With all due respect to Ms. Greenberg, her narrative of the torture scandal is incomplete, and therefore misleading. While *elements* of the CIA's torture program were curtailed, other aspects and techniques involved in the program were not. In only one small example, a number of human rights, medical/ethical and legal organizations have pointed out that torture was not actually curtailed by the Obama administration. The use of isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, exploitation of fear, environmental manipulation, and attempts to instill hopelessness in prisoners continues in the Obama-administration approved Army Field Manual, and particularly its Appendix M.
Ms. Greenberg's failure to mention this may in part be due to her wish to cling to a "hero," as Sen. Feinstein has publicly defended the Army Field Manual and Appendix M. Recently, in a reply to an article of mine on the continuation of some of the CIA/SERE techniques as allowed by current DoD directive, Sen. Levin's Senate Armed Service Committee also indicated they are "comfortable" with the Army Field Manual and Appendix M. (For more info, see http://pubrecord.org/torture/11217/directive-duplicity-current-torture/)
In doing so, they are at odds with the following organizations: Amnesty International, ACLU, The Constitution Project, Physicians for Human Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Institute on Medicine as a Profession, and others. By omitting this aspect of the torture scandal, Ms. Greenberg steers the narrative over this issue down too narrow a highway. Notably, she also does not mention that Pres. Obama did not end the rendition program.
I'm going to assume that Ms. Greenberg is sincere in her anti-torture attitude, and that she will correct the omission and the incomplete narrative around torture that she presents here.
With all due respect to Ms. Greenberg, her narrative of the torture scandal is incomplete, and therefore misleading. While *elements* of the CIA's torture program were curtailed, other aspects and techniques involved in the program were not. In only one small example, a number of human rights, medical/ethical and legal organizations have pointed out that torture was not actually curtailed by the Obama administration. The use of isolation, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, exploitation of fear, environmental manipulation, and attempts to instill hopelessness in prisoners continues in the Obama-administration approved Army Field Manual, and particularly its Appendix M.
Ms. Greenberg's failure to mention this may in part be due to her wish to cling to a "hero," as Sen. Feinstein has publicly defended the Army Field Manual and Appendix M. Recently, in a reply to an article of mine on the continuation of some of the CIA/SERE techniques as allowed by current DoD directive, Sen. Levin's Senate Armed Service Committee also indicated they are "comfortable" with the Army Field Manual and Appendix M. (For more info, see http://pubrecord.org/torture/11217/directive-duplicity-current-torture/)
In doing so, they are at odds with the following organizations: Amnesty International, ACLU, The Constitution Project, Physicians for Human Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Institute on Medicine as a Profession, and others. By omitting this aspect of the torture scandal, Ms. Greenberg steers the narrative over this issue down too narrow a highway. Notably, she also does not mention that Pres. Obama did not end the rendition program.
I'm going to assume that Ms. Greenberg is sincere in her anti-torture attitude, and that she will correct the omission and the incomplete narrative around torture that she presents here.