DISQUS

JDJ · 3 years ago

For an excellent and somewhat ethnographic account of what really goes on at the Quantanamo Bay Prisons and other "secret" American-run prisons that sprang up since 2001, see the poet and essayist Eliza Griswold's article in the most recent issue of Harper's Magazine called "American Gulag: Prisoners' Tales From the War On Terror." Griswold travelled at some risk to many locales to interview former prisoners and to get some indication of interrogation practices that would augment present data.

I admire the precision of your reporting very, very much. It is Socratic and Platonic on its insistence that faulty rhetoric (and actions) be challenged; and logical fallacies and misleading ornamentations be rebuked.

(PS: The email accompanying my comment is a "dead" address that I'm using to cut down on spam at the website address.)

Keith Bidgeman · 2 years ago

In correspondence with John Grohol, I have seen repeatedly that whan his integrity is challenged, he evades the issue, makes obviously false and spurious claims, tries to turn his errors on to other people, and fails to answer every question whose answer he does not like. Trying to reason with him is impossible, unless he feels that his public image is in danger. The image he tries to present publically and what he is like in person are two completely different things. The false public image he tries to portray is one of integrity and reason. The latter and the reality, is somebody who is arrogant and lacks any sense of honour and honesty, and who will do any say what he needs in order to gain advantage for himself.

Benjamin T. Greenberg · 2 years ago

Keith, thanks for your comment. Sounds like we have had similar experiences with John Grohol. I would prefer to keep the discussion focused on specific statements, actions, arguments and facts, rather than assessments of Grohol's character and/or abstract motivations. I do think it would behoove Grohol to make some further public statement about the APA's role in US torture policy, in light of the new revelations in the recently declassified DoD report.