Soldiers at Gitmo really *did* learn everything they know about torture from Jack Bauer
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- April
- 7
In a widely excerpted Vanity Fair article that’s in the magazine’s May issue and is available online now, it’s revealed that Jack Bauer and his special brand of torture on 24 served as quite the inspiration for brainstorming sessions on “new techniques” to use on Guantanamo detainees in gathering info.
That information is based on a memo written by Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate at Guantanamo, and here’s an excerpt from the VF article:
Ideas arose from other sources. The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. “We saw it on cable,” Beaver recalled. “People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular.” Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantanamo, Beaver added. “He gave people lots of ideas.”
I wrote a long time back about folks at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point asking 24’s producers to tone back the torture.
This bothers me almost more for the fact that there’s a bunch of people in our military-industrial complex who can’t tell the difference between reality and television than for the fact that our soldiers have been ordered to torture people and actually believe it will work.
Of course, in excerpting the VF article, I fall into the same trap that most others have in trying to summarize the findings. I’m focusing on the one paragraph in the entire hugely long (10,000+ words) and complex article that mentions Jack Bauer and 24.
So, I suppose, I’m part of the problem. Not least of all because I just love watching Jack shoot someone in the knee or terrorists drill a hole in Morris’ shoulder.
Let me just say this: IT’S A TV SHOW. Television should take its cues from reality. We’re not supposed to take our cues from it.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Photos courtesy of Fox.Â
This entry was posted
on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 2:58 pm by Amy Vernon.
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I am sure the Kiefer is horrified at the thought that the character he created has been referenced by real life people as ways to torture people…. As Amy said, ITS A TV SHOW PEOPLE!
Yeah, that’s just downright scary. Good to hear that the goverment is so uncreative that they’re drawing upon tv shows for inspiration.