Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

We are now so deep into the era of Newspeak that otherwise sensible New York Times journalists can pen stuff like what follows without blinking. And editors run it. On page 23, which puts it one page ahead of the story that some woman who ran off because she couldn't face her wedding was not in fact murdered by the fiancé the left behind.

Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantánamo Bay: A high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information, senior military and Pentagon officials say.

Perhaps illegally! Perhaps!

The F.B.I. agents wrote in memorandums that were never meant to be disclosed publicly that they had seen female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners' genitals, and that they had witnessed other detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours.

Perhaps illegally? Do we presume the FBI would lie about being an eyewitness to this? Or is there some theory in why the forcible squeezing of a prisoner's, whether POW or not, genitals – regardless of the gender of the abuser — is now arguably legal?

… A senior Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been completed, said that the inquiry centered on what procedures were used at Guantánamo and why interrogators thought they were acceptable. The official said there was no evidence of physical mistreatment, but investigators were examining whether interrogators improperly humiliated prisoners or used psychological abuse.

There they go again “no evidence of physical mistreatment”? What's a series of FBI reports? Chopped liver?

The Pentagon official said that the Schmidt report found that some interrogators devised plans that they thought were legal and proper, but in hindsight and with some clearer judgment might have been found to violate permissible standards.

Just how much “hindsight and clearer judgment” does it take to figure out that having “female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners' genitals” is not “legal and proper”? Just asking.

“People determined which interrogation technique they would use, made interrogation plans and wrote them out,” the Pentagon official said. “In retrospect, however, how they applied those judgments to a particular technique is what one might want to question.”

That sort of equivocation rings a bell.

The war “did not turn in Japan's favor, and trends of the world were not advantageous to us.”

— Emperor Hirohito, Aug. 15, 1945