As already mentioned on the Kos home page, today's Washington Post shows that certain tactics at Abu Ghraib, chalked up as the sadistic creativity of a few rogue guards, were actually used by the military at Guantanamo Bay in dealing with the 9/11 "20th hijacker." They "forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains."
Referring to Abu Ghraib and guards such as Lynndie England, Tom Malinoski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch said "Reasonable people always suspected these techniques weren't invented in the backwoods of West Virginia."
The military decided that no reprimands were necessary for any of this.
I'm always torn when I read these articles. Of course I think it shows that the heads of our government and military lie to cover their tracks. No argument there. Letting underlings take the fall for policies created at the top is despicable. I agree with that.
Where I'm torn is in thinking about what forms of interrogation are acceptable, especially when I never hear alternate ideas from those who criticize.
The Abu Ghraib stuff was crazy and sadistic, no doubt about it, especially when you consider that many of the people being interrogated probably had little good information to offer.
But that was piling up naked shackled men, sticking people up on boxes with fake electrodes, forcing them into masturbatory positions, etc. When you stick women's thong underwear on the head of the presumed 20th hijacker, is that torture?
Imagine Al-Qaida training its terrorists and saying "Now if you're caught, they may put women's underwear on your head. Stay strong, brother." Even extremists who think of women as cattle and believe a thong on the head is humiliating would have to laugh at such a tactic. But some in this country see even this as torture.
I'll get no love from the far left for saying this, but I disagree.
These terrorists are trained killers, willing to blow themselves up to kill as many "infidels" as possible. The United States should try to set a standard for reasonable conduct in prisoner treatment. But even your local police department is going to use some "good cop, bad cop" treatment on suspects they believe have information that could lead to further arrests. And the stakes are a lot higher when it comes to the future plans of terrorist groups. The question is "where do we draw the line?"
So what do you think? Instead of just criticizing what's gone on (and much of it deserves criticism), what do you believe is acceptable and what is unacceptable? Is imprisonment alone the standard, or does the U.S. go to harsher tactics? And if we move beyond basic imprisonment to interrogation, when have we gone too far? Is solitary confinement torture? Is forcing someone to stand in one place for 4 hours torture? Is putting a hood over someone's head all day torture?
What say you?