Thiessen argues that "the C.I.A. interrogation program did not inflict torture by any reasonable standard," and that there was "only one single case" in which "inhumane" techniques were used.
Frank Donaghue Chief Executive Physicians for Human Rights Cambridge, Mass., March 15 , 2009 To the Editor: Mark Danner's recounting of the repulsive, inhumane techniques used on suspected terrorist leaders at "black sites" — techniques that President George W. Bush proudly and openly labeled "an alternative set of procedures" — makes one almost physically ill.
This is so although the majority of researchers conclude that decapitation is not an inhumane technique [2], [3], [4].
Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who championed legislation to outlaw inhumane interrogation techniques and was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has described waterboarding as "very exquisite torture".
In addition to the assaults and humiliation, which began almost immediately upon arrest, soldiers from the 1st Battalion Queen's Lancashire Regiment subjected the men to painful and inhumane interrogation techniques that had been banned for more than 30 years.
All of the evidence shows that Mr. Haynes improperly advised the allowance of illegal and inhumane interrogation techniques".
To hear Mr. Gonzales tell it, Mr. Holder was in the wrong — not the lawyers like Mr. Gonzales who tortured the law to justify torture, or the former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who approved its use, or the interrogators who actually subjected detainees to waterboarding and other inhumane and illegal interrogation techniques.
The information they sought from the utterly powerless detainees in their keep was a treasure to be extracted, like oil or diamonds from the bowels of the earth, and no technique was too inhumane, too morally odious, to achieve that end.
While much of the March 2004 policy remains classified, newly declassified excerpts indicate that it warned that interrogators "should consider the fact that some interrogation techniques are viewed as inhumane or otherwise inconsistent with international law before applying each technique.
But it accorded with his sense of self-importance, in prewar Brahmin Boston, to devote himself almost fanatically to doing good, and although many of his educational techniques now seem not only wrongheaded but inhumane (he sometimes disciplined blind children by handcuffing them), he was an inspired teacher.
Maverick John McCain, joining the Republican herd voting against the bill, said that intelligence agencies need to use "additional techniques as long as they were not cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment".
