Depravity

I'm going out of town for a few days due to a family emergency, and I expect to be disconnected from Your Intertubes until at least Sunday. (My relatives are rather primitive in some respects.) Before I go, I want to make sure everybody has read Mark Danner's summary of the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody. It has gotten a bit of attention throughout the blogosphere, but of course the corporate media has tried very hard to ignore it.

You will learn how George W. Bush, dripping with Christian piety, ordered such actions as the following:

Two black wooden boxes were brought into the room outside my cell. One was tall, slightly higher than me and narrow. Measuring perhaps in area [3 1/2 by 2 1/2 feet by 6 1/2 feet high]. The other was shorter, perhaps only [3 1/2 feet] in height. I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck, they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room. I was also repeatedly slapped in the face....

I was then put into the tall black box for what I think was about one and a half to two hours. The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.

That is just a very small taste of an elaborate, bizarre, unending program of torture. Now, the only thing I have to add to this is that for the individuals interviewed by the ICRC there is good evidence, at least according to their torturers, that they were involved in crimes, although they can never be prosecuted because they were tortured. However, as we also know, most of the people who disappeared into the network of CIA and military dungeons, and who were subjected to at least some portion of George W. Bush's psychopathic sadism, were completely innocent. Just think about that as Mr. Bush markets his memoirs and raises funds for his presidential library.