ABC news says these are some of the “enhanced interrogation techniques:”
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
Others include The Belly Slap, Long Time Standing, The Cold Cell, and the much-ballyhooed Water Boarding. Now let me tell you about the real torture: OC Spray. What is OC Spray, you ask?
Oleoresin capsicum (OC) is an extract of pepper plants of the genus Capsicum. It is used as a spice in curries and salsas, as a pharmacological agent in anaesthetic and analgesic creams and as the principal active ingredient in OC spray, or pepper spray used by police and others as an antipersonnel agent.
What are its [horrible…horrible] effects?
When used against a person, OC spray typically has a severe impact. Skin exposure causes tingling, intense burning pain, swelling, redness and occasionally blistering.
Respiratory responses to OC spray include burning of the throat, wheezing, dry cough, shortness of breath, gagging, gasping, inability to breathe or speak and, rarely, cyanosis, apnea and respiratory arrest.
Nasal application of OC spray causes sneezing, irritation, and reflex mucus secretion. Inhalation of OC spray can cause acute hypertension which in turn can cause headache, and increase the risk of stroke or heart attack.
Common eye symptoms associated with OC spray include redness, swelling, severe burning pain, stinging, conjunctival inflammation, lacrimation, blepharospasm and involuntary or reflex closing of the eyelids.
For reasons I still don’t understand, I had to go through a “non-lethal” weapons course. Quick note- the terminology is now “less lethal” ( I guess non-lethal indicates that there is a 100% certainty that it won’t kill you. Less lethal gives you some wiggle room when your sponge grenade hits someone in the face and breaks their neck.)
Anyway, as part of the non-lethal weapons course, I had to get sprayed in the face (a class 1 contamination) with OC. Presumably this was supposed to “sensitize” us to the use of OC in a riot-control situation. However, I don’t recall having to go through a “lethal” weapons course and getting shot with a .556 round in order to “sensitize” me to the battlefield effects of an M16…
After receiving a hefty dose of OC in the face your first initial action is to try to rub your eyes, which instantly start to sting. Bad move- rubbing your face only pushes the OC deeper into your pores, prolonging the horror. After exposure your skin starts to burn –not like a sunburn, but worse –like your face is literally on fire. Your eyes snap shut instantly, and begin to tear up. Breathing through your nose only draws the OC into your nasal passages, triggering coughs, sputters and a feeling of choking. The OC continues to burn into you for 45 minutes. Guys were screaming, punching walls, and generally hating life as they waited in the decon area.
Let me put it to you this way: I would rather take several continuous kicks to the family jewels than do that again –to say nothing about a “belly slap,” or simply standing in one place for 40 hours (ever been to CIF?).
The Army has tough, realistic training that prepares soldiers to fight a determined enemy -but there is a disconnect somewhere. If some things are ok to do to soldiers, why is it wrong to do them to the terrorists who try to kill them and ignore the Geneva Conventions in the process?
I can say that, as a police officer who has had to endure an OC Spray, it is the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I liken the sensation to having hot sand thrown into your eyes.
Nice to have published our interrogation playbook. I’m sure it will be quite helpful to those who teach the SERE portion of al-Qaeda’s “boot camp”.
We Americans, collectively speaking, can be a really stupid people sometimes.
Agreed. I tend to use SERE as my standard for “torture”. If it’s legal to do it to pilots/aircrew in SERE, why isn’t it legal to do to the enemy?
Which pretty much throws out the entire recent controversy, so the liberals I mention this to don’t care for it much.
I feel immensely satisfied in the fact that I have never -nor ever will- have to put up with that crap.
…I don’t really find that to be a very strong argument. For one thing, the two situations aren’t analogous; the methods and the intents are totally different, for one thing.
Frankly, I don’t understand why so many people have this supportive attitude towards harsh interrogation techniques. Sure, they’re terrorists, and they’ve done a lot of bad stuff, but does that really justify treating them likewise?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as conservative as the next guy, but I’ve never seen how we can justify that sort of thing when this country prides itself on being founded for protecting human liberties. I thought that even terrorists counted as ‘human’.
“I tend to use SERE as my standard for “torture”.
I read a comment on another blog that had what I considered a simple definition of torture.
1. Reading someone a manual about a soldering iron, not torture.
2. Hitting them in the face with the manual, still not torture but it would be easy to enter dangerous territory from here.
3. Soldering peoples genitals, torture.
Interesting post and firsthand experiences.
I bet that spray was pretty miserable as you said.
I agree with the SERE comment. If we go through it in training, then it isn’t too harsh to use on suspected terrorists. Good grief – wimpy old flying squid me went through it – but it’s against international law to do it to terrorists?
We are faced with an over-legalization of war – because too many in the west – including the courts and JAG – are living in a fantasy land. I about choked when John McCain, of all people, claimed that not using coercive interrogation (like waterboarding) would somehow protect our troops in the future. I hear the guy finished near the bottom of his Anapolis class, and i believe it!
This guy ought to know better. Or maybe he means that it will protect our troops against prosecution by the ICC, itself a silly exercise in criminalizing mass murder.
I suspect that not our politicians have combined recto-cranial inversion with moral inversion. Ugh.
“If some things are ok to do to soldiers, why is it wrong to do them to the terrorists”
Um, because the soldiers have consented?
Dumb Yanks…