I guess I never got the memo... party in the USA!

Date: April 4, 1286

From: The burghers of Carcassonne

To: John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Richard Cheney

CC: Anyone with a taser, a waterboard, a billyclub, etc.

“Many prisoners have been put in similar situations, in which several, because of the severity of their tortures, have lost limbs and have been completely incapacitated. Many, because of the unbearable conditions and their great suffering, have died a most cruel death. In these prisons there is constantly heard an immense wailing, weeping, groaning, and gnashing of teeth. What more can one say? For these prisoners life is a torment and death a comfort. And thus coerced they say that what is false is true, choosing to die once rather than to endure more torture. As a result of these false and coerced confessions not only do those making the confessions perish, but so do the innocent people named by them…

“Whence it has come about that many of those who are newly cited to appear, hearing of the torments and trials of those who are detained in the mur and in its dungeons, wishing to save themselves, have fled to the jurisdiction of other kings. Others assert what is false is true; in which assertions they accuse not only themselves but other innocent people, that they may avoid the above mentioned pains, choosing to fall with dishonor into the hands of God rather than into those of perverse men. Those who thus confess afterward reveal to their close friends that those things they said to the inquisitors are not true, but rather false, and that they confessed out of fear of imminent danger…

“Likewise, and it is a shame to hear, certain vile persons, both defamed for heresy and condemned for false testimony, and, it is reported, guardians of the dungeons, seduced by an evil spirit, say with a diabolical suggestion to the imprisoned: ‘Wretches, why do you not confess so that you can be set free? Unless you confess, you will never leave this place, nor escape its torments!’ To which the prisoners reply: ‘My lord, what do we say? What should we say?’ And the jailers reply, ‘You should say this and this.’ And what they suggest is false and evil; and those wretches repeat what they have been told, although it is false, so that they may avoid the continuous torments to which they are subject. Yet in the end they perish, and cause innocent people to perish as well.”