Perhaps the experiment was as simple as how many times do we have to do this until they break. But I suspect from past published research (which I will soon have reason to refer to in an upcoming article) that they were interested in things like catecholmine levels, cortisol levels, testosterone levels, relative hypoxia, CO2, etc., i.e., this would make it a Nazi-like experiment, where prisoners were subjected to outrageous physical and/or psychological conditions for the benefit of … study! The U.S. took in scientists like this from the fleeing Nazis (Hubert Strugold, who ended up at NASA), but is not averse to cooking up their own domestic variety, as with Tuskegee experiments, the Plutonium radiation experiments (which a Clinton investigatory commission helped expose), etc.

I’ve read that Roman executioners tied the crucified to the cross more often then not. Having your weight on your outstretched arms is horribly painful and leads to eventual paralysis of the chest muscles and consequent suffocation.

The CIA used different tools to effect the same result as Roman torturers and executioners achieved in the service of Caligula and Nero. I’m not sure which is more appalling: that they either didn’t know what they were doing or that they did and chose to credit themselves with the godlike power to tell the difference between mostly dead and really dead.

If you have battlefield captures (something of which we have almost none) or captures of admitted al-Qaeda (again, almost none) then you have a) someone who is not entitled to a lawyer, but b) someone who is entitled to Geneva Conventions and UCMJ handling in connection with their questioning, which is required to be very circumscribed and for which they have no criminal liability.

If you have the wide assortment of roundups, home invasions, and false intel “captures” (kidnaps, purchases etc.) of people not taken in battle, not in uniform and not admittedly members of al-Qaeda, then you have two routes. You can hold genuine status tribunals in accordance with the Geneva Conventions to determine if they are combatants under the laws of war and if so, you can detain them as pows and, again, the laws of war circumscribe how they can be handled and they have no criminal liability for commissions of acts of assault and attacks etc. undertaken in the prosectuion of war.

However, if you have people who are not “combatants” under the laws of war (and since it is very difficult to have a war on an ideology, you have to just dig in and deal with that issue) like so many of the GITMO detainees have already been determined to be, then you have a couple of options. First option is you let them go. Second option is that you believe that they have non-combatant ties to combatants – they provide money laundering or other kinds of support that under the laws of war are not war crimes and also do not make someone a combatant (things like the Bush predecssors did) – and you want to go after them under US civil law for crimes we’ve made statutory in connection with provision of support to deemed terrorists.

This is already a weird situation, since once we “declare war” we decriminalize a lot of what the “warriors” on the other side are doing (one reason the *war* construct was such a bad idea originally, as opposed to using the NOriega approach of a law enforcement construct with military support for assistance in capture) under the standards long maintained by the world and the laws of war. But trying to make it all work after its been screwed up, what you have is a situation, then, with these non-battlefield (or even battlefield round up) *captures* of non-combatants is that if you want a legal (and morally valid) grounds on which to hold them, you need to figure out if they really are involved in criminal support of al-Qaeda (although now the definition has been so broadened to cover all the war crimes mistakes committed that you might be talking about supporting ELF instead). That means you mirandize and plan on a trial.

If any of this is too difficult for you to follow either the concepts that when you buy someone off a Pakistani warlord, or round up all the men in a village, or grab someone based on torture intel, you often get innocent people; or the concepts that war has international laws and things that are crimes if done in support of a criminal enterprise are allowed under the laws of war or that kinds of support that make someone a co-conspirator for criminal law purposes are also protected as not making someone either a combatant or a war criminal under the laws of war; then I probably can’t help. I’m not much good at drawing pictures.

Hope that umm gets better soon.

“We don’t sleep just to rest our tired bodies?” [Leslie] Stahl asks Matthew Walker, the director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Well, that’s been one of the long-standing theories. But I think what we’re starting to understand is that sleep serves a whole constellation of functions, plural,” Walker explains.

One thing that’s clear, says Walker, is that sleep is critical. In a series of studies done back in the 1980s, rats were kept awake indefinitely. After just five days, they started dying.

Walker says they started dying from sleep deprivation. “In fact, sleep is as essential as food because they will die just about as quick from food deprivation as sleep deprivation. So, it’s that necessary,” he says.

And it’s not just rats: every animal studied so far needs sleep, from the elephant right down to the fruit fly. But that’s as far as the similarities go. Some animals sleep 20 hours a day, others only two or three. And still others sleep with half their brains at a time, all making it hard to figure out what exactly it is about sleep that makes it so essential, and that, in terms of evolution, makes it worth the risks.

6. Code of Conduct V.

a. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
b. When questioned, a prisoner of war is required by the Geneva Convention and this code to give name, rank, service number (Social Security number) and date of birth. The prisoner should make every effort to avoid giving the captor any additional information. The prisoner may communicate with captors on matters of health and welfare and additionally may write letters home and fill out a Geneva Convention “capture card.”
c. It is a violation of the Geneva Convention to place a prisoner under physical or mental duress, torture or any other form of coercion in an effort to secure information. If under such intense coercion, a POW discloses unauthorized information, makes an unauthorized statement or performs an unauthorized act, that prisoner’s peace of mind and survival require a quick recovery of courage, dedication and motivation to resist anew each subsequent coercion.

(don’t feed the troll, don’t feed the troll, don’t feed the troll)

The question is, do prisoners have rights, and the answer is yes.

Everything in the memoes indicates that they saw their goal as establishing the line between CIDT and torture, and believed they were legal on CIDT. Everything, likewise, in Jack Goldsmith and Mark Levin’s memo shows the same “chalk on the cleats” approach to Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention (disallowing deporting protected civilians).

The interview with Dr. Miles on Saturday shows that he and Dr. Basoglu also believe in a bright line between CIDT and torture.

In point of fact, the combination of techniques went over the line and always would, because torture isn’t containable. But some techniques are being lied about, like the sleep deprivation. My point in raising my own experience is that they cross the line into profound disruption long before they get to any 180 hours, and the 4 hour break allowed them to go again. They crossed the line with the nudity and religious tortures too, because of what they signify if someone believes they will die. They crossed the line with extreme isolation at 30 days (this line is in Geneva), but had people in isolation for years. They crossed the line on their slapping and hooding and stress positions, and their shackling as a technique for sleep deprivation amounts to strappado.

Not to mention that they were wrong about how the 5th, 8th, and 14th amendments were interpreted in the reservations, too, or whether or not U.S. law applied, or whether or not Geneva or CAT applied.