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What worries me, is that in heightened situations and environments, there is often something of a gap between the details as they appear in the rules and the details as they are applied in the territory. An extra hour or three in a stress position. An extra night or three of sleep deprivation.
Very little of what I have seen, heard and read, suggests that these limitations were being vigorously applied, nor that interrogations were subject to sufficient oversight to ensure those limitations weren't 'stretched'.
Is 'slapping' allowed under the geneva convention? Is it allowed in police interrogations? Either these men are soldiers or they're criminals. If slapping and sleep deprivation are allowed for either military prisoners, or suspects in a crime then I see no reason not to allow it for alleged terrorists. If it isn't allowed in either of those situations then I see no reason to allow it in this.
Another point worth making is that these things may have a very different psychological effect on day 3 than they might on day 1003. Many of the men held in Guantanamo have spent years there. It's been suggested that interrogations may happen at any time throughout that internment. Bear in mind the entire system of internment there has been designed to destabilise and weaken the resolve of the inmate. After a couple of years of dehumanising imprisonment (without any end in sight, with no recourse to legal process, and the increasing suspicion that if you die there, nobody will be doing an autopsy to find out how...) sleep deprivation, slapping and confinement in small boxes, or physically stressful positions would more than likely take on a whole other level of meaning.
Now...given that we really cannot be sure of their guilt without some kind of trial, I am very uncomfortable about allowing a prisoner to be systematically broken across several years.
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