Torture Memo Details Torture By Insect, Forced Confinement, The “Insult Slap”
The “insult slap.” Enclosing a suspect in a box with an insect. Cramped confinement. The brutal shoving of suspects against a wall — also known as “walling.”
The just-released torture memos detail techniques deemed by the Bush administration to be legal for use against terror suspects. If you dig into them, you’ll find some truly horrific details that graphically illustrate what we’re really talking about when we use euphemistic terms like “enhanced interrogation” or “techniques critics liken to torture.”
Here’s a quick sampling, from the memo detailing the torture techniques to be used on high-ranking Al Quaeda member Abu Zubaydah.
On the “insect” torture:
You would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box.
The remainder of this description is redacted. On “walling” against a “false wall”:
The interrogator pulls the individual forward and then quickly and firmly pushes the individual into the wall. It is the individual’s shoulder blades that hit the wall. During this motion, the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a collar effect to help prevent whiplash. To further reduce the probability of injury, the individual is allowed to rebound from the flexible wall….the false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock or surprise the individual.
On the “insult” slap:
With the facial slap or insult slap, the interrogator slaps the individual’s face with fingers slightly spread. The hand makes contact with the area directly between the tip of the individual’s chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe. The interrogator invades the individual’s personal space. The goal of the facial slap is not to inflict physical pain that is sever or lasting. Instead, the purpose of the facial slap is to induce shock, surprise, and/or humiliation.
On “cramped containment”:
The confined space is usually dark. The duration of confinement varies based on the size of the container. For the larger confined space, the individual can stand up or sit down; the smaller space is large enough for the subject to sit down. Confinement in the larger space can last up to eighteen hours. For the smaller space, confinement lasts for no more than two hours.
Enhanced interrogation, indeed. It’s hard to say which is more chilling: The techniques themselves, or the cold precision with which they’re described.
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1984 much?
I’m remembering the scene where the gov’t torturer exploits the protagonist’s fear of rats to great effect.
This **** is just too predictable.
Nice one, Obama, now let loose the prosecutors or you will be sorry. Americans don’t stand for this.
These people perpetrated evil. What galls me are the tireless efforts of some conservatives I know who try and excuse this.
Brandon.
Yesterday the ultimate test of Obama was the release of the memos. He did that. Today, that’s just an empty gesture, eh?
I just don’t get the critics, sometimes.
Disgusting. Shameful. Subhuman.
-GSD
These techniques should be used more often to get useful information out of terrorists to keep our nation safe. Terrorists are not protected under the Geneva convention and even if they were, the United States never signed it anyway so we have no obligation to treat terrorists like prisoners of war. These terrorists receive no sympathy from me.
Brandon, I wish you were right that Americans don’t stand for torture. There were signs yesterday at the TeaBag protests that said, “Waterboard Pelosi.” We have had members of the administration publicly admit to torture without even a ripple in the MSM. I was at a Christmas Party where a woman who voted for Obama said she didn’t think waterboarding was torture. So, yes, I want to know where all of these Americans are who don’t stand for this. Even John McCain caved his principles on torture. If Obama were to push for prosecution health care, energy, and education reform would go out the window. I wish it weren’t the case, but America doesn’t have much public shame.
greg,
I’m not sure where you learned about international law, but your own Supreme Court says they are covered. This presupposes the question about whether or not someone never tried can even be called a “terrorist”, but I digress. What this really tells me is that there are a lot of Americans who have a sickness in their souls and don’t know right from wrong. Hint: torture is wrong. Read the memo. Even the Bushies knew it.
greg
.
Ronald Reagan signed the Conventions Against Torture into law. Maybe you should actually do some googling and education yourself moran.
Along with endless war and economic disaster, we now have the final piece of the Bush Legacy. I wonder if we’ll look back a hundred years from now and consider the last 8 years America’s Dark Age?
Now sit back and wait for the State Department to issue its annual report on state’s which torture. Will the US be included? Just asking!
Are these Americans accused of terrorism? Are these terrorism suspects? Will Americans be tortured or beaten until they admit to terrorism? Which will rob you of citizenship, label you a terrorist and subject you to more torture as a terrorist. We have to stop being afraid. Freedom comes from courage. Fear and hatred have imprisoned us. Our citizens must kick ***. Not just our military. I rather go hand to hand to with a terrorist and live free the way brave Americans kicked *** on that flight they forced down shy of the White House. Thats what makes me proud. This torture thing is pure cowardice. Its a natural fact that freedom costs sacrificial blood. Bush should have volunteered to be an anonymus subject of the treatment he authorized for a week. Then no one would question these things. He would be a bad ***. Flying back seat on an F18 doesnt cut it.
do I need to call the wah-mbulance? seriously, did you read the document. We train our military harder than we interogate. I got bad news for you, when the terrorists capture an American, they don’t have any other goal than to kill them. Have we gotten so political that we are now standing up for the rights of people that have dedicated their lives to killing us? Is that what I’m reading here? Because of ignorant hatred for anything that’s not liberal we are seeking special rights for our enemy?
