The invaluable Katherine of Obsidian Wings blogs a story that, as she says, "hammers about 19 nails into the coffin of the 'few bad apples' theory." When some interrogators expressed discomfort with the abuse of prisoners, a team of JAGs came back with a PowerPoint presentation on what they could do to prisoners; including the idea that inhumane and degrading treatment was OK, because the Geneva conventions didn't apply. Which we now know to be false as a matter of U.S. law.
Read Katherine's post, and the Esquire article she links (if, like me, you don't have the stomach for the 53-page Human Rights Watch report).
Posted by Matt Weiner at July 25, 2006 07:21 AMI'm a little surprised that my brother hasn't yet pointed out how this demonstrates, again, the evils of PowerPoint....
Posted by: Matt Weiner at July 27, 2006 07:02 PMNo, although I claim that Powerpoint is an instrument of "torture," I value the distinction between metaphorical and actual torture.
The evils of Powerpoint are in the obscuring and dumbing-down even for people with good or neutral intentions. In the hands of a person bent on doing wrong, even a neutral tool can be used for harm; someone bent on sanctioning torture could do so with only the spoken word. Ppt looks official, but leaves an electronic trail - wouldn't one like to see that presentation? Even beyond the moral offense here, there is something tragic and absurd, almost funny in its reduction of everything to a mundane business-plan presentation, about the idea of a slide show with bullet points on the legality of torture and inhuman treatment.
> there is something tragic and absurd, almost funny in its reduction of everything to a mundane business-plan presentation
In which respect, once again, life comes to imitate the Onion.
Posted by: Anders Weinstein at July 28, 2006 02:40 PM