Perhaps you saw the video released yesterday of excerpts from Omar Khadr’s interrogation at Guantanamo Bay by Canadian authorities from their Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Khadr was 15 when he reportedly threw a grenade at an American soldier; the video was made in February 23, when he was 16. If you missed it, here are 10 minutes of the highlights.
Documents released a few days earlier apparently paint a somewhat more detailed and less emotional picture. If I run across the documents, I’ll post a link to them here.
On Fox News, host Trace Gallagher presented the video, and suggested “maybe he deserves” whatever treatment he received. (video).
One of the many problems with the use of torture is the negative effects it has on both the practitioners and the society which condones it. From “Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors,” by Charles S. Maier (Harvard University Press, 2006):
Ruination, as Calvino’s emperor would have understood, does not mean just defeat. It can mean an acceptance of violence, a coarsening of values, the arrogance that insists, no matter what brutal exceptions may ensue: “Trust us, we’re uniquely selfless.”
