The Guantanamo Bay Torture Memos: For Kids!
My six-year-old "son," whom I've yet to name, tossed and turned in the dresser drawer I'd converted into a bed.
"What's wrong boy-I-refuse-to-acknowledge-as-mine-without-a-proper-paternity-test?"
"Oh, nothing daddy," he said precociously, "just having trouble sleeping."
"Well then," I said warmly, "why don't I read you a bedtime story?" My almost-son's eyes widened and a giant grin spread across his face.
"That sounds great, daddy! What story?"
"It's a new one," I told him, "just picked it up today."
"Hold on," the little boy interrupted. "Just so I'm clear, when you say his 'mean parents wouldn't allow him,' you're talking about international law, right? Like, it's international law that forbids Americans from using torture, so in the story when it complains about 'mean parents,' it's really about the international law?" I smiled at the small boy.
"Well, aren't you precocious? But, yes, that's right, I suppose that's the comparison the book is going for."
"Sort of an unfair metaphor, if you ask me. Takes a pretty complex situation and oversimplifies it to the point of absurdity, like it's forcing the reader to side with the-"
"Look, kid, if you have a problem with the shady manipulation of language for the purposes of advancing an agenda, maybe I should stop reading this story now, because it's only gonna snowball from here."
"No, no," the boy said, "please, keep going."
"Waterboarding, daddy? Is that like boogie-boarding, or surfing?"
"Hahaha. My goodness, that's rich, what a precocious little notion. But no. Waterboarding is in no way like boogie-boarding, surfboarding or anything else you have ever or will ever experience in your sheltered, pampered life."
"So," the boy said, "they went to some outside consultants to decipher the anti-torture laws?"
"Not consultants," I corrected, "a two headed monster."
"Right... two-headed monster. But what if the two-headed monster was wrong in its interpretation? Or worse, deliberately wrong? Like corrupt, what if the two-headed monster was corrupt?"
"Oh ho ho, you precocious little so-and-so, let's read on and find out!"
"Okay," said the boy, "this... I already have a problem with this."
"Nope," the boy said, "no, no, no. Uh uh. Nope."
"Calm down, you precocious thing," I said. "It's just a fairy tale."
"Slow down for a second, daddy, this is... there's a lot, here. So, no one would be held accountable?"
"According to Uncle Dicky's plan."
"How would Uncle Dicky know to do that in advance? How would Uncle Dicky know to make a list with so much built-in wiggle room? And how would he know that Bybee Bradbury would see things his way? It all seems so convoluted. It just requires such tremendous foresight." Look at that vocabulary. Six-years-old. No way this kid's mine.
"Well, son, in the way that a talented engineer can look at a broken computer and know exactly what to do to make it work, or in the way that Michelangelo can look at a slab of marble and in it see the magnificent Statue of David, Uncle Dicky can look at a terrorist, some crooked lawyers and a poorly-written international law regarding torture and see in it an airtight, effective plan for covering the collective ass of his administration."
The boy scratched his head. "Did... did you just compare Dick Cheney to Michelangelo?"
"In the field of heartless manipulation and ass-covery, yes, yes I did. Would you like me to keep reading?"
"I guess. I just feel sort of sick, now, and dirty. Like, everywhere."
"So precocious. I'm gonna keep reading."
"The end," I said, shutting the book.
"Hold on, did it work? The waterboarding, I mean, was it worth it? What kind of information did we get out of Zubayah?" I mussed the boy's hair and laughed heartily.
"Well someone's about to OD on precociousness, am I right? But, no, we don't know if it was worth it. The investigation as to whether or not we learned anything from Zubayah, as well as the usefulness of said knowledge, is ongoing. Some think the interrogation yielded some useful info that was integral in preventing several potentially dangerous terrorist attacks, but some high-ranking members of the intelligence community genuinely believe that Zubayah was certifiably insane and his involvement in al-Qaida didn't extend beyond making bombs and organizing transportation, and therefore couldn't possibly have any useful information to begin with."
