“Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”1.
“Tell us the truth, leave me alone”
Dark night, chilly, bag over your head, screams from fellow prisoners,–“click” “Click” “CLICK”. Have you ever been to the dentist and had the water from the drill cause the gag reflex? Magnify and you have waterboarding, allowing your reflexes to believe drowning is a distinct possibility. 
“Tell us the truth, leave me alone”
Emaciated bodies, the British al-lowing the IRA hunger strikers to gain the higher moral ground and die as martyrs had taught us a lesson. We would never allow our victims to opt out of their misery with a hunger strike. Force-feed thru tubes they would survive to face another round of indignities.
“Tell us the truth, leave me alone”
So after minutes, hours, days, weeks of agony – “what truth do you want to Know!!!” Tell us, “in the desert of Iraq is that where you buried the weapons of mass destruction”. “Yes, we have them buried all over the desert, the countryside, you name the place and I will tell you that is where we buried them”.  
“The most important element may have been to declare that the Geneva Conventions, a venerable instrument for ensuring humane treatment in time of war, did not apply”
We have known for years that someone arrested, suspected of a violent crime, has admitted to a crime he/she never committed after days of intensive police inter-rogation. Long-term military interrogation techniques understood this human dynamic, and incorporated it into our previous practices. Practices that fell within the Geneva Conference code of conduct. But when manufacturing a war is your sole objective, moral compasses are quickly disposed, objections are declared treasonous, and the “other” is demonized and vilified even if the “other’s” identification is left rather imprecise. 

#2: The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.2. So long after any useful information could possibly have been obtained, we continued with the inhumane treatment. The Bush Administration orchestrated the payment of $81 million in tax dollars to pay mercenaries to institute “harsh interrogation” tactics on suspected terrorists. Some of the mercenaries had previously been employed as trainers of military personnel on what to expect and how to handle torture if captured by unscrupulous, “villainous” enemies.
So torture became our official government policy. Not the actions of hardened veterans who had seen the horrors of war and the enemy up close. A jury would not convict a battle fatigued soldier for acting out of anger, frustration, and fear. This torture policy was different, implemented by Bush Administration officials who had wrapped themselves in the cloak of patriotism having served in no war, never having been in “harm’s way”; while a war they created made them powerful and rich.

The nation’s most senior officials, through some of their actions and failures to act in the months and years immediately following the September 11 attacks, bear ultimate responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of illegal and improper interrogation techniques.
John McCain opposed the torture methods, one of the few Republicans to do so publicly. Being the victim of torture from a previous war, he could not support this in-humane, and previously un-American treatment. His voice was blurred over, the government propaganda machine working overtime to shape the debate. A debate which twenty years ago would have been one-sided, and opposed by the majority of Americans who

CIA Torture Report Cont’d   2
believed generally we were the “good guys”. That belief is now scarred, and left for only the very naïve or dishonest to defend, and possibly, hopefully, for future generations to resurrect. 
The words in bold came directly from the commission’s report. The commission was made up of 11 bi-partisan individuals, which included a retired army general, several previous republican legislators, leg-al experts, college professors and an “ethics” professor. There were 14 specific findings listed by the commission which are worth your review. The report varies in tone, sometimes feeling like a journalist’s stiff, factual recounting of official meetings and strategy sessions. Other times relating the brutal treatment of numerous individuals, which in several cases resulted in the death of those individuals, It reads like a fictional novel.   

Moreover, The MPs removed al-Jamadi’s hood, and realized that he was dead….Dr. Michael Baden, the chief forensic examiner for the New York State Police, told Jane Mayer, “You don’t die from broken ribs. But if he had been hung up in this way and had broken ribs, that’s different. … [A]sphyxia is what he died from — as in a crucifixion”
The Bible warns, “Violence begets violence”. I am aware the Gospel of Jesus teaches a radical approach, but how does one act on that message in the 21st century? “You can’t handle the truth” – Nicholson shouts in one war movie; many of us do not want to handle the truth. It can be painful to shatter our illusions, and force us to confront our failings. So rather than dealing with truth, we tend to marginalize, scorn, and at times violently oppose the truth bearers (refer to the life of Jesus in the bible).
“The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier … The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.”3.
“In 1988 a Texas sheriff and 3 deputies were convicted and sentenced to 4 years in jail”. They were using waterboarding to force confessions.4.   

What changed in our sensibilities in the past 20 years that the technique is defended publicly by so many high ranking officials? Did 9/11 so damage our nations’ collective physic, that we justify any means for our “security”?

I recognize if you are reading this article in all probability you are already opposed to torture. How do you tilt the discussion? A rhetorical question, one I pray we can answer utilizing our collective spiritual imaginations. 
Mike Connor
Mike is a member of Bainbridge House

1/  All bold lettering comes directly from the independent task force’s report
2/  Senate Commission on Intelligence; the CIA use of Harsh Interrogations
3. & 4/ Waterboarding: A Tortured History 11/3/2007

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