In the aftermath of 9/11, amid widespread fear of more large-scale attacks, the Bush administration ordered the CIA to begin torturing captured al-Qaeda suspects. The CIA had almost no experience in interrogation, and as it struggled to figure out the best way to go about it, the agency turned to a pair of psychologist contractors who themselves had zero experience in interrogation. The psychologists ended up relying in large part on their study of the torture suffered by American POWs in the Korean and Vietnam wars to devise a program the CIA would now use on prisoners.
Because torture is against the law, the administration tasked some of its lawyers with writing a series of memos that would claim that whatever it was doing to its prisoners wouldnāt actually qualify as ātorture.ā To read these memos is to descend into a bizarre and horrifying world of legalistic brutality. Among their claims are that it canāt be torture if the president orders it. That torture is only torture if causing pain is itself the āspecific intent,ā so it canāt be torture if you do it to gain information. And that it isnāt torture unless what you inflict rises āto the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.ā
This was all presented under the absurd euphemism āenhanced interrogation,ā which the Bush administration invented to convince the public that there was something thoughtful and careful about what they were doing, and which some people continue to use today. Iām sure than in Haspelās confirmation hearings, weāll hear it many times.
But it wasnāt āenhanced interrogation,ā or āharsh interrogation methods,ā or ārough interrogation.ā It was torture. Torture is defined clearly in both U.S. law and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a signatory: Itās the intentional infliction of intense physical and/or mental suffering for such purposes as extracting information or a confession. No one has ever articulated what differentiates āenhanced interrogationā from torture, because itās impossible.
In order to keep its treatment of prisoners as far from the reaches of U.S. law and U.S. courts as possible, the CIA set up a number of āblack sitesā in allied countries around the world. One of them, in Thailand, was overseen by Gina Haspel. Among the prisoners there was an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Zubaidah, who was tortured extensively. As a Senate report subsequently explained, he was subjected to waterboarding and extended use of stress positions, which are designed to produce excruciating pain.
At Haspelās site and elsewhere, prisoners were also beaten, hung from their wrists, made to stand for extended periods, subjected to freezing temperatures, deprived of sleep and subjected to mock executions, in addition to stress positions. There are still living Americans who were subjected to stress positions in Vietnamese POW camps; you can ask them whether stress positions are torture.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/14/rand-paul-gina-haspel-cia-director-torture-gleeful-joy
The Republican senator Rand Paul said on Wednesday he would oppose Donald Trumpās nomination of Gina Haspel for director of the CIA, accusing her of having shown ājoyful gleeā during the torture of terrorism suspects.
Paul also announced that he would try to block the presidentās nomination of the current CIA director, Mike Pompeo, to succeed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.
The Kentucky senatorās stance could be especially awkward for Haspel, who is under scrutiny for reportedly overseeing a secret CIA prison in Thailand where detainees endured so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
āTo really appoint the head cheerleader for waterboarding to be head of the CIA?ā Paul told reporters on Capitol Hill. āI mean, how could you trust somebody who did that to be in charge of the CIA? To read of her glee during the waterboarding is just absolutely appalling.ā
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