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This is a very sad topic indeed. It's nice to know at least that something like ten or fifteen years from now this issue might be resolved in a court case somewhere. I feel sorry for the thousands of people in detention right now who are being subjected to torture at this very moment and for whom nothing at all can be done. In fact it is infuriating for me to read this article. It is infuriating because I doubt there is anything at all anybody can do to stop it. "They" know how to break a person down and they do it to innocent people who they believe are guilty. But even to say "break a person down" doesn't scratch the surface of the issue. "They" know how to destroy your sense of self, by putting you into excruciating stress positions or blaring loud music at you while you lie naked and freezing in an ice cold room or locking you in the dark for days on end or sexually humilating you or simulating drowning, in such a way that you lose all ability to resist the suggestions of the government interrogators. My question, the question I think absolutely must be asked, is what happens to the people who have been subjected to psychological torture after they are released from detention? Are they ever released? Suppose you have been tortured to the point of suffering a psychotic break but that you haven't really done anything at all to merit such treatment? Who could you turn to afterwards? Does the U.S. government then take responsibility for your mental health care afterwards? Does the U.S. government do anything to help these people it has tortured after it has satisfied it's torturous goals? Not at all. For one thing, nobody even knows who is being held by the government or who is being subjected to these techniques right now or even where they are being held. It's all classified, hence illegal to talk about publicly. I suspect that once the US military is finished torturing you they pretty much just dump you out onto the street to fend for yourself alone: broken, ruined and probably unable to even explain what exactly happened because it is all too humiliating. I doubt many of the victims of this kind of torture are receiving follow-up care or medication. And here's the saddest thing of all: the government can arrest and then torture anybody they want to torture because such torture does not really rise to the level of legal torture at all according to the Geneva Convention because the people who are being tortured are not soldiers in a recognized army. It's evil. It's horrifying. And apparently, it's all very patriotic. Semper Fi.
