Bill Moyers: Reckoning with Torture

[Snowbird]

The human spirit never ceases to amaze me. Just about the time that we collectively begin to lose hope in humanity, the human spirit rises up to confront, bring forth and reconcile.

Torture is a subject that we should all be learning about; what it is and the fact that it should never happen.

Bill Moyers interviews two outstanding advocates who are forcing torture into the light, where it belongs, straight out of the mouths of those who have been tortured (video at link).

While in the linked web page, check out the left sidebar. It is filled with quality information for further research. The full transcript is also at the link.

Full Show: Reckoning with Torture
Bill Moyers & Company
May 25, 2012

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-s...with-torture/#

LARRY SIEMS: It's been codified into U.S. law. Under U.S. law the question of what's cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is determined by the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and inhuman punishment. The courts interpret that as behavior that shocks the conscience.

There's much, much that shocks the conscience in this book. But, the one thing, as you look at documents, which seem coldly bureaucratic, and you start to read it, and you realize that they're very, very human. They have human voices in them. They capture, I mean, if you think that the purpose of torture is to dehumanize people. The documents, you begin to recover just glimpses of humanity, because you hear the voices of detainees. We've never heard them. The whole system has been structured so you never hear them tell their stories.

BILL MOYERS: You mean, over the last years we've heard about them, but we've never heard from them?

LARRY SIEMS: You've never--

DOUG LIMAN: Until you hear one of the staged readings, or do-- perform one of them yourself. And it's because some of these documents are detainees, describing the experience of being tortured.