Talking torture

Dear Attorney General Ashcroft,

According to reports, a lot of people at the Department of Justice have been spending a lot of time talking about torture:

What they make clear is that the Bush administration had torture on the brain. Its officials were fixated on the subject, which went so naturally with the President's new-style, no-holds-barred, we're-the-only-law-in-town, dead-or-alive, assassination-and-kidnapping "war on terrorism." It's no longer a matter of whether knowledge of the acts committed at Abu Ghraib prison reach the President and his advisors, but of what can only be termed a complete obsession with the subject of torture among those figures. The highest officials at the Pentagon, in the military, in the CIA, and at the Justice Department clearly couldn't stop thinking about torture -- as over the course of more than a year they requested legal memorandum after memorandum, all chewing over how to define torture so that various inhumane acts involving the infliction of mental and physical pain would not be considered such; over how far to go when too far was never quite far enough. In this sense, whether they were aware of the individual acts of horror at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere (and a number of them evidently were), they were certainly intensely aware that acts of this nature and worse were a "necessity" of their war (even if photos of them were not).

Although it's a fun way to pass the day, I'm not sure all this talk about torture is the most efficient use of your time. Perhaps you could have saved some effort by reading the State Department's Human Rights reports. They've already documented many of the torture methods you've approved.

[Libya]
The torture methods they described included electric shocks, beatings, sleep deprivation, intimidation by police dogs, and forcing one female suspect to undress and threatening to insert a lighted lamp into her vagina.

[Tajikistan]
...security officials, particularly those in the Ministry of Interior, used systematic beatings to extort confessions and used sexual abuse and electric shock during interrogations.

[Egypt]
Principal methods of torture reportedly employed by the police and the SSIS included victims being: stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, or other objects; subjected to electrical shocks; and doused with cold water.

[Pakistan]
common torture methods included: Beating; burning with cigarettes; whipping the soles of the feet; sexual assault; prolonged isolation; electric shock; denial of food or sleep; hanging upside down; forced spreading of the legs with bar fetters; and public humiliation.

[Indonesia]
Physical torture cases included random beatings and acts involving the hair, nails, teeth, and genitals. Heat, suffocation, electricity, and suspension were also used. Psychological torture cases reportedly included food and sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, being forced to witness torture, and being forced to participate in torture.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot