Get Your Torture On!

January 26, 2005 1:34 PM

Who thinks this stuff up?Further to concerns discussed here regarding the torture of Guantanamo detainees, some interesting stories are emerging from those released about the creativity of gonzo military interrogation. Eww.
posted by cosmonik (38 comments total)

Double eww.

But note to fetishists: If you really want all your wildest dreams to come true, commit terrorist acts!
posted by u.n. owen at 1:47 PM on January 26, 2005

After listening to a thoroughly revolting interview with John Yoo yesterday on Fresh Air, I wouldn't be surprised to hear anything coming from our government these days.
posted by MegoSteve at 1:49 PM on January 26, 2005

Considering that menses and menstruating women are considered unclean, it's almost as good as dropping a pork chop in somebody's lap.
posted by alumshubby at 1:53 PM on January 26, 2005

No wonder 9 out of 10 retired Generals agree: Gonzales not right fit for GIs
posted by danOstuporStar at 1:55 PM on January 26, 2005

dude?!
posted by garfield at 1:55 PM on January 26, 2005

"[We believe] one of the prostitutes stood over him naked while he was strapped to the floor and menstruated on him," he said.

Can you actually 'menstruate' on someone? Doesn't this constitute an instance of improper verb usage? Isn't this just another case of someone lazily transmogrifying a noun into a verb?

Or perhaps, what he meant to say is that a prostitute placed a menu straight on him. And there were pork chops on the menu. Or, she put the menu straight on his organ, and there were crabs on the menu.

Anyway, torture is bad.
posted by Darkman at 2:00 PM on January 26, 2005

Has anyone ever known a hooker to keep her mouth shut? How come there have been no "exclusives" to the tabloids?

Sometimes the mind can turn imagination into reality.
posted by jsavimbi at 2:05 PM on January 26, 2005

Yes, jsavimbi, we haven't properly examined the possibility that this guy just made up the whole story, have we?
posted by odinsdream at 2:12 PM on January 26, 2005

Guantanamo is a closed base. Where, exactly, are these hookers coming from? Are they Naval personnel?
posted by enrevanche at 2:14 PM on January 26, 2005

what difference does bitching about it in a forum make? None. Absolutely no difference.

Can we now please get back to our regular escapism? It's almost happy hour.
posted by jsavimbi at 2:14 PM on January 26, 2005

Here's my theory:

what would humiliate them more, a female hooker or a male hooker?

A male hooker. Any guy would know this. So why would someone go through the trouble of finding a female hooker who just happened to be menstruating?

I don't know about you, but you could have ten South Bronx comfort women pissing on my face all day long, and I ain't saying squat.

However, you put me in the same room for five minutes with a nancy-boy and his cellphone and I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything.
posted by jsavimbi at 2:22 PM on January 26, 2005

Cry me a river.

American cheerleaders do this sort of thing to each other every day. Don't they?
posted by Rusty Iron at 2:22 PM on January 26, 2005

Can you actually 'menstruate' on someone? Doesn't this constitute an instance of improper verb usage? Isn't this just another case of someone lazily transmogrifying a noun into a verb?

Menstruation does come first, but only by about 25 years, and menstruate has been in use since 1800

on preview: you're actually dismissing this story because it's not humiliating enough?
posted by purtek at 2:27 PM on January 26, 2005

It's a good thing we have a President who stands for traditional family values, as long as torture and degradation are the values in question. I hate what my country is doing in my name, and I think we will pay dearly with continued acts of terror, and the hatred of the Muslim world.
posted by theora55 at 2:57 PM on January 26, 2005

Merrill McPeak, who signed the letter DanOstuporStar saw in The Stars & Stripes said after he retired as Strategic Air Commander that he felt we should abandon nukes. Very interesting person. A quick Google shows he's still saying interesting things.
posted by atchafalaya at 3:30 PM on January 26, 2005

They don't need male hookers; it's a naval base. Sailors abound.
posted by cosmonik at 3:46 PM on January 26, 2005

Maybe they should have just played Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction over and over-- apparently this scarred many Americans for life.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:57 PM on January 26, 2005

what difference does bitching about it in a forum make? None. Absolutely no difference.

via The Free Press:

The critical enabling decision was the president's insistence that prisoners in the war on terror be deemed ''unlawful combatants'' rather than prisoners of war.

