Compare and Contrast
by digby
I was going to do this, but I see that Adam Serwer got there first. He compared the OLC memos with the ICRC report to compare the difference between what was authorized and what the detainees report happened. It's even more sickening to see the dry, bureaucratic torture language compared to the reports by the prisoners of how they were actually carried out.
Here's just one example:
The Bybee memo asserts that stress positions, in which the detainee is forced to maintain an uncomfortable position for a long period of time, "may cause muscle fatigue" but that "any pain associated with muscle fatigue is not of the intensity sufficient to amount to severe pain and suffering." Detainees told the ICRC they were shackled in "stress positions" with their arms above their heads for two or three days continuously, and two or three months intermittently, and were allegedly kept naked during that time. In one case, a detainee's prosthetic leg was removed to make standing more difficult.
Detainees said that their legs and ankles swelled as a result of their arms being shackled in the stress position and that they were forced to defecate on themselves. Occasionally, detainees said, they were allowed to sit on a bucket to use the bathroom but were not allowed to clean themselves afterward. Only one of the detainees who experienced this agreed to have his name published. The ICRC reports that detainees were checked regularly by medical personnel while undergoing this procedure.
They must have learned something during this period because later they began to put diapers on the prisoners. But they monitored them for possible rashes so it's all good.
The cable chatterers have all framed this issue today as "did Obama make America less safe?" which is a sign of the noise machine cranking up. Whether it has any legs is another thing, although the wingnuts seem pretty excited at the prospect of reiterating over and over again that it's ridiculous to say that putting people in a small box with insects is torture.
The "serious people" all seem to think that while there's something mildly distasteful about the memos, it's all waterboarding under the bridge and there's no need to go all Scooter over this. (After all, someone they know might be involved and nobody wants to relive that nightmare.) I can discern almost no energy to pursue this except among the right wingers who want to portray Obama as a terrorist-symp.
After all, it's not like anyone besmirched the village with a consensual presidential blow job or anything important like that.