To the editor:

A recent New Yorker article (Aug. 13) shatters the illusion that we do not torture. It is well known that a July executive order authorized continuation of secret prisons abroad. The article shows, in graphic detail, how these prisons employ “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Torture.

“People were utterly dehumanized,” said one expert familiar with the CIA’s protocol. “People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.” Suspects in secret prisons are reduced to a state of “learned helplessness,” subjected to extreme sensory deprivation, subjected to waterboarding (near drowning), sodomized with suppositories, kept naked for days, kept isolated for months, kept on a dog leash and yanked into walls, suspended from the ceiling by their arms, beaten, slashed, forced to stand, kept awake, chained naked in a crouch, kept in extreme heat or cold, subjected to deafening sounds and so on.

The interrogated suspects have mental breakdowns. They cry, bash their heads against the walls and attempt suicide. After being tortured, the suspects try to please their interrogators, rendering their testimony unreliable. It is ironic that as an individual’s humanity is stripped away through torture, his or her humanity also is revealed. Similarly, those carrying out these interrogations themselves have terrible nightmares and lasting psychic damage.

President Bush says, “we don’t use torture,” but we do, no matter what you call it. A thousand goodwill ambassadors running baseball camps around the globe will never overcome this cruelty in the eyes of the world.

Lora Jost,

Lawrence