Q: Mr. President, I want to ask about the Gonzales nomination, and specifically about an issue that came up during it, your views on torture.

You said repeatedly that you do not sanction it, you would never approve it.

But there are some written responses that Judge Gonzales gave to his Senate testimony that has troubled some people, specifically his allusion to the fact that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of some prisoners is not specifically forbidden, so long as it's conducted by the CIA and conducted overseas.

Is that a loophole that you approved?

BUSH: Al Gonzales reflects our policy, and that is: We don't sanction torture.

He will be a great attorney general. And I call upon the Senate to confirm him.

well, i'm glad that's cleared up!
posted by mrgrimm at 4:07 PM on January 26, 2005

Can you actually 'menstruate' on someone?
Clearly you are either a man, or someone who otherwise does not 'menstruate'.

Has anyone ever known a hooker to keep her mouth shut?
This is indeed odd but I have read somewhere that there is quite a few women who have to prostitute themselves in Cuba. Perhaps these are the type who'll charge money to bleed on someone but wouldn't tell, since there are no big-money paying tabloids around to care. undereducated guess.
posted by dabitch at 4:15 PM on January 26, 2005

what difference does bitching about it in a forum make? None. Absolutely no difference.

Who said it is supposed to make a difference in order to be worthy of discussion? Why are you here? Shouldn't you be making a difference somewhere?
posted by c13 at 4:19 PM on January 26, 2005

"Mamdouh has said he wasn't sexually assaulted by these dogs but really we don't know."

Yeah, really. Who DOES think this stuff up?
posted by thirteenkiller at 5:16 PM on January 26, 2005

Yes, jsavimbi, we haven't properly examined the possibility that this guy just made up the whole story, have we?

Certainly a shocking tale. But a tale that is being told by another party relating what Mamdouh told him.

I still have an open mind on the truthfulness / falseness of his lawyer's claims. Need more corroborating claims at this stage. A smoking gun would be nice, too.



"Mamdouh has said he wasn't sexually assaulted by these dogs but really we don't know."

That line annoyed me a lot. And it made the whole article a little more sensational and tabloidish. Weren't the above examples shocking enough without having to throw in wild speculation about something he denies happening?

In fact, even the, erm, skill these dogs posses is only hearsay. Let alone the actual deed.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 5:29 PM on January 26, 2005

I know, uncanny...it's like "Well, he didn't specifically say he wasn't pack-sodomised by syphilitic bears, and even if he did, we really don't know."

This guy's lawyers are doing more damage then good in trying to make every act of the US an act of premeditated evil. But what's new.
posted by cosmonik at 5:49 PM on January 26, 2005

However, you put me in the same room for five minutes with a nancy-boy and his cellphone and I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything.

I think the "Nancy boy" might say the same about you, but I won't judge your heart.

The lack of transparency with which the U.S. treats enemy combatants is really a problem. It's a problem for detainees because there isn't any way to verify that combatants aren't being tortured.

It's also a problem for the U.S. because there isn't any way to verify that the U.S. isn't torturing combatants.

I seriously doubt that the information gathered out-weighs the political liability of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 6:51 PM on January 26, 2005

However, you put me in the same room for five minutes with a nancy-boy and his cellphone and I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything.

New here, huh, jsavimbi?

Fuck off.
posted by stonerose at 6:59 PM on January 26, 2005

"Sometimes the mind can turn imagination into reality."

After Abu Ghraib, I find it hard to understand why you are so secure in your skepticism. Americans would never torture Iraqis on leashes!

You seem as logical as your are tolerant.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 7:06 PM on January 26, 2005

However, you put me in the same room for five minutes with a nancy-boy and his cellphone and I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything.

jsavimbi, since December 13, 2004 you've been in a room of 20,000+ people, a portion of whom are in fact real-life, actual homosexuals, with not just a cell phone, but access to the intarnet.

