Torture and Democracy Notes

Darius Rejali, Torture & Democracy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 849 pp.
“They started asking me questions from the first moment they put me into the minibus. When I did not answer, they
started threatening me in the following manner. ‘You don’t talk now,’ they would say; ‘in a few minutes, when our
hands will start roaming in between your legs, you will be singing like a nightingale’... “[T]hey forced me to take
off my skirt and stockings and laid me down on the ground and tied my hands and feet to pegs. A person by the
name of Umit Erdal beat the soles of my feet for about half an hour. As he beat my soles he kept on saying,‘We
made everybody talk here, you think we shall not succeed with you?’ and insulting me... “Umit Erdal attacked me
and forced me to the ground. I fell on my face. He stood on my back and with the assistance of somebody else
forced a truncheon into my anus. As I struggled to stand he kept on saying ‘You whore! See what else we will do to
you. First tell us how many people did you go to bed with? You won’t be able to do it any more. We shall next
destroy your womanhood’... “They attached an electric wire to the small toe of my right foot and another to the end
of a truncheon. They tried to penetrate my feminine organ with the truncheon. As I resisted they hit my body and
legs with a large axe handle. They soon succeeded in penetrating my sexual organ with the truncheon with the
electric wire on,and passed current. I fainted. A little later, the soldiers outside brought in a machine used for
pumping air into people and said they would kill me...
! ! ! ! ! ! ! Statement of Ayse Semra Eker, arrested in Turkey in May 19721
Lord, you who are everywhere, have you been in Villa Grimaldi too?2
Lyle Brecht DRAFT 2.3 Wednesday, July 22, 2009! Page 1 of 13

NOTES: Torture and Democracy may be the standard academic text concerning torture.3
Twelve years in the writing, it surveys torture throughout the ages and during modern times in
detail, covering 2,000 declassified and scholarly sources written in 14 different languages from
key countries of the world that covers such periods as British military practices since 1700ʻs;
practices under slavery in the 1800ʻs in the U.S. South; police practices in the U.S., Britain, and
France since the 1920ʻs; colonial practices in Africa during the 1800ʼs and early 1900ʼs;
practices of authoritarian governments in South America during the 1950ʼs to the 1980ʼs; Allied,
Axis, and Resistance practices during WWII during the between 1938-1945; practices of
Chinese, North and South Koreans and U.S. during Korea; French army practices during the
Battle for Algiers, Project Phoenix results during Vietnam; Israeli experience during the Intifada;
practices during the South African struggle against apartheid; U.S. results during the Global War
on Terror (GWOT); etc. It is highly unlikely that any presently remaining classified documents,
when they become known, will substantively alter the basic results of this exhaustively
researched work.
In all cases “torture is much more than an assault on the bodies of individuals; it is rather an
assault on social bodies.” 4 Indeed, torture is often a tool of modern totalitarianism, “the
establishment, by means of a ʻstate of exception,ʼ of a legal civil war that allows for the physical
elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some
reason cannot be integrated into the political system.” 5 Darius defines two primary styles of
torture that assaults not only physical bodes of individuals but social bodies used by states to
manifest their power over the individual: (1) scarring torture that leaves noticeable marks on the
physical body of those tortured and (2) ʻcleanʼ torture that is performed in a manner to leave no
physical scars. Both styles of torture are to inflict excruciating pain (physical and/or
psychological) on those being tortured for one or more of the following purposes: (a) as a
means of achieving or maintaining civil order (Civil Discipline Model); (b) as a means of
achieving false confessions (Juridical model); and/or (c) as a means of extracting information
(forced interrogation or National Security Model).
Note: ʻCleanʼ torture does not hurt any less than scarring torture, nor does it necessarily
produce less serious and lasting physical and psychological debilities than scarring torture.
Thus, clean torture is in no way ʻmore humaneʼ than scarring torture. All torture is inhumane.
That is the point of torture, to devise assaults to a personʼs body and mind that result in such
excruciating pain and disconnect from anything ʻhuman,ʼ that the person being tortured will
become fully malleable in the hands of the torturer.6 The purpose of torture is to fragment and
destroy the personhood of those being tortured; to disconnect them with any reality they may
have heretofore understood.7 The purpose of torture is typically not to cause the death of those
being tortured. If someone dies while being tortured, the torture has failed. If one is dead, he/
she no longer feels the pain. Torture is a craft, not a science. There are no modern ʻscientificʼ