"What?!"
"Oh yeah. I'll read you The One Percent Doctrine before you go to sleep tomorrow night, it'll blow your mind."
"Wait," the little boy said, "wait just one goddamned fingerblasting second. THAT'S how the story ends? A ton of pages that's nothing but a bunch of language-manipulating, bureaucratic horseshit and we still don't even know if we learned anything? And the guy we tortured might even just be a delusional lunatic?"
I mussed the boy's face and chuckled grandly. "Allegedly tortured," I corrected. "Also the lunacy was alleged, too, so, really, watch your word choice."
The boy stared off, looking at nothing in particular. Tears were developing in his eyes and his lower lip started quivering. I could tell he was choking back sobs, trying to look like a big man in front of me. I poked his nose and made an accompanying "boop" sound before unplugging his nightlight.
"Anyway, sweet dreams, Kid!"
Brilliance. Glad to read it again.
ReplyI want to tell everyone that I read this to my 4 year old brother. What my parents don't know won't hurt them, right?
ReplyIncredible article
ReplyI wonder if DOB is available for childcare work.
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[...] « enfants », en écho au premier lien de cet article : « The Guantanamo Bay Torture Memo: for kids!« . Le titre se suffit à [...]
ReplyHere's a scenario:
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYou get pulled off of the street by British government forces because some group said that you're a terrorist. You get taken to some British internment camp. You're tortured for information that you don't have. You're kept for years. You finally are released when these British ass-bags realize that you don't know shit. What would you do after being released?
The first thing that I would do would be to BOMB THE FUCK out of as many British politicians as I can.
Thus I propose this theory: Guantanamo Bay creates far more terrorists than they capture/prevent. Fucking idiots.
ALLEGEDLY torture you. Be careful with your word choice.
Wait- Guantonomo bay "allegedly" released you... To other prisons. Stop whining.
Well then Chadachada, you are squirrelshit levels of crazy. I personally would sue the s**t out of those tea-sipping, funny talking, rotten tooth bastards for holding me not in accordence to multiple articles of the Geneva Conventions.
Reading some of the comments to this article, I can't help but laugh at the stupidity of some people. I'm natively Vietnamese but have lived for 3/4s of my life in Sweden. Thus, I am by all intents and purposes Swedish.
ReplyThe United States invaded Vietnam and killed countless innocent civilians. My maternal grandmother had to flee across the mountains carrying my mother and her siblings and they were near starvation for large periods of my mother's childhood. The French invaded my country and whatnot. The Chinese have a bloody history concerning Vietnam.
Guess what, I HATE NEITHER OF THESE GROUPS OF PEOPLE! My God what a bunch of idiots (some of) you are.
"Noes! 9/11! Terrorists!". Guess what, that does not make every single Middle Eastern citizen a terrorist. At least my patria was invaded by national armies, sanctioned by their governments (or kings in the case of China). 9/11 was orchestrated by a (relatively speaking) small group of people with zero real ties to the Afghan or Iraqi people as a whole.
Many of the Guantanamo Bay interns were arrested just for fighting against the American forces in the Iraqi invasion. Do we arrest enemy soldiers and hold them indefinitely now? Since when?
AND NONE OF THIS CHANGES THE FACT THAT TORTURE IS NEVER OKAY. For every person who is tortured and who gives up some miniscule information, a good ten, at the very least, are innocent or plain just don't know anything.
Do you think the terrorists are idiots?! They've eluded capture because they know what to divulge to whom. And they know to train whoever they give the most important info in the arts of not giving into torture or simply turning them into such zealots they'll simply KILL THEMSELVES before giving up what they know!
If waterboarding and the other torture methods are SOOOOO successful, how come we do not regularly hear of how some piece of information that was revealed after the usage of torture lead to X and Y?! That's right, BECAUSE THE TORTURE HAS IN SO FAR YIELDED ALMOST NOTHING (relatively speaking)!
