by Gary Lewis

Created on: November 26, 2009   Last Updated: November 27, 2009

I do not condone torture to extract information from enemy soldiers. I wish to make the distinction between torture and what was done to enemy combatants in the detention center in Cuba by our military to gather intelligence information. The ten techniques referred to as having been done by our military in Cuba have been listed in Times on-line, April 17, 2009 and include the following:

Attention grasp

Walling

Facial hold

Facial slap (insult slap)

Cramped confinement

Wall standing

Stress positions

Sleep deprivation

Insects placed in a confinement box

The water board

Instruments used were caterpillars and a box, uncomfortable positions, water and a washcloth.

Torture is by definition according to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, copyright 1981, as being: The infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding). Many of the techniques our soldiers employed were uncomfortable. It was supposed to be uncomfortable to cause the men to talk. Perhaps causing mental stress forced the men to give information they would not otherwise have given. I contend that the techniques used could hardly be considered torture.

I would compare the information extracting techniques used by Al-Qaeda. I found this information in www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072tort ure1.html. This article also included pictures to impart more of an impact of what actually took place.

Drilling hands

Severing limbs

Dragging victims behind cars

Eye removal

Blow torch to the skin

Suspended from the ceiling and electrocuted

Breaking limbs and restricting breath

Binding and beating

Suspend from ceiling and whipping

Clothes iron to skin

Victim's head in a vise

Instruments used included electric drills, hammers, blowtorches, meat cleavers, pliers and wire cutters, files, cables and chains, screwdrivers, vices, scissors, handcuffs, and whips.

Hanging upside down and being sliced and diced or electrocuted for the amusement of your captors is actual torture. This has no comparison with a few caterpillars or water-boarding. Having your arm severed or being beaten with steel bars, burned with a blowtorch, hammered, or dragged behind vehicles is torture.

If there were an accurate comparison of techniques and instruments used with the actual definition then there can be no torture at the United States Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay.

Basically the same techniques employed by Al-Qaeda have been used in Burma as reported in the Human Rights Yearbook 1996: Burma.

The Japanese soldiers

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