A Moment of Clarity

We've been reading through the McClatchy series on Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of detainees--and when you start to look at the .pdf files and the declassified document dump, you see all manner of chilling things.

Here is a moment of stark clarity and sanity, from a document dated December 17, 2002 [click to enlarge]:



The quality of the image is poor, and I hope it can be read. What you are seeing is a statement that turns on the lights for me and illuminates everything. At a very early stage in the process of handling the detainees, an individual named Timothy James is basically telling anyone who will listen that torture doesn't work.

No one listened.

And that's why we are where we are today.

--WS