Email of the Day

We knew this already but it's always helpful to be reminded:

Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago that sleep deprivation was perhaps the worst torture inflicted on the prisoners. Interestingly, torture was also illegal in the Soviet Union, and sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, and stress positions were merely considered coercive methods. At the end of interrogation, prisoners had to sign a statement affirming that they had not been tortured and that they had given their confessions in full awareness of their rights.

Here's an account of a Rumsfeld and Bush approved interrogation of one detained enemy combatant:

In one of the few actual logs we have of a high-level interrogation, that of Mohammed al-Qhatani (first reported in TIME), doctors were present during the long process of constant sleep deprivation over 55 days, and they induced hypothermia and the use of threatening dogs, among other techniques. According to Miles, Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani while he was strapped to a chair and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in the hospital. They then returned him to his interrogators.

It is a simple, indisputable fact that this administration has legalized, authorized and enforced torture.