NYT Watch: Liberal spin on CIA interrogation techniques

April 17, 2:19 PMBaltimore Republican ExaminerSean O'Donnell

Previous Next

21 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Baltimore Republican Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

                             (AP/Frank Franklin II)

In today’s New York Times, a front page article detailed the CIA’s use of torture during interrogation methods. The article elaborated on the memos the Justice Department released yesterday on CIA interrogation techniques. The NYT called the methods the CIA used “brutal” and “graphic.”

Before discussing torture further, it must be defined. Black’s Law Dictionary, an authority in the legal world, defines torture as the “infliction of intense pain to the body or mind to punish, to extract a confession or information, or to obtain sadistic pleasure.”

Do the CIA interrogation techniques described in the recent memos fall in line with the definition of torture?

One technique that was used was sleep deprivation. Detainees were shackled in a “standing position” and kept awake for days, some times as long as 11 days. The excerpt printed in the NYT about sleep deprivation said:

It is clear that depriving someone of sleep does not involve severe physical pain… Nor could sleep deprivation constitute a procedure calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses.

Clearly, sleep deprivation is not torture, yet the NYT called it “brutal.” Go to any college campus during mid-terms and you’ll find plenty of students on Adderall, staying awake for days studying. Are they being tortured?

Other techniques used by the CIA were dietary manipulation, nudity, wall standing, water dousing, abdominal and facial slapping, attention grasping, etc. I experienced all of this during Marine boot camp. Boot camp wasn’t a vacation, but it sure wasn’t torture either.

One of the most laughable torture techniques in the memos described taking advantage of a detainee’s fear of insects in a confined space. One memo read, tell the detainee “that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar.” This is torture?

The “confinement with insects” technique is similar to a technique fraternities use to haze pledges that are barefoot. After blindfolding pledges on chairs, they are told to jump off onto broken glass when actually they are landing on potato chips. According to the NYT’s logic, frats torture along with the CIA.

The only good argument for a technique being called torture is waterboarding. Waterboarding involves “strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined at an angle of ’10 to 15 degrees’ and pouring water over a cloth covering his nose and mouth ‘from a height of approximately 6 to 8 inches’ for no more than 40 seconds at a time.” Waterboarding is supposed to simulate drowning and scare a detainee into providing information. This technique could possibly be called torture and be labeled brutal.

It’s obvious that most Americans don’t want torture to be implemented, but if the majority of techniques being used to protect this country don’t fall in line with the definition of torture, then those techniques aren’t torture.

The NYT shouldn’t label techniques as “torture” if the techniques are not, and they shouldn’t call techniques “brutal” if the techniques are not.

• Students at UNC deny former Congressman Tancredo free speech
• Thomas Paine resurrected to inspire tea parties across country
• University of Maryland welcomes porn, denounces prayer