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Congress Violates Geneva Convention

WASHINGTON -- While debate rages in Congress over one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques -- "waterboarding," in which a prisoner feels near drowning -- officials inside the CIA, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say that they have found an even more effective means of getting terrorists to talk and provide information: political speeches.

Although waterboarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information, interrogators at the infamous Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, have been forcing detainees to watch hour after hour of so-called Congressional "Special Order" speeches, unleashing a veritable tsunami of information on Al Qaida operations world wide.

"We tried over and over and over again with games shows, Judge Judy, baseball telecasts and cable news talking heads," said an unnamed senior intelligence official. "But far and away, politicians are most effective in breaking the will and morale of the enemy."

Special order speeches allow Members of the House of Representatives to speak on any topic they wish for periods of time reserved in advance, anywhere from 5 up to 60 minutes in length. They occur routinely at the end of a day's legislative work.

While practitioners claim so-called "Word Boreding" combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury, others claim that it is a clear violation of Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture.

"According to international law, torture is any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession," explained local ALCU Director Clinton Skvintaogle. "Scars are scars -- whether physical, psychological, emotional or cultural -- and there can be no question we are inflicting pain and suffering with this outrageous technique."

Members of Congress, from both sides of the aisle, to date have been silent on their own role in torturing, not only detainees, but U.S. citizens as well.



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