Suicide: an act of asymmetric warfare

The term “stress position” may sound relatively innocuous. But one example is having the wrists handcuffed together and with a long stick pinning the elbows behind the knees, forcing the prisoner into a permanent crouch. Another position has the detainee’s wrists shackled behind his back and suspended by them from the ceiling. In 2003 a man hung up in this way during questioning at Abu Ghraib died after half an hour, US soldiers were subsequently photographed looking triumphant alongside the corpse.

Wet towels were used in Guantanamo during questioning to cause what officials called the “misperception of suffocation” because, they said, there was no actual intention to suffocate. A fine splitting of hairs: as Poole points out, if a person feels he is suffocating then that is his reality, not his “misperception”.

Forced sleep deprivation is defined in the US Army’s interrogation manual as mental torture but at Guantanamo it is called “sleep management”. In 2002 US President George Bush ordered the armed forces to “treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva” - but the appeal to “military necessity” undermines the rest of the statement.

Poole argues the word “abuse” is used because it can mean anything from killing to calling someone an idiot. Some abuse is criminal, some not. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, commenting on the photos of Abu Ghraib prisoners being taunted, said, “My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture … I don’t know if it is correct to say … that torture has taken place … therefore I’m not going to address the torture word”.

Experienced journalist Christopher Hitchens has also become caught up in the use of loaded language. He argued the outcry over Guantanamo was unjustified because members of Al-Qaida and its surrogate organisations did not fight for a recognised authority but were “more like pirates, hijackers, or torturers - three categories of people outside the protection of any law”. But Poole points out no person on earth is outside such legal instruments as the UN Convention Against Torture or the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Australian David Hicks has been imprisoned in Guantanamo for more than four years, often in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. Many other inmates have returned to Britain or their homes in the US while Hicks continues to be punished for crimes his American lawyer, Major Michael Mori, says he has not committed. The Australian Government shows no interest in bringing him to trial in his own country and seems to define him as a terrorist because he’s in prison, inverting the presumption of innocence.

As long ago as 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte said, “It has always been recognised that torture produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything they think the interrogator wishes to know.” Today the US Army’s interrogation manual reads, “Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results”. So, it seems, torture is called something else.

It’s all Humpty Dumpty’s fault, insisting, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less”.