"I don't care what Alberto Gonzales says. That's torture."

[RedEarth]

A former army interrogator explains what torture is really like -- and what happens to those who inflict it.
By Tara McKelvey
Web Exclusive: 03.26.07

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Tony Lagouranis is a 37-year-old bouncer at a bar in Chicago's Humboldt Park. He is also a former torturer. That was how he was described in an email promoting a panel discussion, "24: Torture Televised," hosted by the NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security in New York on March 21. And he doesn't shy away from the description.

As a specialist in a military intelligence battalion, Lagouranis interrogated prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Al Asad Airfield, and other places in Iraq from January through December 2004. Coercive techniques, including the use of military dogs, waterboarding, and prolonged stress positions, were employed on the detainees, he says. Prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, which is located approximately 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame "welded to the wall" in a room in an airplane hanger, he told me in a phone interview after the NYU event. When he was having problems getting information from a detainee, he recalls, the other interrogators said, "Chain him up on the bed frame and then he'll talk to you." (Lagouranis says he didn't participate directly in hangings from the frames.)

The results of the hangings, shacklings, and prolonged stress positions -- sometimes for hours -- were devastating. "You take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple -- at least for a period of time," Lagouranis tells me. "I don't care what Alberto Gonzales says. That's torture."

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12597

[youngdem]

1. If it ain't torture, why aren't we using it to get to the bottom of the US Atty issue

Seems like a win-win to me.

We probably get to the bottom of the US Atty thing out of fear and/or we get to ban torture because Bush will be so petrified of getting a taste of his own medicine.

[Iwasthere]

2. I like that

OMG! I would love to be there to see it too.