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To: Ilaine who wrote (172929)	7/8/2006 2:57:06 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

Who are we systematically murdering in our military prisons while failing to punish the murderers (getting away with itas you said? The 3 who committed suicide in Gitmo in a coordinated action (taking advantage of privacy curtains given them for 'humanitarian' reasons)? -------------------- Re. the book alleging systematic torture, I found the following review interesting: Reviewer: maskirovka (Alexandria, Virginia) - See all my reviews By, Dr. Miles's standards, I suppose I should count myself as a victim of state torture. At varying times, I was in an environment where my liberty at times was sharply limited. I was sometimes kept awake far longer than someone should be. I had to endure temperatures that were freezing cold or paralyzingly hot. I went without food sometimes until I was very hungry. I was screamed at by authority figures and made to do things that were physically and psychologically stressful if they felt I merited punishment (for example doing pushups on a blacktop so hot from the sun that my hands felt like they were burning). On one occasion, I suffered the humiliation of having to run around with a pair of my own underwear on my head. That same day, my hands were held onto metal plates through which an electrical current passed. None of this happened at Guantanamo Bay, a "black site," a prison, or any other place of confinement. It all took place during the time I was a member of the US Army. The time with the pushups was at Fort Benning at Airborne School and the bit with the underwear and the electric shock was at Fort Bragg when I went through the "prop blast" ceremenony. The sleep deprivation and hunger and the hot and cold weather were all throughout my active duty service. I'm relating this here because it seems to me that one man's definition of torture can easily be another's mild discomfort. Sometimes, there's no mistaking it. Watch the movie "the Battle of Algiers" and look at the scenes where the French make members of the FLN talk by running a blowtorch up and down their bodies. I don't think that anyone would ever dispute that that is "torture" or that it would be wrong for doctors, nurses, and medics to have any part in it. But what about keeping a detainee up for 24 hours bombarding him or her with questions? What about making someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the planner of September 11) think that his guards are beating the daylights out of a fellow prisoner when all they are doing is hitting a mattress in an empty cell with a stick while someone screams as if he or she is in pain? What about responding to a prisoner spitting on his interrogator by shackling the guy to a chair and leaving him in that position for a long time to teach him the lesson that he can't act that way? Is that torture? I don't think so, but Dr. Miles does. You can see that when you look at the chart in his book where he defines torture. Besides my fundamental disagreement with Miles about what constitutes torture, I have two other complaints with this book. It's very short for such a complex topic (the main text is about 160 pages long). The second thing is that Miles deliberately blurs the issue between what might be done to someone in order to produce intelligence and what might be done because the guards are sadistic. There is a world of difference between telling a prisoner that if doesn't give some names up, he's going to go to a very unpleasant place and guards forcing a bunch of guys to form a naked pyramid just because they feel mean and want to humiliatie their charges. In the end, I suppose Dr. Miles would never want someone like me responsible for the protection of the human rights of detainees. Having working in the Intelligence Community for going on 19 years, I would be willing to countenance things being done to get actionable intelligence that he would probably find abhorrent. But conversely, I pray to God that people like Miles never, ever get to set the rules for what is and is not acceptable for interrogating terrorists and suspected terrorists. The best is probably a happy middle. Maybe I'm too much of a pragmatist and someone who lives in the real world. But Dr. Miles and his pristine notions of what constitutes ethical counter-terrorist policy is looking down at me from his ivory tower.

To: Ilaine who wrote (172929)	7/9/2006 3:29:35 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 793717

Okay, I've read the two reviews of the book charging widespread torture by the US and claiming 136 deaths of detainees. First re. torture: We have a free press and people are free to make charges and use words any way they wish. Some of the incidents described in the reviews may have been real torture, but some it seems are situations where discomfort and emotional manipulation are labeled torture. That's a shame, it weakens the power of words to misuse them. And it indicates the author was willing to stretch the facts to make his case. Second re. the 136 deaths while in detention - this is what you supplied in response to my question as to who American soldiers have killed while in prison. So you have implicitly claimed the US has murdered 136 detainees by equating 136 deaths in detention with 136 murders. Common sense tells you that many people in Afghanistan and Iraq have been detained following hostilities and the detainee population includes a lot of wounded persons. And some wounded people die. We don't actually know if ANY of the 136 deaths while in detention were murders while in detention, though I'll allow some might have been.