The Frontline Documentary and Follow-Up
For those who didn't tune into PBS'sFrontlinelast night to watch the chilling documentary, "The Torture Question," thePosthas just conducted a Q&A with its producer Michael Kirk.
The metaphor that recurred so often as to become a trope of the film was one of "gloves coming off." This was used by officials like Donald Rumsfeld to indicate the fulcrum moment in intelligence gathering (or better say, intelligence "extraction") following 9/11, and then again after the first wave of jihadist attacks in Iraq. Interesting way of phrasing it, since the level of sadism resorted to at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay would indicate that gloves were the very least of the garments purposefully putonto bloody, intimidate, and abase. (Unless of course it's just a coincidence that inappropriate interrogation methods were defined as the infliction of any injury resulting in "organ failure.")--MICHAEL WEISS
The Torture Question [PBS]