ways or means to torture that work any better than simple means of torture invented hundreds
or thousands of years ago. Electrotorture is popular today because it is relatively ʻcleanʼ (does
not leave marks), not because it is any more effective at eliciting information from those being
tortured.8
Historically, scarring torture was used primarily as a means of achieving or maintaining Civil
Discipline. This is the form of torture mentioned in Scripture. During Greek and Roman times it
was appropriate to torture slaves and barbarians, but citizens of the Empire were off limits. Only
much later in the history of the Roman Empire were citizens also tortured. During colonial times,
almost invariably, colonial subjects were tortured, even though torture was not necessarily
practiced on citizens in the European homeland. During Stalinist times, this form of torture was
industrialized in the U.S.S.R. Literally, millions of Soviet citizens who fell into the displeasure of
Stalin, for whatever reason, were tortured solely as a means to maintain civil order through
terror. This form of torture and abuse is used extensively today in Iraq as part of a sometimes
overt strategy to cow the civilian population and typically has strong racist overtones.9 Always,
the intent of this torture is to leave scars as a public reminder of what the State can do to the
body of those whom it deems a threat.
ʻCleanʼ torture, torture that leaves few or no scars, originated largely in modern times (although
clean techniques themselves are very old torture practices) from U.S. police work beginning in
the 1920ʼs. The move to clean torture was solely to avoid detection by citizenʼs monitoring
groups, oversight commissions, and courts. Without physical evidence of torture, who would
believe a criminalʼs accounts of torture over that of the police? Not all police departments of the
country tortured, but many did (e.g. Boston largely didnʼt, but NYPD, Chicago, LAPD largely
did). This form of torture was known as ʻsweatingʼ or ʻThe Third Degree.ʼ 10 The sole purpose
was to obtain a confession of guilt for the crime being investigated. This form of Juridical torture
typically took many weeks, but a ʻconfessionʼ was obtained in the majority of cases. As long as
torture could not be proven, most courts accepted this confession as admittance of guilt, even
though the confession was coerced. However, if torture was proven or suspected, most courts
would deem the coerced confession as inadmissible. Why? Because, even since the time of
Roman Empire, torture was known to produce confessions of guilt from ordinary, innocent men
and women.11 Under torture, it is possible to get a person to admit to almost anything in order to
stop the torture. Confessions under torture are oftentimes false. That is why most courts will not
allow coerced confessions as evidence in normal situations. BTW: there is no empirical
evidence that indicates an interrogator, especially one who tortures, has any innate or
professional ability to discern truth from fiction during interrogations conducted under torture. In
some actual analysis of data, torturers sometimes did worse than a flip of a coin in predicting
whether the confession obtained through coercion was true or false.12

Clean torture has also figured infamously in the U.S. GWOT as a means to obtain information
not previously known to stop ʻthe ticking bombʼ just in time before innocent civilians are hurt.
Unfortunately, this form of National Security or forced interrogation torture does not work as
advertised based on the historical records and detailed analysis performed on this form of
torture, and cannot practicably work in any case. Torture sequences in Hollywood movies, the
television series ʼ24,ʼ and those described in many mass media accounts where forced
interrogation achieves ʻjust-in-timeʼ useful information from the terrorist are purely fiction. In real
life, this has almost never, or only rarely ever, happened, despite what the public has been led
to believe. Even so-called ʻsuccessfulʼ historical uses of torture in war, such during the Battle for
Algiers or during the Vietnam Warʼs Operation Phoenix do not hold-up to analysis. In fact, in
almost every case of the use of torture in a National Security scenario, torture has either been
ineffective to obtain useful, timely information and/or has generated false information, and has
produced blowback of consequence that has engendered a situation where it is more difficult to
obtaining timely and useful ongoing human intelligence. Torture also has long-term health
consequences on the population tortured.13 Under torture:
“The subjectʼs ability to recall and communicate information accurately is as impaired as his
will to resist.” “Any circumstance that impairs the function of the brain potentially affects the
ability to give information” (CIA HRET manual, unedited, p. 466);
Ribotʼs gradient: “When there is trauma to the brain.... The closer the memory is in time to
the trauma, the less likely it is to survive the trauma.... The new perishes before the old.... By
the time prisoners wish to cooperate, it may be too late” as they cannot remember the
information, even as they wish to provide it under torture (467);
Torture sometimes “increases the confidence of cooperative subjects who report false
information as true, and they are unable to compensate for these errors.” Sleep deprivation,
especially, produces “the illusion of knowing” completely false information as true and
reliable, confabulating memories to fit the needs of the interrogation” (468-9);
Standard practice for agents is for passwords and critical information to be changed after 24
hours if an agent is captured (475). “Real torture... takes days, if not weeks” (474);
“Persons of considerable moral or intellectual stature often find in pain inflicted by others a
confirmation of the belief that they are in the hands of inferiors, and their resolve not to
submit is strengthened” (476);
Even “medieval inquisitors knew that repeated questioning during sleep deprivation
guaranteed false information” (511);

