minor jive

The IG Report is not for the faint of heart. The details of abuse are so graphic and brutal that it’s hard to read in places. But Glenn is right — everyone should read it (or at least the key parts). People should see precisely what happened. The highlights include: (1) mock executions; (2) threatened rape of family members; (3) threatened murder of children; (4) kicking and beating a detainee with a metal flashlight to death; (5) threatening naked hooded detainees with power drills; (6) blowing cigar smoke in detainees’ faces until they got sick; (7) waterboarding with massive volumes of water far beyond what OLC authorized (to make it “poignant”); (8) stress positions that nearly caused shoulder dislocations; (9) scraping detainees with stiff brushes; (10) choking a detainee with one’s bare hands until they nearly pass out; (11) subjecting detainees to extremely cold temperatures and water dousing; (12) “hard takedowns” (sometimes in diapers); and (13) beating detainees with butts of rifles (followed by kicking them). It’s easy to let your mind skim over these. But if you stop and linger over a couple of them — and really take the time to reflect on the individual pain and fear that must have been involved — it makes you sick to your stomach. These acts must be punished.