I also think that the anti American Americans are trying to confuse the issue and lump these descriptions into the description of the general detainee life instead of what it is , which is our continuing attempt to gather intelligence among selected, individual terrorists. These stress actions are not done for fun or punishement or experimentation. Once it is determined that the detainee has provided as much useful information as possible, he is basically just a guest of gitmo who is served his orange chicken with pilaf until we can determine if it is safe to let him go.

I'd rather be a muslim in Gitmo than a Christian in Saudi Arabia.

Giving the cartoonist's view from the left side of the media, the guys at Powerline have put up a real gem from Chris Britt. (Link here.)

The cartoon is pretty amazingly offensive, but consider what it says about the guy that he could come up with the idea and take the time to finish the drawing without realizing how far over the top he'd gone. Consider, too, that Britt's drawings are carried in mainstream papers. It's not like he's the house cartoonist for MoveOn.org or anything.

These criminals are desperate and insanely violent. At every opportunity, they will try to murder the guards using their feet, hands and their teeth. They make Hannibal Lector look like a 80 year old grandmother.

The criminal might have just killed or maimed a guard and was under disciplinary lock down. Let's put Durban in with those prisoners and see if Durban lives for more than 7 minutes.

A alternative might be to go the Hannibal Lector route. Put him in a wire cage wearing a goalie mask and a straight jacket.

"extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before"

Sorry guys, but this IS torture. And damn cruel torture at that.

I thought you meant AC, the obscenely entitled band. Playing that might get some results!

I saw a documentary not very long ago on the Discovery Channel (I think) about British military interrogators. They too subjected the people they were interrogating to stress positions, isolation in shackles, loud music (at one time they also played a loud recording of a baby crying), intimidation that stopped just short of physical violence, sleep deprivation, etc. They also learned almost all of the details of the plot they were trying to uncover from those they were interrogating.

Here's the interesting thing: it was 6 college students who had volunteered to undergo interrogation. They were all given "facts" about a "plot", and their goal was to conceal the facts of the plot from the interrogators for 24 hours. It was quite interesting. They signed medical waivers and if I recall correctly one student was examined by a medic partway through the interrogation and declared to be just fine.

Of course, at the time, I didn't realize that this supposed documentary on modern interrogation tactics was, in fact, televised torture of hapless college students duped into the situation by some producer. If I knew then what I know now, now that the Left has informed my brutish conservative outlook, I would have been horrified. ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIED! Because they really, really care so much about the detainees in Gitmo. Really, they do. I mean, they say so, right?

Afterwards, in the debriefing, the students agreed it was a much more harrowing experience than they had thought it would be, but I don't remember any of them tearing out their own hair or threatening lawsuits. Guess they just didn't know they were being tortured...

Whoops, it was the History Channel: http://www.teamdelta.net/HistoryChannel.htm

I got some of the facts wrong, it wasn't college students and it was U.S. military, but the idea is the same.

My bad. :-(

It gets even better than being shackled hand and foot in the fetal position to the floor. Presumably this means BOTH HANDS and BOTH FEET. One doesn't need to be so constrained to lose control of bodily functions. However, some new laws of physics are required to permit this poor demented individual to grow a third arm so he could pull his hair out and leave it in a nice orderly pile?

Nah, in the fetal position your hands are near your head anyway.
I could see how he could duck his head and tear some hair out, especially if there was a few links of chain between the floor and his wrists.

But again, its not like our soldiers did that to him. If he tears his own hair out, should he be further restrained to keep him from doing that?

Because then, presumably, being chained up wouldn't be considered 'torture', right? Even if its more restrictive than being chained to the floor, because its only to keep him from...not really hurting himself? Yeah, 'cause what is the big F'n deal about pulling hair?

Aw, this whole thing is so fucking stupid. Give me the pliers and the blowtorch. I'll show you what.