The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means (April 30, 2009)

The New York Review of Books
April 30, 2009
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22614?email

The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means
By Mark Danner

When it comes to torture, it is not what we did but what we are doing. It is not what happened but what is happening and what will happen. In our politics, torture is not about whether or not our polity can 'let the past be past'--whether or not we can 'get beyond it and look forward.' Torture, for Dick Cheney and for President Bush and a significant portion of the American people, is more than a repugnant series of 'procedures' applied to a few hundred prisoners in American custody during the last half-dozen or so years--procedures that are described with chilling and patient detail, particularity in this authoritative report by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Torture is more than the specific techniques--the forced nudity, sleep deprivation, long-term standing, and suffocation by water,' among others--that were applied to those fourteen 'high-value detainees' and likely many more at the 'black site' prisons secretly maintained by the CIA on three continents.

--------------------

If you enjoy this article, you may be interested in one of the
Review's free email newsletters:

http://www.nybooks.com/newsletters

You can also keep up to date with our RSS feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/nybooks

This message was sent to you using the "email to a friend" feature
on http://www.nybooks.com/. The New York Review of Books is not
responsible for the contents of this message.