"If the detainee dies, you’re doing it (torture) wrong.”

[kpete]

"If the detainee dies, you’re doing it (torture) wrong.”

From today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on The Origins of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques:

http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=299242

"If The Detainee Dies, You're Doing It Wrong"
By Spencer Ackerman 06/17/2008 10:01AM

Levin just laid out a timeline for how we got from Geneva-compliant interrogations pre-9/11 to the torture of Guatnanamo Bay. A key step came in early October 2002, when a lawyer for the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, Jonathan Fredman, visited Guantanamo to discuss "aggressive" techniques for interrogation. Fredman explained "the wet towel technique," according to unclassified minutes of his meeting with senior Guantanamo commanders -- also known as waterboarding.

Discussing what the law permitted when it comes to interrogation, Levin, quoting from the minutes, Fredman said: "It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

The response, from Guantanamo chief of staff, Lt. Col. Diane Beaver: "We'll need documentation to protect us."

By early 2003, following a working group at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld provided exactly that. Cry the beloved country.


http://washingtonindependent.com/view/if-the-detainee-dies

[damntexdem]

1. How nice to have a little screening test.

How many deaths to get their attention?

[gratuitous]

2. Scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Training for gladiators, and the trainee is just not following through properly with his mace or whatever the heck it is. His instructor is patient, as a long line of slaves steps up one by one onto a block to have their heads caved in so the gladiator can get it just right.

"'The people called Romanes, they go the house'?"

"It says 'Romans go home'."

"No it doesn't."