1) "Rectal Feeding."
Two phrases leap out at you in the very first pages of the report. Feinstein's authors drop the terms "rectal feeding" and "rectal hydration" on page four, in an early summary of abuses, and then simply move on without explaining:
At least five CIA detainees were subjected to "rectal rehydration" or rectal feeding without do ented medical necessity. The CIA placed detainees in ice water "baths…"
As a reader I was really distracted by the use of quotation marks around the term "rectal rehydration" while there was no punctuation at all around rectal feeding. Was I supposed to know what the one was, and not the other?
Reading on, one at first thinks that these are just fancy terms for simple enemas and force-feedings – techniques the interrogators used to try to cir vent the attempts of terror suspects like Khalid-Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah to resist the intake of food and water. In some places, the shoving of water and sustenance up the terror-suspect's backside is described as merely more efficient than IV methods, quoting CIA operatives:
[W]hile IV infusion is safe and effective, we were impressed with the ancillary effectiveness of rectal infusion in ending water refusal in another case…
But as you read on, you start to sense a kind of fondness for the rectal procedures that is frankly a little creepy. Sounding like a man describing with satisfaction how well his new remote-control garage-door opener works, one officer reported:
Regarding the rectal tube, if you place it and open up the IV tubing, the flow will self regulate, sloshing up the large intestines… What I infer is that you get a tube up as far as you can, then open the IV wide. No need to squeeze the bag – let gravity do the work.
Then, later, you find out that the "rectal hydration" procedures were not only executed to fill resisting suspects with fluid and sustenance. They were also used to put them in a talking mood. The report talks of how "rectal hydration" of KSM was ordered "without a determination of medical need," which the chief interrogator explained was indicative of the questioner's "total control over the detainee."
In the case of KSM, they used the technique as a means to "clear a person's head," and believed it was helpful in getting him to talk. The report explains that KSM fabricated information during this period, leading to the capture and CIA detention of "two innocent individuals."
Then, in a classic case of "
force drift" – the phenomenon in which the use of one permitted interrogation technique inexorably moves toward harsher and weirder behaviors – the CIA interrogators got downright bizarre with a suspect named Majid Khan:
Majid Khan's "lunch tray," consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins, was "pureed" and rectally infused.
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False equivalence and lies are ALL you right-wingers have.
