Menstrual juice as torture instrument at Gitmo

kalen

Your Daddy
kalen
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And I thought I heard it all

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," Mr. Saar recounted, adding: "She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee. As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward," breaking out of an ankle shackle.

"He began to cry like a baby," the author wrote, adding that the interrogator's parting shot was: "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/opinion/30dowd.html?oref=login&oref=login&hp
 
The sensitive part of me thinks this goes too far, the other part of me thinks it is fair game.

If true, this woman used this man's irrational superstition against him.

While I can appreciate the mental anguish of the prisoner over this religious uncleanness he felt afterward, objectively he was far better off than those who were raped or beaten.

I don't think this menstrual technique would actually violate any international law, but could be mistaken.
 
If true (and I will take it with a large grain of NaCl) then I wouldn't want to release this guy anywhere near Americans in the forseeable future.

If he wasn't a radical before, he bloody well might be now.

Sounds like a Tom Clancy novel....or are the interregators reading Tom Clancy novels?
 
username said:

I don't think this menstrual technique would actually violate any international law, but could be mistaken.
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I believe psychological torture is covered under all definitions, including Geneva and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I love how people make excuses for this. Yet if an Arab country were forcing Israeli POWs to eat pork, people would scream bloody (har) murder.
 
Cleon said:
I believe psychological torture is covered under all definitions, including Geneva and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I love how people make excuses for this. Yet if an Arab country were forcing Israeli POWs to eat pork, people would scream bloody (har) murder.
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Could be, I am not well versed in international law, but nations utilize psy op units routinely and all interrogators use psychological manipulation ranging from telling the accused simple lies to instilling a sense of fear to whatever.

I don't know at what point a legal line is crossed.

Nevertheless on a 'torture' scale I would rank this well below rape and beatings. Of course that could be due to my lack of apathy towards people who subscribe so strongly to superstitious nonsense.

BTW, I am not making excuses for it. Not every issue has to bring the Jews/Israelis into it either.
 
Cleon said:
Yet if an Arab country were forcing Israeli POWs to eat pork, people would scream bloody (har) murder.
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And you know this how??
 
username said:
Could be, I am not well versed in international law, but nations utilize psy op units routinely and all interrogators use psychological manipulation ranging from telling the accused simple lies to instilling a sense of fear to whatever.
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Many experts on interrogation swear by the Stockholm syndrome - getting the detainee to identify with you. Get them talking. Even if it's off the point - it may give clues to the point he wants to keep off. The great problem with coercive techniques is the subject's desire to tell you what you want to hear - now he's interpreting you, which tells you very little.

Coercive techniques also attract the wrong sort of people. They're better suited to dealing with the absolutely proven guilty. There are wet-work people, and there are head-game people, and they should be employed appropriately.
 
There's a crucial piece of information that's not in the above quote from the article: the woman used ink, not real blood, during this interrogation. She circled around behind the detainee precisely so he would not see her apply the ink, and tricked him into thinking it was real with a slight of hand. Reading the quote alone (as some who haven't registered with the NYT might do) could lead one to incorrectly conclude that she used real blood. Does this make a difference? That's up to you, but it probably does for some people, so it's important to have that information.
 
Ziggurat said:
There's a crucial piece of information that's not in the above quote from the article: the woman used ink, not real blood, during this interrogation. She circled around behind the detainee precisely so he would not see her apply the ink, and tricked him into thinking it was real with a slight of hand. Reading the quote alone (as some who haven't registered with the NYT might do) could lead one to incorrectly conclude that she used real blood. Does this make a difference? That's up to you, but it probably does for some people, so it's important to have that information.
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I don't think it's all that crucial; the effect here is psychological, it's got nothing to do with whether it's real blood. I mean, sure, that would be disgusting, but the point is to psychologically torture the prisoner; actual blood would to very little damage.
 
Cleon said:
I don't think it's all that crucial; the effect here is psychological, it's got nothing to do with whether it's real blood. I mean, sure, that would be disgusting, but the point is to psychologically torture the prisoner; actual blood would to very little damage.
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It's not that simple. If a fundamentalist muslim were to consider this case, the difference might be crucial: has the prisoner really been cut off from God, or only made to think that? Yes, for you and me the distinction is irrelevant, since we don't share that belief. But in this war, perceptions of what we're doing matter. And one of the groups whose opinion of our behavior we're trying to affect could very likely consider that a key issue. It's also relevant to how the prisoner himself may feel after the fact, since the possibility exists to inform him of this later, may also be important (and isn't psychological torture supposed to be distinguished by lasting emotional scar?). I'm not saying that everyone's opinion should depend on this distinction, rather that in a dialogue about what's going on (in which what other people think and feel is rather relevant), its IS a crucial peice of information to be aware of, because there are people whose opinions WILL depend on this information.
 
We inspire terrorists as if we stayed up late nights trying to think of new ways to do it.

So here's how to do it right.

Pretend to beat up another prisoner in the adjacent cell, out of sight but not hearing. Have someone scream like their head is being cut off, lots of sawing and gurgling noises. Drag some bloody bodies by the cell door and leave a trail of blood.

Bring in a bucket of red dye and tell the prisoner that it is the blood from the decapitated prisoner. Make him drink it, and tell him he's next.

Hey no harm done.
 
Kopji said:
We inspire terrorists as if we stayed up late nights trying to think of new ways to do it.

So here's how to do it right.

Pretend to beat up another prisoner in the adjacent cell, out of sight but not hearing. Have someone scream like their head is being cut off, lots of sawing and gurgling noises. Drag some bloody bodies by the cell door and leave a trail of blood.

Bring in a bucket of red dye and tell the prisoner that it is the blood from the decapitated prisoner. Make him drink it, and tell him he's next.

Hey no harm done.
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Don't be giving anyone any ideas now, after all, "they" are listening.
 
RussDill said:
Don't be giving anyone any ideas now, after all, "they" are listening.
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I've found that rasberry Jello makes very good fake blood and is less expensive than the pro-grade theatrical blood. The trick is to make the Jello good and watery so it doesn't set-up like it normally would when it cools down. You have to play with the recipe a little but a good rule of thumb is to double the amount of water.
 
Ziggurat said:
It's not that simple. If a fundamentalist muslim were to consider this case, the difference might be crucial: has the prisoner really been cut off from God, or only made to think that? Yes, for you and me the distinction is irrelevant, since we don't share that belief. But in this war, perceptions of what we're doing matter. And one of the groups whose opinion of our behavior we're trying to affect could very likely consider that a key issue. It's also relevant to how the prisoner himself may feel after the fact, since the possibility exists to inform him of this later, may also be important (and isn't psychological torture supposed to be distinguished by lasting emotional scar?). I'm not saying that everyone's opinion should depend on this distinction, rather that in a dialogue about what's going on (in which what other people think and feel is rather relevant), its IS a crucial peice of information to be aware of, because there are people whose opinions WILL depend on this information.
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Apart from the possibility that blood bourne disease might be transmitted, this bit of information is not crucial. The only person to who this matters is the person being tortured and in his mind it is blood. I can only imagine what kind of torment he suffered. The fact that he can be told afterwards it was just ink may not alleviate his pain. He also may not believe it is ink if it was applied in a convincing way - even after being told.

I will admit this bit of information may be crucial to people who think it's fine in any sense to torture people. It provides them with an "out": "Hey, it was only ink! We really fooled that guy. Ha! Ha!"
 
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