Torturing people - and language

"In December 2002, two prisoners at the US base in Bagram, Afghanistan, died after trauma to their legs of such severity that the coroners compared it to the results of being run over by a bus. The subsequent official investigation was nothing if not creative. The death of one was explained in this way:

'No one blow could be determined to have caused the death,' the former senior staff lawyer at Bagram, Col. David L. Hayden, said he had been told by the Army's lead investigator. ‘It was reasonable to conclude at the time that repetitive administration of legitimate force resulted in all the injuries we saw'.

So starts a rather startling and revealing piece on Perspective [on ABC Radio National] by Stephen Poole.

How language can be "tortured" and manipulated, as above, is the essence of what Poole is discussing. Go here to either read the transcript or listen to the audio.

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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