Memo dump, Part I

"Rumsfeld OK'd harsh treatment" declares Wednesday's USA Today front-page headline. Let us together explore the supposed pit of pain and despair that the SecDef instituted. Of course, to do so requires actually reading the documents that Rumsfeld signed. Fortunately for you, your blogging host is not above reading DoD documents, and can relate the following Pentagon-approved atrocities:

• Incentive / removal of incentive. So the interrogators are authorized to reward a detainee and later remove rewards. Sounds like my employer.
  
• Techniques of deception, like lying to a detainee or misleading the detainee as to the identity of his interrogator. Saw that on Law and Order.
  
• Use of faked documents or files, which is just another deception technique intended to get a detainee talking.
  
• Yelling at detainees. Sounds like my employer. Again. Where's USA Today when I need them?
  
• Multiple interrogators. Means both Kelly and Sipowicz can go in to talk with Ahmed about how he came to be driving the car full of explosives toward the water treatment plant. Are you trembling with indignation yet?
  
• Sleep adjustment. This includes switching a detainee's day-night cycle, but sleep deprivation is still not allowed.
  
• Isolation, for up to 30 days. If I were in detention with a bunch of terrorists, I'd specifically ask for this one.
  
• Stress positions, (e.g. standing) for a maximum of four hours. Someone needs to look into the inhumane treatment of our nation's retail pharmacists.
  
• Changing diet, e.g. hot food to MRE's. Which is to say, you can bump a detainee down to what we feed our soldiers.
  
• Forced grooming (e.g. can compel prisoner to bathe or shave). Again, as a detainee I'd probably demand this one as well.
  
• Use of a hood during transportation and questioning. Unpleasant, but "harsh?"
  
• Exploiting fear, e.g. threatening with dogs [rescinded April 2003].
  
• Removal of clothing [rescinded April 2003].

In the memos there is an entire additional category of techniques that Rumsfeld denied to interrogators. So the USA Today headline editor could have more plausibly written "Rumsfeld rejected harsh treatment," but I guess that tack doesn't jibe with the prevailing prejudices these days.

Those skeptical of any prejudicial tilt might want to look up at the URL for the story's online version, which includes the phrase "rumsfeld-abuse." This in spite of the facts that (1) there is nothing I have found in the documents or in the news story connecting Rumsfeld to the "abuse scandal," and besides (2) the news story principally concerned Guantanamo detainees.

What a long road we've travelled in under three years. In the months following 9/11, Alan Dershowitz was granted numerous news forums to proclaim the inevitability of torture warrants, and now these same newspapers and network news outlets are raising hell about the Administration's endorsement of un-comfy chairs.