Torture undermines the prospect of good human intelligence, polarizes the population, and
tends to destroy morale of the side that is doing the torturing that has lost any illusion of
moral high ground in the conflict (518).
Examples: “During WWII, British counterespionage managed to identify almost every

German spy without using torture.... only three agents eluded detectionʼ (476-7). During
Battle of Algiers, in no cases did torture, “through timely interrogation, produced decisive
information that stopped a ticking bomb from exploding” (481).14 Phoenix Program in
Vietnam ʻvictimized 38 innocents for every 1 actual Vietcong agent (471). “Torture did not
provide any worthwhile intelligence and often yielded false information” (514).
ETHICS:
All mainline religions in the world today have condemned the use of torture:
“Torture is universally condemned by people of faith and conscience as contrary to our most
deeply held values. For Christians, opposition is based, in the words of the National Council of
Churches ʻon our fundamental belief in the dignity of the human person created in the image of
God and in the rights accorded to all persons by virtue of their humanity.ʼ
“This view is also expressed by the National Association of Evangelicals, which has endorsed
An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture. This Declaration is grounded in a Christian view of
the sanctity of life, and in a commitment to human rights which finds expression in Christian
sources dating to long before the Enlightenment. This statement reads in part:
Human rights, which function to protect human dignity and the sanctity of life, cannot be
cancelled and should not be overridden. Recognition of human rights creates obligations to
act on behalf of others whose rights are being violated. Human rights place a shield around
people who otherwise would find themselves at the mercy of those who are angry,
aggrieved, or frightened… Among the most significant human rights is the right to security of
person, which includes the right not to be tortured.
“The Jewish Tradition also strongly condemns torture, and this has been expressed recently
when 600 North American Rabbis signed the Rabbinic Letter Against Torture. This letter states
that:
We understand that the most fundamental ethical principle, which results from our belief in
God as Creator of the world and Parent of all humanity, is that every human being is seen as
reflecting the Image of God. Torture shatters and defiles God's Image.
“The purpose of torture is to remove a person's pride, humiliate that person, or make his or her
life so painful that the person does or says whatever the interrogator wants. Torture 'works' by

attempting to deprive a human being of will, spirit, and personal dignity. The humanity of the
perpetrators, as well as the victims, is inevitably compromised by the use of torture. Jewish
tradition calls for humane treatment even of one's adversaries.
“Strong statements opposing any use of torture by the US government have also been issued
by The Rabbinical Assembly (of Conservative Rabbis), the Reconstructionist Rabbinical
Association, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs.
“The teachings of Islam are also quite powerful, “Oh you who believe! Stand forth for Allah
witnessing with justice. And do not let hatred of a people sway you into injustice, but adhere
always to justice. That is true piety.” (Qurʼan, 5:8) The spirit of this Qurʼanic decree calls for an
end to torture and for the universal guarantee of humane treatment and due process for all
prisoners. For Muslims the use of torture under any circumstances is abhorrent. Such means
can never serve the ends of justice and peace.
“There are of course other, more pragmatic arguments against the use of torture. The most
important of these, is that the U.S. must set a standard of international behavior regarding the
use of torture. How can we complain when other nations use torture against our soldiers if we
continue to practice torture ourselves?
“But ultimately, we believe that this is a moral issue that cannot be compromised regardless of
the weight of the pragmatic arguments. We support the Statement of Conscience issued by the
National Religious Campaign Against Torture [and the Episcopal Policy Network (9/15/2006)]:
Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions, in their highest
ideals, hold dear. It degrades everyone involved -- policy-makers, perpetrators and victims.
It contradicts our nation's most cherished ideals. Any policies that permit torture and
inhumane treatment are shocking and morally intolerable. Nothing less is at stake in the
torture abuse crisis than the soul of our nation. What does it signify if torture is condemned
in word but allowed in deed? Let America abolish torture now -- without exceptions.” 15
A THEOLOGY OF TORTURE
Perhaps the most well-known historical torture narrative is the Passion of Jesus Christ as
recorded in the New Testament Gospels.16 The Passion narratives describe the events
surrounding Jesus being tortured by the Romans.17 Crucifixion was considered as the worst
death by torture, a means of Civil Discipline that violated the basic tenets of civilization and
humanity by: (a) dishonoring the dignity of the human body by mutilation and leaving the body
on the cross to be eaten by animals; (b) introducing humiliation and revenge into the notions of
human justice; and (c) disallowing bereavement by families who wished to mourn those so
tortured.18

