Ex-interrogator tortured by role in Iraq

[Hamlette]

snip

The embarrassing truth for me, as I read Lagouranis' book, is that I never saw him as a torturer.

He never used a cattle prod on anybody, never personally beat anybody or condoned a beating, never resorted to waterboarding -- the infamous technique, said to be used by the CIA, during which a victim is made to feel like he is drowning.

Lagouranis' methods were usually technically legal -- making a prisoner stand for long periods of time, for example, or forcing him into a "stress position," such as making him put his back against a wall and bend his legs, as if sitting without a chair.

In the last six years, I've probably read dozens of news stories about the debate over acceptable interrogation techniques. And at some point along the line, I apparently bought in to the Pentagon's disturbing mind-set that "torture" is a matter of what's legal, not what's moral.

Soon after returning home from Iraq, Lagouranis talked to an Army psychiatrist who offered him an escape hatch from his feelings of guilt.

He had done nothing "evil," she said. He had only done his job.

Lagouranis couldn't buy it.

"If you don't include torturing helpless prisoners in your definition of evil," he replied, "your definition of evil is meaningless."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/mcnamee/412793,CST-NWS-mcnamee04.article

My son is 24. When I first heard that we had authorized torture, that we had a discussion at the highest levels of government including lawyers and they concluded Geneva does not apply to the US, my stomach churned. I've been sick since. But really troubles me is not so much our image abroad, its our image to our children. What will my son grow up thinking about his country? What if he were drafted and made to torture people? Will he know it is evil?