Bush’s Torture Lite=Torture

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Bush thinks he can beat a torture prosecution because he has conned the public and DC into believing that his torture lite is not torture under US and international law. Bush has generally succeeded because he has relied upon the public’s  perception of torture as limited to gruesome, excruciating and barbarous physical mutilations.  However, torture has also historically included methods that superficially appeared not harmful, painful or injurious, but which can produce the same pain, suffering, death, and permanent injuries as the gruesome methods.  This is the heart of Bush’s torture lite system:  Inflict the pain, suffering, injuries or death by a method that is called an innocent-sounding euphemism, such as stress positions, and the public will not think that torture is being committed in our names.  

Torture is generally defined as acts done under color of law that intentionally inflict severe pain or suffering, either physical or mental. While Bush claims the US does not torture, the ACLU has documented the deaths of 160 prisoners in which more than 70 of the deaths were caused by “gross recklessness, abuse or torture.” Human Rights First issued a report (pdf file) that provides detailed circumstances based on statements and autopsy reports of  8-12 men who were tortured to death.

One key to Bush’s torture lite is that a torture method may sound innocent in the sense that the US is not pulling limbs apart on some rack, but the technique may produce similar brutal, painful results. For example, the innocent sounding “stress position” has left at least one dead prisoner with limbs almost removed from the body, similar to the hideous torture rack.  In addition, Bush’s torture lite may not kill a person by burning them alive, but may cause medical impacts, such as increased blood pressure, or loss of circulation that can cause death or require amputation.  Thus, the torture lite may cause the same or similar pain, injuries or death that is caused by the more shocking physical acts generally associated with the word torture.  

Another key to Bush’s torture lite is that the US mixes and matches one or more of his approved torture-lite techniques together, so that the cumulative impact is once again pain, suffering, injuries and/or death that the public may not anticipate from the use of one technique alone.  The possibility of harm or death can be enhanced by combining “interrogation” techniques, and this impact is recognized by the US because even extending the duration for a technique may require approvals from superiors or medical monitoring.

Senior Pentagon official Susan Crawford recently explained how even authorized techniques which do not constitute the “horrendous physical act” that people associate with the word torture can and do legally constitute torture when there is a combination of “interrogation techniques” that cumulatively impact the prisoner’s health.

There are four torture techniques used by Bush that may not have horrendous sounding names, but can reap impacts as harmful and deadly as extreme physical torture: waterboarding, stress positions, psychological torture and sleep deprivations. This diary covers the first two and part 2 tomorrow will cover the last two.

Waterboarding

Attorney General nominee Eric Holder recently confirmed unequivocally that waterboarding is torture, and President Obama will not allow its continued use. However, understanding what constitutes waterboarding really makes the case as to why Bush, Cheney and others must be prosecuted for war crimes.  

Waterboarding has been a universally recognized form of torture until Bushie decided to use it.  In fact, after WWII, the US organized and participated in a world war crimes tribunal (the Tokyo War Crimes Trials) to prosecute and convict Japanese soldiers, military leaders and government elite for waterboarding torture of American prisoners of war. So, there is precedent for prosecuting government officials for authorizing or conducting waterboarding torture. If the US is to truly regain its moral stature as world leader, it can not aggressively prosecute others yet not hold our leaders to the same standards.

There are actually at least 3 different types of waterboarding where the victim is either immersed in water or water is forced into the nose and mouth:

The subject is strapped to an inclined board, immobilized with his head positioned lower than his feet. In some cases, a piece of cloth or cellophane is placed over the subjects face and water is repeatedly poured over it, triggering a gag reflex and choking the subject. In other cases, the subject’s head is submerged under water or his mouth is forced open and water is poured down his throat.

Remember in 2006 when Cheney was trying to weasel out of his statements that dunking terrorism suspects into water constituted a “no-brainer” permissible interrogation method?  Cheney claimed that the water dunking was not equivalent to waterboarding, when in fact water dunking is one form of waterboarding.

The megamedia will often describe waterboarding as a  technique used to “create the sensation of drowning without causing death.”   That’s not the reality. Persons who have both experienced and trained waterboarding say that it is not just the sensation but the prisoner is actually drowning as water is entering his/her lungs.  In other words, “waterboarding is usually “real drowning that simulates death”  because the “victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut.”

Stress Positions

“Stress position” is another euphemism for torture by the US. Stress positions include a variety of techniques, some may be simply uncomfortable while others are barbaric, painful and cause lifetime physical handicaps if the person survives the torture.

One stress position is for a prisoner to stand for hours at a time. Seems fairly harmless given that many people have jobs that require hours of standing. However, standing alone can constitute torture. A 1956 CIA commissioned medical study of Soviet torture found that standing for extended time periods, such as 18-24 hours, causes “excruciating pain as ankles double in size, skin becomes ‘tense and intensely painful,’ blisters erupt oozing ‘watery serum,’ heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen.”

Moreover, as the picture shows, standing is not always implemented alone, but includes other torture lite tools of forced nakedness and the humiliation of wearing a woman’s panties while shackled to a fixture.

Even Karl Rove called “stress positions” torture when the Vietnamese did it to John McCain, who was tortured in the stress position of “tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him.”  Today, McCain “can’t raise his arms over his head” because the “torture so badly busted up his shoulders.”

The bow stress position was used for Omar Khadr, who was captured when 14 years old.

Upon their return, the MPs uncuffed Omar’s arms, pulled them behind his back and recuffed them to his legs, straining them badly at their sockets. At the junction of his arms and legs he was again bolted to the floor and left alone. The degree of pain a human body experiences in this particular “stress position” can quickly lead to delirium, and ultimately to unconsciousness. Before that happened, the MPs returned, forced Omar onto his knees, and cuffed his wrists and ankles together behind his back. This made his body into a kind of bow, his torso convex and rigid, right at the limit of its flexibility. The force of his cuffed wrists straining upward against his cuffed ankles drove his kneecaps into the concrete floor. The guards left.

The bow torture technique is believed to be fatal, or, the survivor may face amputation because “a limb or limbs deprived of oxygen and blood circulation for long periods of time don’t reliably recover and become gangrenous.”

Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Jamell, 47, a former Iraqi army officer, was tortured to death with stress positions (pdf file).  The stress position was being tied by his hands to the top of his cell door while gagged after being “lifted by his feet by a baton held to his throat.” He died within 5 minutes due to blunt force injuries and asphyxia or lack of oxygen.  The autopsy found “[t]he severe blunt force injuries, the hanging position, and the obstruction of the oral cavity with a gag contributed to [his] death.”

Manadel al-Jamadi was tortured to death by beatings and two stress positions (pdf file).   In the “Palestinian hanging” stress position, he was shackled to a window about 5 feet from the floor and his arms handcuffed behind his back in a manner which made it “impossible for him to kneel or sit without hanging from his arms in pain.” Less than an hour later, he was dead, blood gushing from his mouth and his “arms were almost coming out of their sockets.” This was death by asphyxia caused by the stress position rather than the beatings.

“Palestinian hanging” is a form of the strappado torture that “places intense pressure on the shoulders,” causing extreme pain and often long-term injury. It also causes difficulty breathing, and if the prisoner “cannot support themselves” due to sleep deprivation, it can cause “death by asphyxiation in much the same way as crucifixion.”

There is no such thing as torture lite. It does not matter if our government caused pain, injuries or death by horrendous physical acts or by water-boarding or stress positions when the similar medical impacts of both are known beforehand and yet our government intentionally inflicted the severe pain, suffering or death upon prisoners.