confession </font></font><font face="Georgia, serif">should
not be compelled, and should not be elicited with violence.” Until
Church leaders perceived that that Christianity was under existential
threat by heretical sects, this prohibition remained in place for 400
years.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> In 1252 Pope Innocent IV issued a papal
bull allowing the use of torture to force heretics “to confess
their errors (but) without killing them or breaking their arms.” In
1256, in an act roughly parallel to Obama's promise not to pursue
legal action against CIA interrogators, Pope Innocent offered
absolution to those who used instruments of torture.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> Medieval inquisitors were allowed to use
“enhanced interrogation techniques” only after “half proof”
of the charges had been presented. After 9/11, terror suspects were
picked up on the flimsiest of evidence. In Afghanistan a bounty
($3,000-5,000) was offered for those with alleged ties with Al Qaeda,
and hundreds of innocents were swept up, shackled, and hooded for
transfer to “black sites” around the world. In the recent Senate
report the CIA admits that 26 people were “wrongly detained,” but
there were easily ten times that number.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> Pope Innocent obviously did not want
heretics to die during their interrogation, but there are no
estimates of how many may have died of torture. In 2008 the ACLU
issued a report on 160 detainee deaths, and it concluded that 70 of
them were the result of “gross recklessness, abuse, or torture.”
One day in November of 2002 in a CIA “black site,” Gul Rahman was
shackled and forced to sit naked on a cold concrete floor. The next
morning he was found dead of hypothermia.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> Pope Innocent also did not want any
broken bones, but heretical joints were most certainly dislocated on
the infamous Rack. Bush's attorneys also allowed similar stress
positions as long as they did not lead to permanent injury. On
November 4, 2003 at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, Manadel al-Jamadi
was placed in a position called the “Palestinian hanging.” “Less
than an hour later,” as reported in </font><font face="Georgia, serif"><i>The
Daily Kos</i></font><font face="Georgia, serif">, “he was dead,
blood gushing from his mouth and his arms were almost coming out of
their sockets.” One more turn on the ratchet by an eager medieval
torturer could have led a poor heretic to an early end as well.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> Perhaps only because no plastic tubing
was available, medieval torturers did not resort to rectal hydration
or feeding. The CIA's excuse that it was for medical reasons would
be laughable if the procedures were not so horrific. The Senate
report concludes that “excessive force” was used and one detainee
“was later diagnosed with an anal fissure and rectal prolapse,”
symptoms congruent with anal rape.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> </font><font face="Georgia, serif">President
George Washington refused to allow his soldiers to use the cruel
methods that the British and Hessians had used against
them. Continuing to preserve the moral high ground, President
Roosevelt did not permit American officers to torture any Japanese,
even though they had tortured thousands of allied soldiers to death.
At Fort Hunt Park 4,000 high level Nazi prisoners were treated more
than humanely and underwent noncoercive interrogations. The Axis
Powers were a far greater threat to world peace than any terrorist
group today, but America still preserved its values.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> The U. S. has always recognized
waterboarding, a torture technique that goes back to the Inquisition,
as a war crime. In 1901 Major Edwin Glenn got 10 years in prison for
waterboarding a Philippine insurgent. The U. S. prosecuted Japanese
soldiers who brought thousands of prisoners to the point of drowning.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney speaks in error when he denies
these facts of U.S. military history. </font>
</p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> On November 15, 2004, Pope John Paul II
apologized for the Inquisition, and it is important to acknowledge
that Protestants tortured and burned many more heretics, and that the
conviction rate during the various Catholic Inquisitions was very
low.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld may travel to
Canada with impunity, but European judges and parliamentarians are
eagerly waiting to arrest them as war criminals. When will the U. S.
government acknowledge that the Bush administration violated not only
international law but basic human decency?</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
<font face="Georgia, serif"> Nick Gier taught philosophy at the
University of Idaho for 31 years. Read previous columns on this topic
at </font><font color="#000080"><span lang="zxx"><u><a href="http://www.nickgier.com/Torture.pdf"><font color="#0066cc" face="Georgia, serif">www.NickGier.com/Torture.pdf</font></a></u></span></font><font face="Georgia, serif">
and /HumaneTreatment.pdf.</font></p>
<p style="background:rgb(255,255,255);line-height:150%;margin-top:0.08in">
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