harry shearer
Posted by | Under R Wednesday Mar 3, 2010Defenders of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — they’re just techniques, after all — have continually insisted that the treatment does not cross the line into the forbidden land of torture. Critics have relied on history — the US used to prosecute people for waterboarding. Now we have some hard evidence, in the form of rulings by US federal judges.Thanks to the Supreme Court’s habeas corpus ruling on Gitmo inmates, detainees have been getting federal court hearings on the reasonableness of their detentions.That’s the US Justice Department, not disputing a detainee’s contention that he was tortured in US custody; not insisting that he was subjected merely to enhanced techniques or any other tortured euphemism.