Torture: It Was Never Just “Sleep Deprivation”

What this L.A. Times story demonstrates is the proclivity of the CIA and other government torturing agencies to twist the meaning of words, and stuff into the nomenclature of one "technique" or procedures a veritable cornucopia of different torture methods. In this "enhanced interrogation" version of sleep deprivation, forced sleep deficit was...

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What the fuck is wrong with America?

Written By Word Of The Day on April 24th, 2009

What kind of fucking country do you live in where you have to debate whether torturing someone is a crime? What kind of country do you live in when you can spend 3 years prosecuting the President for a consensual sexual act but won’t prosecute a President for authorizing illegal wiretaps and torturing people? What kind of country do you live in where the supposed ’spiritual’ and ‘religious’ leaders think it’s OK to torture non-Christians? What kind of country do you live in where you can’t even use the word ‘torture’ but have to say ‘interrogation techniques’? What kind of country do you live in when their Nuremberg defense (’We were just following orders’) becomes the mantra for not holding war criminals accountable for their actions? What kind of country do you live in where a major candidate in a Presidential primary openly advocates for doubling the size of America’s illegal detention centers and increasing the use of torture?

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House conservatives seek Patriot Act extension

More than a dozen of the GOP’s most conservative members on Thursday introduced a bill to reauthorize controversial Patriot Act provisions (“roving” wiretaps, access to library patron information and expanding FISA) set to expire later this year.

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Ex-gitmo guard saw torture, calls co-workers psychotic

As the Guantanamo Bay detention center reached its seventh birthday this week, a U.S. veteran said he witnessed cell beatings, forced head shavings and interrogation tactics--including sleep deprivation, floor shackles and loud music--while guarding detainees there.

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W. House ignored FBI concerns on prisoner abuse -probe | Reuters

Top Bush administration security officials ignored FBI concerns over abusive treatment of terrorism suspects, which one agent called "borderline torture," a four-year Justice Department probe found.

The FBI, alarmed by interrogation techniques such as the use of snarling dogs, sexual provocation and forced nudity, clashed with the Defense Department and CIA over their use, said the 370-page report, released on Tuesday by the Justice Department's inspector general.

Congress in 2005 banned the inhumane treatment of prisoners, and the CIA says it has not used "waterboarding," a form of simulated drowning, in five years. But Bush in March vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other abusive techniques.

The new report quotes an FBI agent as objecting that the CIA's interrogation of suspected senior al Qaeda commander Abu Zubaydah was "borderline torture," and said at one point an agent helped care for him in the hospital "even to the point of cleaning him up after bowel movements."

Specific interrogation techniques for Abu Zubaydah were blacked out in the report as classified information, but the CIA has acknowledged he was one of three suspects subjected to waterboarding.