"Harry Krause" wrote in message
news:c3dhc2g=.c230bf50bbc6ad6d357f33f6d4c3cd90@108 4811830.nulluser.com...

these techniques entailed a systematic softening up of prisoners through
isolation, privations, insults, threats and humiliation-methods that the
Red Cross concluded were "tantamount to torture."

Isolation, insults, threats, and humiliation are "tantamount to torture"?
LOL.



The Bush administration created a bold legal framework to justify this
system of interrogation, according to internal government memos obtained
by NEWSWEEK. What started as a carefully thought-out, if aggressive,
policy of interrogation in a covert war-designed mainly for use by a
handful of CIA professionals-evolved into ever-more ungoverned tactics
that ended up in the hands of untrained MPs in a big, hot war.
Originally, Geneva Conventions protections were stripped only from Qaeda
and Taliban prisoners. But later Rumsfeld himself, impressed by the
success of techniques used against Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay,
seemingly set in motion a process that led to their use in Iraq, even
though that war was supposed to have been governed by the Geneva
Conventions. Ultimately, reservist MPs, like those at Abu Ghraib, were
drawn into a system in which fear and humiliation were used to break
prisoners' resistance to interrogation.

I'm glad we've gone almost 3 years since a terrorist attack on our
soil...despite the promises from bin Laden and al-Zawahiri that the next
attack was imminent. I credit those in our government and armed services
who took bold steps (outside the usual legal box that confines them) to
protect our country.

The war on terrorism is an unconventional war being fought by *illegal*
combatants as defined by the Geneva Convention. If the terrorists are
illegal combatants, then they're not guaranteed the protection granted to
"legal" combatants by the Geneva Convention. Humiliation, insult, threats,
and isolation are not "torture" anyhow.