“Memo on Torture Draws Focus to Bush,” Washington Post.
“In the view expressed by the Justice Department memo, which differs from the view of the Army, physical torture “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” For a cruel or inhuman psychological technique to rise to the level of mental torture, the Justice Department argued, “the psychological harm must last “months or even years.”
So suppose I want to keep a prisoner naked and awake, chained in “stress positions” to the bars of their cell, in solitary confinement, under intense heat and cold, alternately beating them up and then sodomizing them for oh, 96 hours? A-OK, it is now officially on the record that Ashcroft doesn’t consider any of the above to be torture. And if you are caught, who wanted you to do these things? The White House, that’s who.
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