Sleep deprivation is widely praised as a non-lethal, ‘no lasting effect’ method of absolutely destroying an individual’s resistance to interrogation. Since at least 2003, it has had a partner: the music American boys and girls grew up on.
The BBC reported that U.S. Psychological Operations (“PsyOps”) has found great success with exposing Iraqi captives to prolonged Sesame Street and Barney music. No, not success in teaching them their ABCs and do-re-mees. Though doubtless a little reeducation is not far from their minds.
The success is in breaking their wills.
Apparently, the tactic has a deleterious effect on prisoners’ body functions and thought processes. Oh, to have been there on that sad day for American television, when one energetic young officer suggested we ‘Hit ‘em with the Big Bird.’
These interrogation practices are also said to employ repeating heavy metal music, which many devout Muslims would find culturally offensive. BBC Magazine also suggests that which specific tracks of “futility music” are used goes largely undocumented, but may also include The Bee Gees, Christina Aguilera, and the Meow Mix advertisement jingle. Maybe this enemy isn’t so crazy, after all.
It is fair to say that the United States has a legitimate interest in making sure war prison is not a comfortable place if you are, or may be, an enemy combatant or civilian. Such conditions are even more acceptable if they serve a compelling governmental purpose in extricating reliable confessions and intelligence from such enemies. And these practices are most deserving of tolerance – praise – if they are carried out with a conscientious view to minimizing harm or lasting damage on these enemies.
Really, it depends on how strictly one views “harm” or “damage.” As it happens, the Geneva Convention prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment,” clearly taking emotional distress into consideration.
Perhaps any type of harm can be sustained, repeatedly inflicted, to the point of being unbearable – to the point where someone is willing to do anything, say or admit anything, to just make it stop. When even a normal individual in day-to-day circumstances acts because they ‘just can’t take it anymore,’ it is not so radical to say they are compelled by a form of torture.
But it is nevertheless important to reserve the most drastic terms for the most drastic situations, so we still know what we’re talking about when real, inhuman, malicious, irreversible, and sadistic torture happens.
Incidentally, this article is brought to you by the number zero. It’s the amount of torture currently tolerated by the U.S. government. Depending on how you define this word-of-the-day, of course.