What if Daniel O'Brien is retarded?
Reply"Boop" :D
ReplyYou people are idiots. There does not appear to be ONE person here who is able of even a modicum of objective thinking. So many closed minded responses. Every person who responded to this needs to stop and spend 30 seconds considering what it means if you're wrong. Temper yourselves, fools. You are all right, and you are all wrong. It is a delicate balance to negotiate the human rights of a person who has no respect for human life. For those of you who equated our enemy to "freedom fighters..." are you kidding? Do you know ANYTHING of what they do? Selling their daughters into marriage, beating a woman who defies her husband, stoning a female for touching a man who isn't her husband? I need you to clarify which part of this suggests freedom to you. If you like it so much, maybe you should be there yourself and write home and tell us how free you feel. Keep your literacy a secret, though, if you want to keep your eyes. They don't like that over there. If you paid attention to the news, you'd know what kind of respect they have for education.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesIt's easy to have so many selfrighteous opinions when you've never been outside your own little utopia. What a bunch of childremn. You should be embarrassed of your ignorance.
WTF! I live in Pakistan. Nobody does this s**t. By the way, stop calling every Muslim country the f**king Middle East. Pakistan is technically part of the Indian subcontinent. American dumbs**ts.
wow easy cowboy
who did put your country in charge of the entire world
if America love its so called freedom, you don't need to stick it in every country faces.
first Americans killed million of Indian, almost two million Vietnamese. and god knows how many Afghanistanians and Iraqis. they were f**king sawing Indians scalps for crying out loud.
great article DOB
Yeah man its close minded to say that torture is illegal and immoral.I guess what's not close minded is to bomb the s**t out of a peaceful conference and kill 41 people on an assumption that such a large gathering of muslim tribesmen could mean only one thing......terrorists
The only people who win as a result of this so called "torture" debacle are the terrorists themselves. Now they pretty much know that the interrogations are designed not to cause them harm so theres no need to give up any information in case of capture! The level of intelligence will most likely drop and the only people that end up suffering or dead will be you and me.
ReplyAlso, somebody argued that torture doesnt work because anyone will confess to anything under torture. Thas true if youre being tortured by the Taliban but trained interrogators will have facts which they will expect the target to verify. Thats how they learn whether the target is lying or not and thus will eventually extract reasonably reliable and accurate information!
Waterboarding is not the iron maiden for goodness sake and if made illegal we will have lost an effective means of getting information about terrorist networks from out of their own ranks.
If I was a terrorist leader I would be a growing a bit more confident about devising ways to kill you. You can thank Mr Obama and his team for that.
Ah, but it's not effective. It never was. Read a book.
"Trained interogators will have facts they expect the target to verify"? If they have the facts already, what’s the point of the torture? Also, what if your facts are wrong? Wouldn't you just dismiss valid information at that point?
Anonymous, thanks for proving my point.
ReplyAs someone who believes in the rights that the USA is supposed to stand for, who believes in justice and human rights, due process and democracy, I have to say: the moment you torture people claiming to protect these rights, is the momant you prove that you have no idea what they actualy are.
Do acual terrorists commit jhorrible crimes against all kinds of people, including Americans? Yes. But if the US wants to be seen- by its own citizens as well as foreign nations- as a country that actualy believes in the values it claimes to fight for, then lowering to teir levelis definitely not the way to go.
And only vets and soldiers are allowed to have an oppinion? Not only is that idiotic in and of itself, given that everyone having a right to their own opinion is one of the cornerstones of democracy, you also seem to believe that all vets and soldiers would agree that torturing people is ok.
Funny, the ones I have talked to have often spoken of being ashamed that the righjts they fought to protect are being cast aside so callously by those who are supposed to uphold them.
But I geus you can not expect an actual thoguhtfull discussion from someone who openly ADMITS THAT HE THINKS AMERICANS SHOULD BE TREATED BETTER THAN AND HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN EVERYBODY ELSE
Reading your post was a frightening prove of the fact that so many people in the US have become so deeply entranched in propaganda. they forgot what the USA is supposed to stand for.
