The Means By Which We Torture

To me it's a thoroughly awful thing to know that the U.S. carries out torture. But it's something altogether worse to see the means by which we torture.

I think others feel this way, too. It's why the sickening photos from Abu Ghraib -- replete with barking dogs and creepy masks and the vile posing of partly clad prisoners -- still has such chilling resonance.

In light of this, there's a disturbing piece today in the Des Moines Register on the Emergency Restraint Chair. It was invented fifteen years ago by a local sheriff, who has since sold it to jailers and psych hospitals and, lately, the U.S. military.

A special chair that Crawford County Sheriff Tom Hogan designed to prevent violent inmates from hurting jailers and themselves has blossomed into an international enterprise — and landed at the center of an international controversy.

Hogan, who has made the chairs in his Denison garage for the past 15 years, sold about 400 of them at $1,150 each last year. Among his customers: the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where inmates' lawyers recently charged that the chairs are used for torture.

[Ellipsis.]

Hogan said military officials weren't clear on how the chairs would be used. He said they are designed to protect inmates, not abuse them.

"We never even considered that our chair would be used for that purpose," said Hogan, who has been sheriff for 18 years.

[Ellipsis.]

Hogan said he has faith that the U.S. military will use his chairs as they are intended. He also said that open, public discussion about the issue is important to make sure that the government does just that.

I'm glad Hogan is calling on the government not to use his product for torture. In his defense, I guess I can see how these chairs might have an occasional use in a prison. (I'm less comfortable with their use elsewhere.) And I'm pretty sure manufacturers of rubber hoses, car batteries, dog leashes, pliers and cigarettes don't (and shouldn't) take into consideration the torturous utility of their products.

But with the Bush administration so openly advocating and (less openly) employing torture, I'm not sure Hogan saying all the right things matters that much to me. And I'm absolutely certain it doesn't matter a lick to those who are put in the chairs for long periods of time and forced to sit in their own excrement while illegally detained without trial in Cuba.