From a theological perspective, torture today, just as the torture of Jesus during Roman times, is
predicated on the belief of the state that it ʻownsʼ the physical bodies of its citizens, even as the
churches ʻownʼ the spiritual lives of these very same citizens.19 Thus, it is an easy move for the
state to torture the physical bodies of its perceived enemies, especially if these enemies in any
way threaten the power structure of the state. What supports this practice is the realization that
“the modern state is built upon a soteriology of rescue and violence.” 20 In this framework, too
often religion and theology become handmaidens to the desires and false ʻrescueʼ of the state,
merely “a means of binding the individual to the sovereign.... [For Christians, the] “Body of
Christ... is nominalized, scattered and absorbed into the body of the state.” 21 National Defense
conceptualized almost entirely as counter violence and war, commanding the vast share of
stateʼs annual budget, is seen as ʻnecessary and prudentʼ as a primary means for relationality
among citizens as a false anchoring of civil society.
Maybe nowhere is this capitulation more stark than listening to those who proclaim themselves
ʻChristianʼ who also proclaim their support for torture as a legitimate means for the state to
protect itself. Instead, might true Christian grace be understood as “the capacity, manifested at
last in the political dimension, not to se ourselves and evaluate ourselves with our own eyes, but
with the eyes of our victims.... Thus, grace ultimately makes possible for us a new life of
solidarity, a life which is no longer dependent upon the oppression of others.” 22 This grace “is to
be distributed by us in imitation of God, in an indiscriminate, profligate fashion that fails to reflect
the differences in worthiness and status that rule arrangements of a sinful world.”23 Thus, to
challenge the instrumentalist interpretation of torture is not only to reintroduce relationality with
God, with neighbor, and with self into all notions of reality and truth, but also to displace the
autonomous visions of the sovereignty of the state from its false pretensions of mastery and
certainty of purpose.24
What the Christian Church, in this environment too often fails to do is to ask: “Is this the right
thing for Christians to say and do?” Instead of patriotic, nationalistic citizens, maybe the more
appropriate stance of Christians, if one is to behave as Christian, is “as resident aliens in the
society of which they are a part.” 25 For, in every state-sponsored form, Jesus radically
challenged power.26 In the Gospels, it is apparent that “religion goes disastrously astray when it
ceases to be a sign of contradiction and becomes the cement for social conformity. The
foolishness of God... is then replaced by capitulation to the values of the world.” 27 But, maybe
the most important sign of the Churchʼs non-obeisance to the power of the state is in its liturgical
practices. For example, N.T. Wright makes this point regarding the Christian church of Asia
Minor in Plinyʼs time:
the litmus test for conviction as a Christian was, as in Polycarpʼs case, ritual actions and
declarations which, small in themselves, carried enormous socio-cultural significance. These