Here's a hint: It's not supposed to be a superiority complex, ignorance of all other nations interest and the willingnes to ignore the law whenever they feel it gets ion the way.
Nauseating.
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ReplyThe Brave Knight was an American Idiot, a tool to the Oilogarchy.
ReplyPrisoners were documented being raped (including children in front of their fathers), gang beaten until their bones broke, had their eyeslids held open and sprayed directly with mace and pepper spray, held in excrucating stress positions that would make Brave Knight scream like girl, waterboarded as often as every half hour, by pouring water directly up the nose and mouth causing intense physical pain and gagging, where NOBODY has ever been able to resist, and when the prisoners (anyone rounded up in US patrols or turned in for ransom) went on hunger strikes, were beaten, and even gunned down with 50-caliber machine guns, you bone head.
If someone charged into your country chasing some alleged mass murderer of their people (OBL is NOT charged with 9/11), then gave up the chase at Tora Bora, and just started bombing the shit out of Houston and Atlanta and shooting down innocent American men in the streets "looking for bad guys", you'd be on the barricades with your M-16 firing back, just like the Alamo.
10,000's of innocent Afghans have been murdered by America, and 100,000's of innocent Iraqi's, but there is ZERO evidence either Afghanistan or Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11. It was documented Saudi princes' and Pakistani ISI money, and Saudi and Egyptian terrorists. Why don't we nuke Riyadh?
Because these are Oil Crusades.
"Torture for Humvee Jesus!!"
Don't bring Pakistan into the f**ked up world of the terrorists mate. We are your allies and are on the front line against terrorism.
First of all since waterboarding only creates the sensation of being drowned how is it effective more the once? You'd think after, I don't know, the first hundred times, maybe, he would've figured out he's not actually drowning.
ReplyAlso, why should someone from a country where no one has rights be given rights from a country that he hates and would very much like to see burn. Don't BS with the "we're better then them" speech either because the fact is if you guys got your way the country would burn. Newsflash: not everyone in the world wants peace, some people like killing, they like the screams of innocents being killed and you sitting at your safe computer, away from any violence and the real world, crying about them the mistreatment of terrorists should go to the nearest military recruitment center, join infantry and get put on the front lines and when your getting shot at and bombs are blowing up around you and you watch innocent people being killed, you come back and tell me, does a man who helped do that, killed innocents, and killed Americans who fight to protect your freedoms and rights while you criticize them, does he really deserve any of our rights and is waterboarding him really all that bad. If someone came and shot your best friend right now, would you give him a meal or beating? Screw off you self-righteous pricks who have never expierenced anything outside of your safe little world where your biggest worry is the bills. Those of you all pissy at this guy Voltaire for his comments, none of you came up with legitimate arguements against him and its because he's right, until we have a better method then torture, we might as well use it. Everyone else does. Finally, international law is the biggest load of bull shit ever come up with, especially the Geneva Convention, for those of you who don't know, terrorists broke the Geneva Convention by not wearing distinct uniforms and by concealing weapons, so as a result they aren't considered POW's and have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. Quite being a bunch of pussies, step up and do what it takes to protect the ones you love. The only people who truly have the right to say anything against it our vets and current military operatives and not the ones who sit behind a desk doing nothing.
For jaimie: Hell no I wouldn't be willing to accept Americans being waterboarded and tortured, but don't think for a second I wouldn't do the same to the bastards to protect my fellow Americans because if thats what it takes then I'm ready to do it. Call me a hypocrite or whatever you want but I'd still do it to protect you and and any other American. Fun fact though Americans are being held without of the rights you listed, and not just military operatives but also civilians and they get tortured daily, ten times worse then anything we do to our captives. "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Haven't you heard that torture isn't effective?And have u ever been water boarded, I bet not.And of the americans captured what the f**k were they doing in our countries in the first place.
