Intellectual torturers (Tzvetan Todorov / Daily Times)

... What is most striking is the discovery of niggling little rules, outlined in CIA manuals and co-opted by the government’s legal executives. One would have thought that torture was the result of blunders or unintentional excesses committed on the spur of the moment. On the contrary, these memos make clear that torture was a tactic formulated in minute detail ...

For a facial slap, the interrogator was supposed to hit with fingers slightly spread, at equal length between the tip of the chin and the bottom of the corresponding earlobe. Dousing a naked detainee with water was to last 20 minutes if the water’s temperature measured 5°C, 40 minutes at 10°C, and up to 60 minutes at 15°C. Sleep deprivation could not exceed 180 hours, but could start over again after eight hours rest.

Water immersion in a tub could last up to 12 seconds, no more than two hours a day, for up to thirty days in a row. Water-boarding could last 40 seconds at most, though two prisoners were subjected to this torment a combined total of 286 times in a single month. Confinement in a small box could not exceed two hours, but if the prisoner could stand in the box, it could continue up to eight hours at a time, 18 hours a day. If an insect was introduced into the box, rules governed that, too ...

The Bush lawyers were the torturers’ necessary partners, whose work was intended to ensure legal impunity. This was also a novelty: torture does not appear as a breach of a common standard, unfortunate but justifiable. Instead, it has a legal standard ...

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\05\10\story_10-5-2009_pg3_3