The Banality of Evil--American Style

Comparisons are odious. As Barney Frank fans know, comparisons to Nazis are particularly fraught and can subject one--rightly--to questioning about one's planet of origin. Still, the CIA's guidelines for interrogators ("Report Shows Tight C.I.A. Control on Interrogations") remind one of nothing so much as the famed Nazi penchant for organization and bureaucratic control.

This lengthy and heavily redacted document spells out in minute detail the allowable techniques for softening up suspects.

The "sanctioned techniques. . . . in approximately ascending degrees of intensity" include:

Shaving (Shaving?)

Stripping

Hooding (Who decided that it's worse to be hooded than stripped?)

Isolation (Shaving, stripping, isolation. . . .? Sounds like a typical weekend for the Solipsist.)

The list darkens, though, as we move on to coercion techniques like "sleep deprivation," various kinds of "slap," and "walling"--not even sure we want to know what that last one means--all the way up to the infamous "non-torture" known as "Waterboarding." The list ends with the following admonition: "In all instances the general goal of these techniques is a psychological impact, and not some physical effect" (emphasis added). The physical suffering is a bonus.

The level of detail provided to ensure "proper" care and feeding of detainees would be almost hilarious as part of a Monty Python sketch. Imagine the following read by John Cleese:

"The more physical techniques are delivered in a manner carefully limited to avoid serious physical harm. The slaps, for example, are designed 'to induce shock, surprise, and/or humiliation' and 'not to inflict physical pain that is severe or lasting.' To this end they must be delivered in a specifically prescribed manner, e.g., with fingers spread. Walling is performed only against a springboard designed to be loud and bouncy (and cushion the blow). All walling and most attention grasps are delivered only with the subject's head solidly supported with a towel to avoid extension-flexion injury."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Detainee, would you excuse me for a moment while I fetch a towel to support your head while I clench your face?"

The defense, of course, is that obsessive detail ensures that detainees will be treated, for want of a better word, well. We're sure the detainees appreciate it.

Consider that someone sat around and deliberated about exactly what needed to be done in order to avoid the impression of torture. As the Times reports, "Two 17-watt fluorescent-tube bulbs--no more, no less--illuminated each cell, 24 hours a day. . . . A prisoner could be doused with 41-degree water but only for 20 minutes at a stretch." The "Goldilocks" quality is striking. Presumably 40 degree water would be inhumanely cold, but 42 degrees--especially for hardened veterans of Afghanistan winters--would be positively spa-like.

Even if we give the benefit of the doubt and assume the authorities did want to protect from grievous harm the prisoners they were maltreating, we are brought up short by this focus on minutiae. Didn't the fact that they had to strive so hard to make sure they were presenting a facade of humanity tip these interrogators to the fact that they were somehow beyond the pale?