You payed $5 to join teh gay.
posted by cosmonik at 7:16 PM on January 26, 2005

Don't listen to 'em jsavimbi, they're just jealous. Not everyone can be a bad-ass.
- Speaking of bad-ass, I been to Gitmo - hookers abound.

I sort of am in awe of the "we're not the sort of people who torture people" schtick in the face of the evidence that, yes, you have been torturing people, in a sick sort of way.
I don't know that I'd have a mirror in the house if I could pull that off.
posted by Smedleyman at 7:17 PM on January 26, 2005

Maybe the hookers are actually female soldiers?
posted by insideout at 7:20 PM on January 26, 2005

note to fetishists: If you really want all your wildest dreams to come true, commit terrorist acts!

This may come as a shock, but people like me usually don't enjoy serving as the butt of unfunny jokes about torture and atrocities. But if the quip just has to be made, let's at least make the analogy accurate:

Note to fetishists: If you really want all your wildest dreams to come true, you have several options: Attempt to defend your country when the US invades, be associated in some way with people the US considers "terrorists," or simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On another note... Training dogs to rape interrogatees is, I'm sorry to say, not a new idea. According to an item credited to a Robert J. Fadness and found in The Book of Lists, soldiers and police in Uruguay used "rape with trained dogs" as a form of torture in the sixties and seventies.
posted by Clay201 at 7:22 PM on January 26, 2005

Clay201 - I didn't mean to imply it was a new idea; the idea of using it at Gitmo is what disturbed me. In fact, rape by dogs was used during the Robespierre Reign of Terror in France circa late 18th Century.
posted by cosmonik at 7:43 PM on January 26, 2005

[Interrogators had] superimposed animal heads on photos of [Habib's] wife and children, Steven Hopper said.

"The Americans in their wisdom have taken the heads off the pictures, enlarged them and superimposed them with the heads of animals and then strung them up all over the walls of the interrogation room," he said.

WTF? As horrible as the allegations of torture are, this is just silly. Did they draw buck-toothed caricatures of the detainees too?
posted by hydrophonic at 8:53 PM on January 26, 2005

cosmonik - so noted. I hadn't heard about the Reign of Terror implementation. Thanks for the history lesson.

hydrophonic - I could easily be wrong about this, but my first assumption upon reading this bit about the photoshopped pictures was that the prisoners would interpret them as threats against their families.
posted by Clay201 at 8:57 PM on January 26, 2005

Would this information seem the photoshopped photos seem less silly?

Interrogators at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay had also told the Sydney man they had killed his family and superimposed animal heads on photos of his wife and children, Steven Hopper said.

Or being told this while being shown photos of your family with the heads of animals ...

'It's a shame we had to kill your family, it's a shame you will never see these people again'.

In context, it looks to me to be a little more than just making "silly" photos in PS.
posted by Orb at 10:42 PM on January 26, 2005

After Abu Ghraib, I find it hard to understand why you are so secure in your skepticism.

Nude pile-ons of prisoners ? Use of prostitutes to smear vaginal blood on prisoners

Not a good comparison.

After the British soldiers torture scandal exposed by the Mirror, I find it hard to understand why you are so secure in your belief.

[Google cache - actual Metafilter link not working for me]



Also: Documented use of trained "rape dogs" in warfare = Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ!

Unbelievable. You learn something every day.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:55 PM on January 26, 2005

[Interrogators had] superimposed animal heads on photos of [Habib's] wife and children, Steven Hopper said.

I had an inkling that Something Awful has, in fact, been a secret government anti-terrorist group all along.
posted by DaShiv at 10:57 PM on January 26, 2005

The "?" was a mathematics "not equals" sign in preview.

And while I'm here... Army goons using PS?! Don't make me laff. I'm guessing it was cut'n'paste of the oldskool variety. Completely with non-toxic glue and children's safety scissors!

I can just picture them now: Carefully cutting, tongue out, concentrating hard...
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:01 PM on January 26, 2005

I love the image of the tongue out, hengeman.

I think if the Photoshop was well done, I'd be spooked by them. Combined with sleep deprivation/intimidation/general threats I could see it being pretty freaky.

And all the more so if I was an Afghan farmer not familiar with Photoshop, for instance.
posted by rafter at 11:15 PM on January 26, 2005