Whatever happened to common sense?
Wednesday, February 9th, 2005Let’s see…
If you have a suspected Al Quaeda leader in custody, which would be the smarter choice:
1. Interrogate him and hold him for trial, and for potential use in the future. (Many possibilities here.)
2. Interrogate him using torture techniques that land him in a military hospital and kill him, thereby creating a powerful new martyr that helps Al Quaeda in their recruitment efforts?
Common sense and common decency both went down the drain here. Amer al-Enezi, a Kuwaiti Muslim fundamentalist in his 30s, was captured after a gun battle with police. Even if he was the bogeyman Kuwaiti security forces describe, torturing him to death was incredibly stupid.
According to the Reuters article on the event , “Enezi had been interrogated by police since his capture on January 31. Last night, he died at a military hospital due to a “collapse in blood circulation”, Lieutenant Colonel Adel al-Hashash of the Interior Ministry told the state news agency KUNA.”
The only other place I find the phrase “collapse in blood circulation” is in the book Crimes Against Women and Children: A Medico-Legal Guide. The phrase appears in the chapter entitled ‘Traumatology and clinical forensic medicine’. The subsections of this chapter include ‘Violence, trauma and injury’, ‘Types of injuries’ and ‘Complications associated with injury’.
In this last subsection we find:
The main systemic complications are shock, bleeding disorders and various types of embolism (e.g. blockage of a blood vessel by a blood clot, globules of fat or air bubbles). Shock and its consequences are the most important causes of death following an injury. It affects all organs but its effects are seen mainly in the brain, kidneys, liver, heart, lungs and adrenal glands. Shock refers to a state in which the blood circulation is inadequate to meet the necessary demands for nutrients (e.g. sugar) and oxygen to the tissues in the body with resultant damage of the tissues. This may lead to failure of the above-mentioned organs and death of the patient.
Bleeding disorders may result in organ disturbance as a result of bleeding into organs or the formation of clots in blood vessels with resultant blockage of blood flow. Embolism has similar effects on organ function because of blockage of blood flow. Shock is a condition where there is a collapse in blood circulation in which the blood pressure in the arteries is so low that it fails to circulate the blood fully to the tissues.
Let’s hope that our allies figure out quickly that a live suspect is much more valuable than a dead one.