Posted on 04/19/2009 7:43:42 PM PDT by forkinsocket
INSECTS have been conscripted as weapons of war, tools of terrorism and instruments of torture for thousands of years. So should we be surprised by the news that the C.I.A. considered using these creatures to instill fear in Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist suspect? Yes, and here’s why.
The earliest hypothesized uses of insects in human conflicts involved bees and wasps. During the Upper Paleolithic period, nests of stinging insects — evidently contained within baskets or pottery — were heaved into rocky caves or thorny stockades to drive an enemy into the open. Employing insects to destroy crops or transmit disease would not develop until modern times (unless we include Yahweh’s assaults on Pharaoh in Exodus). However, entomological torture continued to play a role throughout history.
The ancient Persians developed a gruesome practice called scaphism, which involved force-feeding a person milk and honey, lashing him to a boat or hollow tree trunk, and then allowing flies to infest the victim’s anus and increasingly gangrenous flesh. Siberian tribes simply tied a naked prisoner to a tree and allowed mosquitoes and other biting flies to deliver as many as 9,000 bites per minute — a rate sufficient to drain a person’s blood by half in about two hours. And the stories of Apaches staking captives on anthills to ensure lingering and painful deaths are not merely the stuff of Hollywood westerns.
The epitome of insectan torture was developed by a 19th-century emir of Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan. He threw political enemies into a bug pit, a deep hole covered with an iron grille and stocked with sheep ticks and assassin bugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Really. I'm going to cut back on milk and honey.
Thanks for posting this fascinating history. If the writer, though, is suggesting that this could invite tit for tat, he lost me. Terrorism is encouraged by weakness, not outrage.
The Ancients seem to have somehow missed the more serious forms of torture such as “Panties on Head” or “Loud Clap of Hands” or even the “Shout Loudly at You.” How could that be?
Hmmmmm ..... the NYT is trying to sell Papers ?
using change we can believe in ?
I read the NYT Headline . . . knew some details...but didn’t read the entire story...drew the wrong conclusion.
I imitated a BHO drone/voter.
But the Conclusion is Catepillars are NOT TORTURE. but DON”T TELL THE ENEMY or he will use it as information....(is that what the article said ?)
Now THAT kind of caterpillar would do some real damage!
Send the Gitmos to Washington DC... Just one look at Pelosi should get them talking. Then they can ban her for torture.
Gory GGG here
True, but folks at the New York Times live in "liberal land" where truth is only a function of "feelings"...
I read the entire article and still don’t know what the point is. Are insects scary? Yes, some of them.
I freak out over spiders, although I come into contact with them constantly (I am a gardener and love the outdoors). I just don’t think about them, even though I know they are nearby when I dig into the ground, etc.
As I type this I have a BIG raised spot on my arm where my brother pulled a tick off me a few days ago (left the head inserted, and I tried to tell him not to do that, to place a hot match head on it so it pulls its head out).
I certainly hate mosquitos (who wouldn’t).
But catepillars? Are these terrorists such pansies they are afraid of catepillars?
Like I said, I didn’t see the point of the article. Yes, we “tortured,” more like inconvienenced, some really evil terrorists. These people have tortured and killed a lot of people. I wouldn’t have any problem hurting evil people like this.
We’ll never win another war if we have to worry about hurting someone or their feelings. We are doomed, unable to defend ourselves.
Heck, even a dog will defend herself and her pups!!!
Wikipedia on scaphism, not quite what NYT says it is:
Scaphism, also known as the boats, was an ancient Persian method of execution designed to inflict torturous death. The name comes from the Greek word skaphe, meaning “scooped (or hollowed) out”.
The naked person was firmly fastened within a back-to-back pair of narrow rowing boats (or a hollowed-out tree trunk), with the head, hands, and feet protruding. The condemned was forced to ingest milk and honey to the point of developing severe diarrhea, and more honey would be rubbed on his body so as to attract insects to the exposed appendages. They would then be left to float on a stagnant pond or be exposed to the sun. The defenseless individual’s feces accumulated within the container, attracting more insects, which would eat and breed within his or her exposed and increasingly gangrenous flesh. The feeding would be repeated each day in some cases to prolong the torture, so that dehydration or starvation did not provide them with the release of death. Death, when it eventually occurred, was probably due to a combination of dehydration, starvation and septic shock. Delirium would typically set in after a few days.
In other recorded versions, the insects did not eat the person; biting and stinging insects such as wasps, which were attracted by honey on the body, acted as the torture.
Death by scaphism was painful, humiliating, and protracted. Plutarch writes in his biography of Artaxerxes that Mithridates, sentenced to die in this manner for killing Cyrus the Younger, survived 17 days before dying.[1]
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From what I read, we allowed the suspect to see a caterpillar? or did we let the thing crawl on the suspect?
Unless it’s a hagmoth or a saddleback caterpillar I don’t see a problem.
The point of this article is beyond me.
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