This is really mind-blowing. When reading the below, remember, that these people were at that time "suspects" ONLY. I am not saying that convicted person should be experimented on in such a way. But think how much worse it is when someone is but a suspect being abused in this manner:
According to two sources—one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it—the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death."'
And there is the word, highlighted by me, that explains what this activity is: torture. Not enhanced mock executions, simply this - torture.
What would you say if you thought you would have your head drilled? Would you agree to anything? Would you admit to anything that the person threatening you wanted you to admit to? Of course you would. I would. Would that be justice? What if I were innocent but only admitted to doing something because I feared I would be killed if I did not?
There is more:
"The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution.
Before leaving office, Bush administration officials confirmed that Nashiri was one of three CIA detainees subjected to waterboarding. They also acknowledged that Nashiri was one of two Al Qaeda detainees whose detentions and interrogations were documented at length in CIA videotapes. But senior officials of the agency's undercover operations branch, the National Clandestine Service, ordered that the tapes be destroyed, an action that has been under investigation for more than a year by a federal prosecutor."
Like I said, if I were threatened with death and put through simulated drowning methods, I would admit to anything. I would admit that I voted for Bush twice, that I thought Cheney was the greatest man who ever lived, and that Donald Rumsfeld should win the Nobel Peace Prize. I would admit these things, but they would be lies. That is the problem with torture from a legal perspective. From a moral perspective, the reason torture is banned should be obvious to anyone with a soul.