only make sense on the assumption that Christians of all sorts in the area, who would
mostly not have been trained theologians, regarded it as fundamental that their allegiance to
Christ cut across any allegiance to Caesar.28
In the early days of Christianity the “early martyrs often asserted the kingship of Christ in
refusing to offer worship or service to the emperors and their gods.” 29 “To the world, the death-
acts of the martyrs make visible a disciplined community that will not be conformed to the world
(Rom. 12:2). The trial, torture, and execution of each martyr only serve to call the Christians out
from among the world and put the conflict into bold relief.”30 Thus, in this fashion, the body of the
martyr becomes ipso facto, “the battleground for a larger contest of rival imaginations, that of
the state and that of the church.” 31 From this perspective, the church, in its liturgical practices,
provides a public display of “a hope-filled witness to the opening of [the dominion of God], the
revelation of things [to come] which the earthly eye now sees only dimly”, as a contrast-society
to the stateʼs power over the bodies of it citizens:32
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had just
passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming
down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (NRSV, Rev.
21:1-2).
What the Revelation of John is saying here is that “the Church is the collective living out of the
opening of heaven,” the dominion of God.33 However, too often the function of the state with its
ʻhumanistʼ and instrumentalist orientation “is to kill the eschatological imagination of the church
by preventing this vision from coming to light.”34 For Christians, the primary means for keeping
this eschatological vision alive may be through the Eucharist. When state-sponsored oppression
fragments and violates the community of God through its policies and practices of power, the
Eucharist can serve as public witness to the remembrance of the break in time where “the future
breaks into the present.” 35 This “eschatological dimension of the Eucharist anticipates the future
realization of a new society, the kingdom of God, which.... keeps alive the subversive memory of
Christʼs past confrontation with, and triumph over, worldly power.” 36
In the Eucharist, Christʼs body represents “the goodness of Godʼs own life [communicated]
outward to what is not God,” namely the community of all humans.37 The Eucharist might be
thought of as a “radical risk of self-exposure to the other”38 where this scramental sharing of the
gift of God becomes “a risk taken in the trust that, in spite of all [the terror and discord in the
world], the self and the world are held in the always-already, not-yet reality of Godʼs redemptive
love.”39 In its deepest sense, the Eucharist is an astonishment, “a rupture that takes oneʼs
breath away, and yet this rupture by the given otherness of being is the initiation of a going
towards the other.... both a rupture and a renewal” of imagination and vision for what can be and

what is becoming despite mere appearances to the contrary of a world filled with sufferings and
all its failings.40
It is this way of being in the world, of rupture from the adiphorization that is characteristic of the
state-powered mindlessness of conventionality, that assumes responsibility for the other initiates
the ʻfact of human fellowship,” prior to liberation of the body and spirit that makes the Eucharist
such a radical act that calls to question any rationale for torture of another human being.41 In
summary, the liturgy of the Church, and the Eucharist provides a public witness whereby:
We, drawn into communion, into participation with God through the mutual giving of Jesus
and his Father have become part of a fellowship initiated and sustained by gift, and to abide
in this fellowship is to learn how we can give, to each other and to God. That we can give at
all rests on what we have been given….If we can even begin to give in this way, it is only
because of the depth of the assurance implied in the gift given us on Calvary. 42
The Eucharist is ultimately an act of love, an acknowledgement that “I am not centered in

myself... but rather: I have a need. The other person is needed. I canʼt do without the other.” 43
This remembrance, witnessed to in the Eucharist, is a audible, unending cry against torture. If
empires of oppression and torture persist in their power by numbness, blindness and
adiphorization, the Eucharist serves as public denial of this indifference to torture and the
embodiment of an alternate Christ-consciousness that articulates newness, compassion, and
hope.44
ENDNOTES
1 Quoted from Amnesty International, “Combating Torture: A Manual for Action” (October 2002). “Behind
this account stand thousands of similar stories, shocking in their brutality, yet numbing in their
bureaucratic precision and repetitiveness.” See William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Malden,
MA. & Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 26.
2 Villa Grimaldi, formerly located on Jose Arrieta Avenue in Santiago, was the “most notorious of Chileʼs
clandestine torture centers” under the Augusto Pinochet regime (1973-1990) during which at least 80,000
were incarcerated without trials and 30,000 subjected to torture. See Ariel Dorfman, “His Eye on the
Sparrow,” in Lost Waltz in Santiago, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: Viking Press, 1988), 11 quoted in
Cavanaugh 1998, 1.

