Unspeakable Scars

The FBI's autopsies of detainees who died under US custody in the war on terror, released through a freedom of information act by the ACLU, listed at least 14 cases as homicides: several died during interrogations, leaving markings that indicate severe beating, internal hemorrhaging from blunt force injuries, and suffocation while being suspended. But the scars, the testimonies of released detainees, and even the bodies, may not be enough to prosecute for crimes.

As I research that topic, I'll use this space to spit out all the gritty research that's been piling uncomfortably in my mind, where I prefer to keep naive memories of the Founding Fathers and childish romanticism of the Constitution. So here it is, a stock-pile of circumstantial evidence of unspeakable acts...Unspeakable both because of the gruesome acts involved and because they have no name. But whether you call it torture, humiliating/degrading treatment, or necessary exceptions under the exceptional circumstances of the war on terror....

What is Torture? (Slate) provides an intro to US interrogation methods, the scandalous "torture memos," an , most valuably, a list of interrogation techniques. These include those approved by the military, exceptions secretly made, and those evidenced from former-detainees but not approved, accompanied by visuals and sources.

Again, the apparently under-reported, ACLU-acquired and FBI-evaluated postmortems of detainees who died in US custody.

Philippe Sands, author of Lawless, describes US obligations under the UN Convention against Torture, in the Financial Times.

An interview with three scholars, editors of In the Name of Democracy, who think American acts in the war on terror constitute prosecutable war crimes.

Today Bush and McCain finally finished the political in-party show-down on Capitol Hill: Anti-Torture Amendment 1 : Bush-Cheney 0. Victory for victims of things that look like torture but the administration doesn't call torture? No. I'll explain why in the product of this blasted research. But the Congressional Research Service, ironically, has already started the job in its analysis of the McCain Amendment--the limits it sets and those set on it.