The "Torture" Log

Here is the link to the Times' "Extracts from Interrogation Log."

I heard a caller describe the water-related parts of the interrogation as involving drowning on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday. The caller wanted to know why Limbaugh would assume that the interrogation involved pouring water on the head when it was more likely to involve wrapping the detainee's head in plastic and drowning him. Limbaugh was fairly livid with the caller, asking the caller why he would assume such a thing when it was found in the article.

I thought Limbaugh was over the top and engaging in his typical, but effective, argumentum ad absurdum. On the other hand, after reading the "log", it seems Limbaugh was right. When the detainee was offered water, he refused on the grounds that he was on a "hunger strike." The interrogators then poured water on the detainee's head because he had shown "disrespect" to "Sergeant A."

It seems more likely that Limbaugh was right. Also, it seems that this kind of bizarre insistence on minor points of protocol might be a starting point for interrogation; breaking down a detainee's initial resistance on small and trivial points puts the detainee into a position where he is on the road to being compromised in more important areas.

Also, ironically, the detainee's "hunger strike" resulted in dehydration, which necessitated the suspension of interrogation so that an IV could be used to mend the detainee's self-inflicted injury!

Americans either never knew, or ignored, or have forgotten, the treatment of American POWs by the North Vietnamese. Long story short, Americans were brutally and physically tortured by the Communists. They were beaten and strangled, all so that the North Vietnamese could wring silly concessions from the POWs. For example, Admiral Stockdale writes:

In fact, I am not so sure we lost many battles. Unless you have been there, it is difficult to imagine the grievous insult to the spirit that comes from breaking under torture and saying something the torturer wants you to say. For example, "My government is conducting a criminal war. I am a war criminal. I bomb churches, schools, and pagodas." Does that sound silly to you? It does to me. But I and many others were tortured in ropes for that statement.

Here is another source on the torture of American POWs in Vietnam, which advises that the goal of torture was to have POWs "write letters requesting forgiveness from the Vietnamese people, to sign letters of amnesty and to be on Vietnamese television."
Silly things, in truth, but the POWs knew that the real goal was to compromise the POWs on silly and trivial things, so that they could then be exploited for more serious ends.

It's also enlightening to read what the torture inflicted on Americans involved. It included being "tied to trees and posts in the compound and beaten for 16 hours a day", internment in solitary confinement for 6 months at a stretch and the imposition of solitary confinement for engaging in "public worship."

If that kind of thing is torture - and the anti-war forces have always been oddly silent about the American experience, as well as the role of those complicit with the system that applied torture to Americans, such as Jane Fonda, as if the things that Americans suffered was not torture - then calling 30 days of solitary confinement and the pouring of water over the head "torture" would seem to drain the word of any substance.

Update:Lileks puts the issue of "torture" in a different perspective.