Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Bush bordering on torture?

Kevin Drum reposts a news article confirming that:

the Bush order approved interrogation tactics that include "sleep deprivation and stress positions," as well as "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."

That doesn't sound quite like torture to me, or at least not-so-bad torture. But the question I've had about these "stress position" requirements we keep hearing about, is how do they force prisoners to maintain those positions? The only way I can see that is if they will do something worse to prisoners if they move from the position. Stress positions seem to be synonymous with beatings, and that's torture.

P.S. I suppose people could be tied/chained into stress positions. I think the term encompasses more than that, positions that prisoners have maintain like a low crouch. Someone tied in a stress position long enough would experience excruciating pain, anyway, and that seems to me to be an authorization for torture, directly from our dear president.

UPDATE: From Laura Rozen: stress positions included "forced squatting for an extended period".

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