3 According to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, torture is:
...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a
person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind,
when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence
of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering
arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.”
Thus, euphemisms such as ʻextraordinary rendition,ʼ ʻenhanced interrogation techniquesʼ, ʻharshʼ

techniques (e.g. used to refer to “how the Central Intelligence Agency was allowed to strip Al Qaeda
prisoners naked, bash them against walls, keep them awake for up to 11 straight days, sometimes with
their arms chained to the ceiling, confine them in dark boxes and make them feel as if they were
drowning.”) or increasingly ʻbrutalʼ techniques all are just wordsmithing to avoid saying publicly that all
these ʻtechniquesʼ are torture, as defined by the U.N. Convention Against Torture. See Wikipedia; Clark
Hoyt, “Telling the Brutal Truth,” New York Times (April 25, 2009).
Also, the illegality of torture apples to all persons, whether such persons are labeled: ʻprisoners of war,ʼ
ʻinsurgents.ʼ enemy combatants,ʼ or ʻterroristsʼ by one side or labeled with racist and dehumanizing terms
to describe the enemy: ʻRedskin,ʼ ʻNigger,ʼ ʻChink,ʼ ʻJap,ʼ ʻGreaser,ʼ ʻDago,ʼ ʻWop,ʼ ʻGook,ʻ ʻCharlie,ʼ
ʻTowelhead,ʼ or ʻHajjiʼ (a common racial slur to refer to Iraqis or Arabs used presently in the Iraq War).
etc.
4 Cavanaugh 1998, 22.
5Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, Kevin Attell, trans. (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago
Press, 2005), 2.
6Physiologically, all pain, whether induced via physical or psychological mechanisms, is real. See Valerie
Gray Hardcastle, The Myth of Pain (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1999).
7“In the hell of the torture that destroys body and soul and shatters personality, there is no hope. That is
why Dante sets over the entrance to hell: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The same words might be
written over every human torture chamber. No one comes out of it whole. No one comes out of it the
same. Not the person tortured, and the torturer even less.” See Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for
Todayʼs World, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1995), 58.
8 Democratic states were the first to pioneer clean electrotorture. The earliest uses were around 1910.
“The French and American torturers used magneto torture in conjunction with other techniques that left
few marks, pioneering the way in electrotorture” (193). Today, the most prevalent form of electrotorture is
by police departments and security guards in the U.S. using Taser-like non-lethal (usually) weapons.

9 There are numerous examples of racism and dehumanization of Iraqi citizens by U.S. troops reported
almost every day in the press and in reports of returning soldiers. For example, “Aiden Delgado, an Army
Reservist in the 320th Military Police Company, who served in Iraq from April 1st , 2003 through April 1st,
2004.... says he observed mutilation of the dead, trophy photos of dead Iraqis, mass roundups of
innocent noncombatants, positioning of prisoners in the line of fire – all violations of the Geneva
conventions. His own buddies – decent, Christian men, as he describes them – shot unarmed prisoners.
He also witnessed brutality towards children in Iraq: ʻThere was a Master Sergeant.... He whipped this
group of Iraqi children with a steel Humvee antenna. He just lashed them with it because they were
crowding around, bothering him, and he was tired of talking.... It was a matter of routine for guys in my
unit to drive by in a Humvee and shatter bottles over Iraqis heads as they went by.ʼ” See http://
www.blackcommentator.com/133/133_think_racism_military.html.
10 Coined by Major Richard Sylvester of Washington, DC, the president of the International Association of
Chiefs of Police in 1910: police duties could be described as arrest (the first degree); transportation to jail
(the second degree); and interrogation (the third degree). “Soon Americans came to use third degree to
refer solely to violence used to obtain confession or information about a crime - in short, torture” (73).
11The Roman lawyer Ulpian... cautioned interrogators that torture “is a chancy and risky business and
one which may be deceptive.” He notes some will always lie under torture; others will “tell any kind of lie
than suffer torture,” and one “should not place confidence in torture applied to [a personʼs] enemies,
because they readily tell lies.” He advises that one can have confidence in coerced information only after
the case has been investigated by other means” (462).
12 “The torture of the informed may generate no more lies than normal interrogation, but the torture of the
ignorant and innocent overwhelms investigators with misleading information” (461). “The notion that one
will stop torturing when one hears the right information that allows one to know the truth when one hears
it. That is precisely what does not happen with torture” (465).
13 “The main psychiatric disorders associated with torture are posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and
major depression (DSM IV).... it is equally important to recognize that for many survivors, the symptoms
and aftereffects of torture endure for a lifetime. We know, for example, that survivors of the Holocaust
and the concentration camps during World War II have much higher rates of clinical depression and
suicide even 50 years after the conclusion of those events. We also know that World War II American
prisoners-of-war tortured by the Japanese have significantly higher mortality rates, increased morbidity in
all body organ systems, and increased social problems that persist throughout their lifetime. See
“Testimony of David R. Johnson, Director of Medical Services The Center for Victims of Torture
Minneapolis, Minnesota to International Commission of Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-terrorism and
Human Rights” (September 6, 2006) at http://www.scribd.com/doc/210841/.
14“[T]he real Battle of Algiers was a story of terror, collaboration, and betrayal by the local
population” (482). Torture may not have helped the French win the battle, but it did help them to loose the
war. “Massu killed more innocents than terrorists, arrested at least 22,600 other people who were not
connected to the FLN [Saadi Yacef has only 1,400 FLN operatives in Algiers], and tortured most of
them” (482-3).
15Oregon Interfaith Letter to Senator Gordon Smith Opposing the Use of Torture by any US Government
Agency (January 28, 2008).
16
“Many of the details in accounts of the Passion derive from other texts, such as the 14th century
German text Christi Leiden in Einer Vision Geschaut which covers the event in horrific detail.” See http://
www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/passionofchrist_9.shtml.

