It’s a pity that Kathryn Bigelow Didn't Read This: How Torture Prevented Convictions
Jane Mayer:
It’s a pity that Kathryn Bigelow, the director of the acclaimed war-on-terror thriller Zero Dark Thirty, didn’t have the opportunity to read Jess Bravin’s meticulously reported account of America’s trial practices for post-September 11 terror suspects, The Terror Courts. If she had, she might have grasped how self-defeating the Bush Administration’s embrace of torture has turned out to be and depicted it as an egregious mistake rather than a necessary evil.
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780300189209-0
How Torture Prevented Convictions
MAR 28 2013 @ 3:20PM
Jane Mayer reviews Jess Bravin’s The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, which focuses on military prosecutor and Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, “whose moral clarity and professional ethics are repeatedly assaulted by the unconstitutional process in which he finds himself participating” and who found that torture had undermined “his ability to try and convict all but the most low-level detainees.” Take the example of Mohamadou Ould Slahi, a detainee who Couch concluded had “the most blood on his hands”:
Eventually, Slahi confessed incriminating details to his interrogators, but because of the abusive methods through which they were learned, Couch believed the confession was unreliable and inadmissible. Indeed, he no longer believed he could press charges against Slahi at all.
As a Christian and a U.S. military officer, Couch underwent a crisis of conscience. He consulted with his most trusted advisers, read the Convention Against Torture, and then informed his superiors he couldn’t prosecute the case. “What makes you think you’re better than the rest of us around here?” his commander asked him, angrily. “That’s not the issue at all. That’s not the point,” Couch retorted. A week later he sent his boss a memo to be shared with higher-ups, suggesting that the interrogators ought to be prosecuted, and concluding, “I…refuse to participate in this prosecution in any manner.”
After Slahi, Couch was ordered to ask no more questions about detainee treatment. But he persisted, often despite complete obfuscation from both his superiors and other agencies, most particularly the CIA. Despite his superior’s effort to keep the interrogation file from him, Couch discovered that a second important detainee held by the military in Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Qahtani, believed to be the missing twentieth Al Qaeda hijacker, was also so shockingly abused that charges had to be dropped.
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http://www.democracyjournal.org/28/dark-matters.php
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/03/28/how-torture-undermined-the-justice-system/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Dish%29
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they see lies everyday in the news they get, for example the local 'Global' news station reported Pres. Chavez death by recounting how he became a 'strongman' after surviving a 'recall' in '02 which followed his 'seizure' of power in a coup...etc. The 'recall' was, if anyone cares, actually a right-wing attempt to seize power which failed when confronted by vast majority of Venezuelans who saw Chavez as the chief lawmaker of the country iow they elected him! Another news item, the recent shooting of the prison warden by a neonazi type, was reported as killing of a 'prison director' 'warden 'is outta fashion i guess...the harebrains are thus upset at the news, which plays right into fascasti agenda of more cops and army to protect them from themselves, the public....
Good for the fascisti btw- we are an evil and nasty culture, which needs global warming and every disaster that nature can throw at us, and the fascists are simply hurrying up judgement day...
there's nothing to fight for
My only point is that a director of movies doesn't dictate national policy. Further, what we see in movies is not "the truth," it's an artistic interpretation of the director's vision. This particular director has been taking a lot of heat lately, perhaps because she's female and she makes "manly" 
films...? The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, after all!
It's just silly to bring her into the discussion at all.
I wonder if the Russians try to cut people in half with brightly colored lasers? I saw someone with a decidedly slavic accent try to do just that to James Bond, once....got rather close to his "wee wee" before either someone threw the switch or a wrench in the monkey works, thus sparing his manhood!
