When the King Isn't Tough Enough

When the King Isn’t Tough Enough
1 Samuel 15: 1- 33

According to news reports, at U.S. bases in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in the first decade of the twenty-first century we were engaged in the torture of people suspected of terrorist acts. This involved keeping people in constrained positions for long periods, beating them, subjecting them to sexual degradation and sexual assault, burning them with cigarettes or cutting them with barbed wire or glass, and imposing loud noise or extreme temperatures on them for long periods. A distinctive technique we used at Guantanamo Bay was waterboarding, putting people on their backs with their heads downward and pouring water over them in such a way as to make them go through an experience that resembles drowning and can lead to brain damage or death. There is some dispute over whether this counts as torture, as is also the case with the sleep deprivation we impose on people that makes it impossible for them to sleep for days on end; it has been described by someone who has experienced it as wearying the spirit to death...