17“it would seem His crime against Rome was treason. The Roman legal system branded him a traitor.
This was a capital offense with a penalty of crucifixion. See http://peacesecurity.suite101.com/article.cfm/
the_history_of_crucifixion#ixzz0KfebOuQV&D.
18St Anselm mourned the fact that he had not been present at the Crucifixion... Why, O my soul, were
you not there to be pierced by a sword of bitter sorrow when you could not bear the piercing of the side of
your Saviour with a lance? Why could you not bear to see the nails violate the hands and feet of your
creator? (Op. Cit.).
19“It was only in the seventeenth century that politics was first linked to the idea of an abstract,
impersonal, sovereign state distinct from other parts of society.” At that time ʻreligionʼ as we currently
understand it was separated as distinct and different from ʻpoliticsʼ as presently understood. Before the
Peace of Westphalia treaties (May 15 and October 24, 1648) that set the conditions of the sovereignty of
the modern nation-state, these two aspects of universal civitas were inextricably linked and inseparable.
Bob Jessop, State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in their Place (University Park, PA.: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1990), 350 quoted in Cavanaugh 1998, 5.
20William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of
Global Consumerism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), 2.

22Johann Baptist Metz, The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Postmodern World (New
York: Crossroad, 1981), 61.
23 Kathryn Tanner, Economy of Grace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 25.

24David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1987), 50.
25Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Guides to Theological Inquiry;
Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 94-5, 103).
26 Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 56.
27 Kenneth Leech, We Preach Christ Crucified (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 1994), 10.
28
N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. I of Christian Origins and the Question of
God (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1992), 350 quoted in Cavanaugh 1998, 63.
30 Cavanaugh 1998, 63-4, 65.
33James Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination (New York: Crossroad,
1996), 81 quoted in Cavanaugh 1998, 65.
35 Cavanaugh 1998, 224.

36 Cavanaugh 1998, 280.

37 Tanner 2005, 67.
38David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York:
Crossroad, 1981), 339.
39 Tracy 1981, 438.
40 William Desmond, Being and the Between (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 8.
41Adriaan Peperzak, To the Others: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (West
Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993), 82, 91, 95.
42Rowan Williams, Eucharistic Sacrifice – The Roots of a Metaphor (Liturgical Study #31; Nottingham:
Grove Books, 1982), 29.
43Jacob Taub, The Political Theology of Paul, Alieda and Jan Assmann, eds., Dana Hollander, trans.
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 55-6.
44 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 89, 91.

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Darius Rejali, Torture & Democracy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 849 pp.

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Examples: “During WWII, British counterespionage managed to identify almost every

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The Eucharist is ultimately an act of love, an acknowledgement that “I am not centered in

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3 According to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, torture is:

Thus, euphemisms such as ʻextraordinary rendition,ʼ ʻenhanced interrogation techniquesʼ, ʻharshʼ

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21 Cavanaugh 2004, 38.

23 Kathryn Tanner, Economy of Grace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 25.

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36 Cavanaugh 1998, 280.

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