"Disappeared" is a transitive verb

Abu Ghraib. Gitmo. They seem to have slipped from the headlines. But that doesn't mean that what they involved, what they meant, what they told us about how our "war on terror" was equally a "war on freedom," are no longer important.

At least 11 al Qaeda suspects have "disappeared" in U.S. custody, and some may have been tortured, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued Monday.

The prisoners are probably being held outside the United States without access to the Red Cross or any oversight of their treatment, the human rights group said. In some cases, the United States will not even acknowledge the prisoners are in custody. ...

In refusing to disclose the prisoners' whereabouts or acknowledge the detentions, Human Rights Watch said, the U.S. government has violated international law, international treaties and the Geneva Convention. The group called on the government to bring all the prisoners "under the protection of the law."

The report, compiled from news accounts, said prisoners have provided valuable intelligence, but that some have "lied under pressure to please their interrogators." That is one of the problems of torture that reaches beyond the humanitarian questions: It simply doesn't work. That is, it's not an effective tool because it's difficult to know if the information you're getting is accurate or if the victim is just saying what they think you want to hear or even making things up in order to make the torture stop.

Which means, ultimately, you wind up violating international law and, more importantly, standards of human decency in order to get unreliable information. Since our intelligence agencies undoubtedly know that information gained via torture can't be trusted, the question becomes what's really the point of doing it. Does it just feel good? Is it a way of venting frustration and anger? A way of "getting back at them?"

There's an old saying, I don't know the source, that those who deal in vengeance tend to become what they say they oppose. We seem to be well on the way.

The HRW report, titled "The United States' 'Disappeared:' The CIA's Long-term 'Ghost Detainees,'" can be found in .pdf format here.