Officials at the highest levels of the US defense and justice departments approved interrogation techniques such as sleep disruption and temperature extremes for detainees at its base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The Washington Post reported yesterday.
The newspaper cited defense officials, some of whom had helped draw up the guidelines.
"We wanted to find a legal way to jack up the pressure," one lawyer and drafter of the guidelines told the newspaper on the condition of anonymity. "We wanted a little more freedom than in a US prison, but not torture."
The techniques were designed to put stress on detainees and disorient them. Stripping detainees was permitted if they were alone in their cells, officials told the Post. Some of the other 20 techniques included "sensory assault," such as subjecting the detainees to loud music and bright lights, or making them stand for hours at a time, but physical contact was not permitted, the officials told the Post.
They said a similar policy was in force for detainees in Iraq believed to have information on terrorist or insurgency operations, but whether those guidelines were in force at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Bagdad, where US soldiers had abused Iraqi prisoners, was not known.
The abuse at Abu Ghraib, which included sexual humiliation, recently came to light with the release of photographs taken by US soldiers there, prompting investigations to be launched over treatment of detainees there and other similar US facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
The Post said that Guantanamo interrogators must win the approval of senior officials at the Pentagon, and sometimes even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to use such techniques by justifying it as "militarily necessary," and detainees subjected to such treatment must be watched by medical personnel.
Taiwan is projected to lose a working-age population of about 6.67 million people in two waves of retirement in the coming years, as the nation confronts accelerating demographic decline and a shortage of younger workers to take their place, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan experienced its largest baby boom between 1958 and 1966, when the population grew by 3.78 million, followed by a second surge of 2.89 million between 1976 and 1982, ministry data showed. In 2023, the first of those baby boom generations — those born in the late 1950s and early 1960s — began to enter retirement, triggering
ECONOMIC BOOST: Should the more than 23 million people eligible for the NT$10,000 handouts spend them the same way as in 2023, GDP could rise 0.5 percent, an official said Universal cash handouts of NT$10,000 (US$330) are to be disbursed late next month at the earliest — including to permanent residents and foreign residents married to Taiwanese — pending legislative approval, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. The Executive Yuan yesterday approved the Special Act for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience in Response to International Circumstances (因應國際情勢強化經濟社會及民生國安韌性特別條例). The NT$550 billion special budget includes NT$236 billion for the cash handouts, plus an additional NT$20 billion set aside as reserve funds, expected to be used to support industries. Handouts might begin one month after the bill is promulgated and would be completed within
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IMPORTANT BACKER: China seeks to expel US influence from the Indo-Pacific region and supplant Washington as the global leader, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng said China is preparing for war to seize Taiwan, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said in Washington on Friday, warning that Taiwan’s fall would trigger a regional “domino effect” endangering US security. In a speech titled “Maintaining the Peaceful and Stable Status Quo Across the Taiwan Strait is in Line with the Shared Interests of Taiwan and the United States,” Chiu said Taiwan’s strategic importance is “closely tied” to US interests. Geopolitically, Taiwan sits in a “core position” in the first island chain — an arc stretching from Japan, through Taiwan and the Philippines, to Borneo, which is shared by
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