From Human Rights Watch
May. 14th, 2004 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusArticle published in the Washington Post" Time to Stop "Stress and Duress"
I remember a while back, and the FBI asked Congress for official permission to use "Stress and Duress" techniques. At the time, many people, such as myself, and organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, recognized these as code words for "Torture" and raised hue and cry. Congress was bombarded by letters urging them not to pass any legislation making it legal. They responded by quietly stopping all mention of it.
However, from time to time over the last few years a news article still came out citing the use of such techniques in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. If you read back through blogs, you'll find many of us denouncing these techniques long before the pictures from Abu Ghraib surfaced.
Why were all these reports either scoffed at, ignored, or justified the Powers That Be in the past, and now these same people are expressing outrage and disgust that such things are happening?
Is it the sexual content? Is torture OK, until it becomes sexually suggestive? Bush has gone on record as saying that "Stress and Duress" is a good and necessary tool. But now, suddenly, it's a sin. That attitude repulses and disgusts me even more.
I remember a while back, and the FBI asked Congress for official permission to use "Stress and Duress" techniques. At the time, many people, such as myself, and organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, recognized these as code words for "Torture" and raised hue and cry. Congress was bombarded by letters urging them not to pass any legislation making it legal. They responded by quietly stopping all mention of it.
However, from time to time over the last few years a news article still came out citing the use of such techniques in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. If you read back through blogs, you'll find many of us denouncing these techniques long before the pictures from Abu Ghraib surfaced.
Why were all these reports either scoffed at, ignored, or justified the Powers That Be in the past, and now these same people are expressing outrage and disgust that such things are happening?
Is it the sexual content? Is torture OK, until it becomes sexually suggestive? Bush has gone on record as saying that "Stress and Duress" is a good and necessary tool. But now, suddenly, it's a sin. That attitude repulses and disgusts me even more.