This country is headed for a failure, a bad one.
I jumped out of C-130’s and Starlifters but training is training. And war is war.
You scared huh? You worried about someone training to kill you. Your talking about how hard we train. Your not trainging or fighting and your petrified. Your ready to hit the button just to feel safe? Know the difference between a terrorist and someone you are at war with.
Thats not bad news to me thats bad news for a terrorist that tries to capture me. Thats bad news to you cause your scared.
Build an iron tower, have food delivered to your rooftop and experience all via the net. connect and subject your every imagination to the scrutiny of the hierarchy you bow to. Build walls, walls, walls, walls.
Or live.
Life as we know it has only existed for relatively short amount of time. So why do we have to abandon dignity and integrity and what the beauty of being human is. We as America cannot trust a pattern of behavior covering fear by sending our children to do what we must do fight terrorism in our minds. We have to build a legacy on something higher than might if we want to be remembered and preserved.
So stop worrying about where the country is heading. Do the right thing now. Worrying about where were going wont get us where we want to be. If we are wrong about our thoughts lets exemplify nobility by being human enough to change. If spanish or japanese or russian turns out to be better than english we need to learn it. We cannot fight the entire world. We will be mentally equivalent to hut dwellers. We can win the race with legs rather than elbows. This is America man! Do you hear me!We are the baddest. We dont need this scare tactics ****. Its embarassing me man!
The most significant portion of MLK’s I have a dream speech is not ” I have a dream.” It is the portion where he points out that the quality of your life is tied to happiness of your enemy.
We cant get ahead by holding others back. Otherwise that’s all well be good at. Americans are better at doing things better. We have shifted to focusing on artificially maintaining a labor force.
I supported CIA Bush at the polls I could care less about any title lefty righty….
Believe it or not we are not who we are because we beat everyone else into submission. Many countries and their people helped the US. And we are closer to what others say about us than what we say about ourselves.
This torture thing is evidence of our failure indeed!
Where is America going? By the way, whats so great about Amerigo Vespucci anyway? Wake Up please! We are the United States of the Example We Set. Yeah the USEWS! I like that.
lol@”education yourself moran.”
Are you kidding me? I recently saw the “insult slap” at a local super market when a small child was not being mindful to her mother. A quick, open handed, open fingered strike to the side of the face that is not designed to injure is torture? Or “walling”, where the time is actually taken to protect and support the neck before bouncing someone harmlessly off a hollow wall in order to induce shock and surprise? Folks, have you taken the time to read any accounts of POW experiences in Japan, Vietnam, and the first Gulf War? Do you have any idea disparity that exists between these carefully designed methods of interrogation and the round the clock, brutal, physical abuse we have endured at the hands of our captors throughout the years?
Unequivocally the techniques described are not brutal; they simply do not cause any long term, and beyond very minor bruising, any short term physical injury either. That is a fact; a cold, hard, simple fact. The average Gitmo detainee has gained almost 20 pounds in captivity. That is not very indicative of torture, unless gluttony is new form of torture. Given your tendency to call absolutely anything unpleasant torture it would not surprise me if you did indeed find the fact that they have gained weight under our care a form of torture. “He just can’t wear his favorite jeans any more on his way to bomb the disco, oh the horror and inhumanity of it all!”
The legal implications of holding people indefinitely is a separate and far more valid issue, but calling these techniques torture is absurd and laughable. It’s akin to equating a paper cut to a severed femoral artery because both involve bleeding.
Wake up and grow a pair, those of us with brains and balls are getting tired of putting our lives on the lines to defend those of you with neither. And by the way, a lot of us who do all that defending have been on the receiving end of “walling”, and “insult slaps”, and “attention grasps” and other various and sundry techniques, and it IS NOT torture. Listening to your pathetic prattling on the other hand, well, yeah that might just cross the line into the sadistic and tortuous.
As a Navy flyer I experienced diet manipulation, walling, small space confinement and waterboarding at survival school. It’s OK to do it to our own service members for training purposes, but it’s not OK to use those same techniques on people intent on killing us? Sorry, I don’t get it.