Published on Thursday, May 12, 2005 by The Nation Tortures Dirty Secret: It Works by Naomi Klein
<http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0512-23.htm>
excerpt:
....Obviously, intelligence agents have an incentive to hide the use of unlawful methods, says the ACLUs Jameel Jaffer. On the other hand, when they use rendition and torture as a threat, its undeniable that they benefit, in some sense, from the fact that people know that intelligence agents are willing to act unlawfully. They benefit from the fact that people understand the threat and believe it to be credible.
And the threats have been received. In an affidavit filed with an ACLU court challenge to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, Nazih Hassan, president of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, Michigan, describes this new climate. Membership and attendance are down, donations are way down, board members have resignedHassan says his members fear doing anything that could get their names on lists. One member testified anonymously that he has stopped speaking out on political and social issues because he doesnt want to draw attention to himself.
This is tortures true purpose: to terrorizenot only the people in Guantánamos cages and Syrias isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resistthe individual prisoners will and the collective will....
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