Sir:
I was left completely speechless by your May 13, 2004, article on the CIA's graduated procedures involving "coercive methods of interrogation," which managed to avoid calling these methods by their proper name: torture. The methods described -- "waterboarding," hooding prisoners and (this is nice) "roughing them up," deprivation of sleep, food and medication, threatened executions straight out of Doesteyevky's The House of the Dead -- would not fail to be denominated what they are if practiced by, say, our former ally and current prisoner Saddam Hussein. It was particularly nice to call these -- what is the word -- practices "simulated torture." What would count as the real thing?
I am an attorney at a large and very conservative defense firm in Chicago. I am not an expert in international law, but I do know US law concerning, for example, police misconduct, and when the Chicago police engage in these activities, we call it torture. So do you: your morgue files will have articles on Cmdr. Jon Burge of Area 5.
So why the mealy-mouthed circumlocution when it comes to describing CIA torture? Is it that the New York Times cannot bring itself to say what everyone else in the world is saying, from Madrid to Moscow, from Shanghai to San Juan, and in every city, hamlet and tent in the Muslim world?
You wouldn't have to say it yourself. You could find legal scholars to whom you could attribute the characterization. I could provide you with a list of names if you cannot reach anyone who teaches civil rights or international law at Columbia or NYU. Or if government officials are required to validate the characterization, there are a lot of those too.
We are facing a time when the US's practices have done more damage to the standing and indeed the security of this country than all the terror that al Qaida could muster. The practice of -- to call it by its right name -- torture by the CIA and US Special Ops teams, as well as US prison guards in Iraq and (one might add) Guantanamo have destroyed for a generation the idea, once widely held, that America is a beacon for human rights. The New York Times, far from being patriotic in wriggling around this, only contributes to our international humiliation, and prolongs our status as a human rights pariah. A correction would be too much to ask, but how about a followup article with some balancing quotes on these practices from some of those legal scholars and foreign government officials?
Justin Schwartz Evanston, Illinois 847 328 4906
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/