Planet Obama: Where Hitler spoke Austrian and Churchill didn't torture

Sullivan throws around the terms "torture" and "abuse" so often and indiscriminately that it is impossible to know whether he is referring to authorized interrogations or to illegal behaviour. He writes, for example, that "at Guantánamo, newly released documents show that some of the torturers felt that they were acting on the basis of memos sent from Washington." Which "torturers" is he referring to? If he means interrogators conducting routine interrogations, of course they felt that were acting on the basis of Washington guidance. They were! That guidance allowed interrogators to question a detainee past his bedtime, put him on cold Army rations, moderately adjust his environment, or isolate him.

It would appear that Sullivan regards such methods as "torture." It is hard to say, however, since he never addresses the actual interrogation approaches authorized for Guantánamo. Those approaches were moderate, lawful, and closely hemmed in with oversight to ensure humane treatment, as the Schlesinger report found.

Over time, the internment of Britain's fascists became a legal nightmare for the government. Evidence of treasonable activities or opinions against all but a minority of BU members -- Mosley estimated them as 5 percent of the movement --- was negligible, and often acquired by dubious means.  At one point, Alexander Raven Thomson and other detained BU members were taken to Ham Common, a secret M15 interrogation centre where psychological and occasionally physical torture was used on captured German spies. The British fascists were starved and threatened with immediate execution if they would not co-operate with the authorities.