The Senate report's summary of the "enhanced interrogation" techniques the CIA used on terrorist detainees after 9/11 reads like something from a horror novel ("CIA strikes back after Senate torture report," Dec. 16)http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-witcover-1216-20141215-story.html.
Prisoners were required to stand on broken limbs for long periods of time and kept awake for up to 180 hours while standing with their arms cuffed above their heads.
"Rectal feeding" was done without medical necessity using the largest tubes possible. One prisoner developed anal fissures, symptomatic of rectal prolapse and chronic hemorrhoids. After being made to sit on a concrete floor without pants, another prisoner died of hypothermia.
Detainees were waterboarded until their skin turned blue and they had to be resuscitated. And detainees routinely were stripped, beaten, hooded, wrapped with tape and were forcibly immersed in ice-water baths.
The CIA and most Republicans have responded to these gruesome descriptions of torture with the argument that the end justifies the means. What they seem to overlook is that torture is illegal in the U.S.
The U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified in 1994, states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war … may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Whether it saves one life or a million lives is irrelevant. Torture can never be justified. Not only is it illegal, it is immoral and, as the Senate report shows, ineffective as well.
Despite President Obama's assertion to the contrary, this is who we are: A nation that resorts to torture. And unless those responsible for torture are prosecuted for their crimes, this is who we will continue to be.
Sally Evans Yost, Baltimore