It isn't a mental sensation, it's a physical one. Your body thinks you're drowning and there isn't a way to stop going into panic-mode. Ever started choking on something and notice how it's immediately terrifying, even if you can still breathe slightly?
Imagine that every half hour.
[...] As for waterboarding, what criticism could I say that cracked magazine doesn't satirize better! Guantanamo bays waterboarding a children's bedtime story [+] Rate this post [...]
Reply[...] As for waterboarding, what criticism could I say that cracked magazine doesn't say satirize better! Guantanamo bays waterboarding a children's bedtime story [+] Rate this post [...]
ReplyTo everybody who says "they deserve it for killing Americans" - As far as I know, when someone commits a murder, that person is put on trial. If he/ she is proven to be guilty, then he/she will be punished. If you want to punish people for crimes they alledgedly committed against the US, put them on trial. By locking them up without even access to a lawyer, you are making a mockery of your country's legal system.
ReplyAsk yourself this simple question: If an American where taken prisoner by another nation, and the officals explained that they considered him a terrorist, and that they therefore would hold him indefinitely, without even bothering to prove they were right- what would you as an American citizen think? If they then conducted "interrogations" using waterboarding, what would the reaction of the American people be? Who would stand for it? Would they buy into the pseudo-legal bathering that is designed to disguese what is clearly torture as anything but?
Actually, I don't have to ask. I know that the American governmant would consider these treatments to be torture and try the perpetrators for crimes of war. It's what they did with the Japanese who used waterboarding on American soldiers in WWII.
So everyone who says that Americans are allowed to use these techniques to protect their own country- What you are saying is
I don't care about anybody else but me. Breaking the law is ok if it for my best interest. I am allowed to do whatever I consider neccessary to take care of myself and those I care about. BUT YOU! Don't you dare even think that you are allowed to do the same for your best interests. Only I, as an American, have the right to disregard the law. Because I am American, and as such, I AM ABOVE THE LAW.
Laws are not meant to be applied when it is convenient and otherwise ignored. Is it hard, granting just procedure to someone who committed a horrible crime? Yes. Will the victimes demand harder punishment? Most likely.
But that doesn't change the fact that human rights are only as secure as we let them be. By taking them away from others, we lose every right to demand that they be granted to us.
The legal system was not designed for conveniece, to be adjusted whenever we would like.
One of the guiding principals of moral behaviour is that you should treat others the way you wish to be treated yourself. Applied to a nation, that means that every right you demand for yourself and your people, you have to give others as well. And every punishemnt you mete out against others, you have to allow the to mete out against you if the situation is reversed.
Tell me that you would be willing to accpet Americans held without access to an attorney, without proper trial, for an indefinite amount of time. Tell me that you would accept it if Americans were subjected to waterboarding.
@ayo germany:
ReplyCongratulations for making me feel nicer towards Voltaire with your inability to point out the obvious criticisms to that user's ideas without trotting out the tired, old arguments that only demonstrate that you've been hoodwinked by the corporate bureaucrats that own both parties in this country.
In much the same way that torture isn't right to perform against an individual under any circumstance, terrorism isn't excusable either. Your revenge scenario only further purveys the problem in which each side claims that they are responding to wrong doing of the other side.
Quoting Carlin in the fashion that you have, in that unwieldy way without context shows that you understand neither.
In the way that many Republicans are contemptible with their "tea parties," you are covering your ears crying "bullshit" and thanking an author that agreed with your previous beliefs.
@Voltaire:
The basis of virtue is maintaining one's ethics in the face of adversity. We cannot claim our principles if we abandon them when it is convenient.
General:
Voltaire did bring up an interesting idea though. What if unpleasant medical procedures were used as negative reinforcement protocols. "If you don't tell us where the weapons are, we're going to irrigate your colon...and give you a hepatitis shot!" Would the laws governing intent apply to these techniques, I wonder.