{"id":51269,"date":"2014-12-22T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51269"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:10","slug":"cia-torture-report-once-again-language-is-distorted-in-order-to-hide-us-state-wrongdoing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/cia-torture-report-once-again-language-is-distorted-in-order-to-hide-us-state-wrongdoing\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA ‘Torture Report’: Once Again Language Is Distorted in Order to Hide US State Wrongdoing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told his torturers he could fly through the air.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thank God for Noam Chomsky. Not for his lifetime of eviscerating assaults on our political hypocrisy, but for his linguistics. Long before I knew him, undergraduate Fisk laboured at his university linguistics course, where Chomsky\u2019s work first alerted me to the pernicious use of language. Hence I condemn at once the vile semantics of the Pentagon and the CIA. Not just that old, wolfish, obscene phrase \u201ccollateral damage\u201d, but the language of torture.<\/p>\n

Or, as the lads who torture on our behalf call it, \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d. Let\u2019s take a closer look at that. \u201cEnhanced\u201d is a word of improvement. It suggests something better, more learned, even less costly. For example, \u201cenhanced medicine\u201d would presumably involve a more streamlined way of improving your health. Just as \u201cenhanced schooling\u201d would suggest a more worthy education for a child. \u201cInterrogation\u201d at least gives a hint of what this is all about. Asking questions and getting \u2013 or not getting \u2013 a reply. But \u201ctechniques\u201d beats the lot. A technique is a technical skill, is it not? Usually, so my dictionary tells me, in artistic work.<\/p>\n

So the \u201cinterrogators\u201d have special skills \u2013 which implies training, learnt work, application, the product of brains. Which I suppose, in a way, is what torture is all about. It\u2019s just not the way I would normally describe the process of slamming people into walls, half-drowning them in water and ramming hummus up their rectums. But in case that\u2019s a bit too graphic, the US press lads and lasses have got round it in a familiar form. The whole process of \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d is now called \u201cEIT\u201d. Like WMD \u2013 another whopper in our political vocabulary \u2013 the whole filthy business is wrapped up in a three-letter abbreviation.<\/p>\n

And then we learn that this is all part of a \u201cprogramme\u201d. Something carefully planned, you understand, a syllabus, a performance, regular, approved, even theatrical. My trusty old American College Dictionary even defines \u201cprogramme\u201d as \u201can entertainment with reference to its pieces or numbers\u201d, which is what I suppose the sickos in the CIA were enjoying when they set about their victims. Strap him down, cloth over the face, pour on the water, whoops, not too many bubbles please. Ah well, slam him into the wall again. A programme indeed.<\/p>\n

Dick \u201cDark Side\u201d Cheney<\/a> used the word \u201cprogramme\u201d when he condemned the US Senate report on CIA torture. Oddly, however, his description of the document as \u201cfull of crap\u201d contained an unintended side effect of the process which he applauds. For those under torture often urinate and defecate, and \u2013 as we know from those who suffered these \u201cprogrammes\u201d \u2013 the CIA often let their victims stand naked and soil before them. Cheney wishes us to believe, of course, that these poor men gave important information to the vile creatures who were torturing them. That\u2019s exactly what medieval inquisitions discovered when they accused the innocent of witchcraft. Almost to a man \u2013 and woman \u2013 the victims admitted that they had flown through the air. Perhaps that\u2019s what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, after being waterboarded 183 times, told his CIA torturers. He could fly through the air. A terrorist human drone. I suppose that must be the kind of \u201cvital information\u201d Cheney claims the victims gave the CIA.<\/p>\n

Of course, it was left to the Gothic-faced CIA director, John Brennan, perhaps feeling the heat of some human-rights lawyers breathing down his neck, to say that some of the \u201ctechniques\u201d \u2013 yes, that\u2019s the word he used \u2013 were unauthorised and \u201cabhorrent\u201d. And thus he deftly provided a new version of the CIA\u2019s crimes. AIT \u2013 the abhorrent torture \u2013 \u201cshould be repudiated by all\u201d \u2013 but not, it seems, good old EIT. As Cheney said, torture was \u201csomething that we very carefully avoided\u201d. I note the words \u201cvery carefully\u201d. And I shudder.<\/p>\n

The good Mr Brennan told us that \u201cwe fell short when it came to holding some officers [sic] accountable\u201d. But it is perfectly clear that the torturers \u2013 or \u201cofficers\u201d \u2013 are not going to be held accountable. Nor is Mr Brennan. Nor Dick Cheney. And nor, dare I mention this, are the Arab regimes where the CIA \u201crendered\u201d those victims worthy of even viler treatment than could be meted out in its own secret prisons. One poor chap, Maher Arar, was a Canadian citizen, a truck driver seized by the CIA at JFK airport in New York and bundled off to pre-civil-war Syria for a little AIT \u2013 not EIT, mark you \u2013 at the request of Americans. Held in a hole little bigger than a coffin, his first introduction to AIT was being whipped with electric cables.<\/p>\n

Thus did Cheney and his lads and lasses indulge their sadism by proxy \u2013 to the very state whose \u201cinterrogation techniques\u201d now outrage the West so much that it is calling for the overthrow of the Syrian regime (along with the overthrow of Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra), in favour of newly armed \u201cmoderates\u201d who will, presumably, engage only in EIT rather than in AIT.<\/p>\n

But as my journalist colleague Rami Khouri has been pointing out, the 54 countries in the CIA\u2019s \u201cprogramme\u201d of rendition included Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. You can add Gaddafi\u2019s Libya to that list. Indeed, the Italian secret police even helped the CIA to kidnap an imam off the streets of Milan and pack him off to Cairo for a little AIT at the hands of Mr Mubarak\u2019s interrogators. Which probably accounts for why the Arab and Muslim world has been a bit quiet ever since the US Senate report \u2013 even in its highly censored form \u2013 was published last week.<\/p>\n

It was the Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal who first wrote of how the CIA circulated film of an Iranian woman being tortured by the Shah\u2019s\u00a0 secret police so that other nations should learn how to make female prisoners talk. Not so the new and improved CIA of\u00a0 today, of course. It destroyed its own video tapes before the US Senate committee could get its hands on them. But the subservient nature of the Arab regimes should be studied at this time. For they also tortured \u2013 on our behalf. As Khouri asked last week, \u201cWill we speak of, or try to repair, our own criminal and imperial collusions nearly as openly as the US addresses its own?\u201d Don\u2019t bother waiting for the answer.<\/p>\n

Disputes are outlawed, only \u2018conversations\u2019 permitted<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the subject of Chomsky and words, I bought a fine new winter jacket before leaving Canada for Beirut. Made in China, of course. But the guarantee informed me that it met a high standard \u201cfor waterproofness and breathability\u201d. These words now join that horrible expression which governments and companies now use for an argument.<\/p>\n

They no longer tell us they are in a dispute with someone. They are \u201chaving a conversation\u201d about \u201can issue\u201d. Oh yes, and if I find another doctor who talks about \u201cwellness\u201d, I shall immediately apply AIT to the culprit.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The whole process of \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d is now called \u201cEIT\u201d. Like WMD \u2013 another whopper in our political vocabulary \u2013 the whole filthy business is wrapped up in a three-letter abbreviation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}