Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA's Manual

Post #155,255 by JayMehaffey 5/14/04 10:42:26 PM Reply	Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA's Manual [link\|http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0514-05.htm\|Common Dreams] THE PHOTOS from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison are snapshots not of simple brutality or a breakdown in discipline but of CIA torture techniques that have metastasized over the past 50 years like an undetected cancer inside the US intelligence community. From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led secret research into coercion and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak. After experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, and sensory deprivation, this CIA research produced a new method of torture that was psychological, not physical -- best described as "no touch" torture. In the first stage, interrogators employ the simple, nonviolent techniques of hooding or sleep deprivation to disorient the subject; sometimes sexual humiliation is used as well. Once the subject is disoriented, interrogators move on to a second stage with simple, self-inflicted discomfort such as standing for hours with arms extended. In this phase, the idea is to make victims feel responsible for their own pain and thus induce them to alleviate it by capitulating to the interrogator's power. In his statement on reforms at Abu Ghraib last week, General Geoffrey Miller, former chief of the Guantanamo detention center and now prison commander in Iraq, offered an unwitting summary of this two-phase torture. "We will no longer, in any circumstances, hood any of the detainees," the general said. "We will no longer use stress positions in any of our interrogations. And we will no longer use sleep deprivation in any of our interrogations." The majority of Abu Ghraib pictures show things that could have been taken straight from CIA manuals. Very interesting, but nothing that could be described as proof. Jay
Post #155,402 by Ashton 5/16/04 5:50:30 PM Reply	The Neuropsychiatric-LRPD explains, entirely - this schizoid attitude, endemic to the mix of mawkish Puritanism and that tiny core of anarchic surly rebels which formed Murica, and gave it its permanent dyslexia and its reliance on euphemism to escape facing >\| things: I'm a bastard. I know I'm a bastard. I'm comfortable and balanced with my bastardliness. My inner bastard is emotionally nourished. (ie we'll 'say' Anything! just to make a problem go back under the sheets, not to be faced on My Watch\ufffd cha cha cha) Have another Big Mac, Supersized, skinny..
Post #155,436 by pwhysall 5/17/04 2:06:55 AM Reply	I'm an Ashton-quote! :-D \\o/ Peter [link\|http://www.debian.org\|Shill For Hire] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Blog]
Post #155,403 by rcareaga 5/16/04 6:10:28 PM Reply	From billmon's blog today Read it and Weep Sy Hersh blows the cover - all of it - off the real story behind Abu Ghraib. And it's about as bad as I had expected - maybe even a little worse. I'll let you discover the grisly details for yourself. But the thematic essence - the back story to the back story - is right here: The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was \ufffdThe Arab Mind,\ufffd a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. \ufffdThe segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world,\ufffd Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, \ufffdor any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private.\ufffd The Patai book, an academic told me, was \ufffdthe bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.\ufffd In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged\ufffd\ufffdone, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation.\ufffd We're truly through the looking glass now, and while Sy quotes several intelligence sources who think - and fear - that the scandal will eventually result in a Church Commission-like investigation into the seamy side of the war against terror, I myself doubt it. As nation, as a degenerate republic morphing into empire, I think we're beyond that sort of exercise now. It will be interesting, though, to see how the system contains and buries the scandal. [link\|http://billmon.org/archives/001481.html\|link] A "degenerate republic morphing into empire"—ah, wish I'd said that (Oscar Wilde would not have prospered in the Internet Age). Incidentally, I note that the Voice of the Philbot is not much heard these latter weeks on our green and pleasant board. The effort to starve it having fallen short of success (though not before eliciting some melodious squawks), could it be that the Fighting Fedora has been laid low with—food poisoning? Baghdad Belly, anyone? cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #155,406 by tablizer 5/16/04 6:56:04 PM Reply	When to torture? I don't think very many agree that our intelligence branch should never torture to get information, but it is best to have clearer rules about when and when not to. A high-ranking official with a good likelyhood of having key knowledge is probably going to get tough interrigation of some sort. No nation is going to pass up key info. Here are my draft guidelines: 1. No kinky sex crap 2. Make sure the film does not leak out 3. Limit it to only those who are a likely source 4. No permanent physical damage. 5. Let well-trained professionals do it, not amatures and contractors 6. Try softer "mind game" approaches before resorting to physical measures ________________ oop.ismad.com
Post #155,407 by inthane-chan 5/16/04 7:01:33 PM Reply	The problem with torture... ...is that the victim is most likely to tell the interrogator what the victim thinks the interrogator wants to hear. What the interrogator wants to hear isn't always the truth. Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
Post #155,629 by Nightowl 5/17/04 10:30:04 PM Reply	This is the truth and it's worst failing. When under torture, the only thing the person can imagine is making it stop, so they say anything, do anything to make it stop. That's why psychological mind games work much better than anything physical, although they can fall into the same trap of the person saying anything to stop the mind games. This is one of torture's worst failures, and why it is rarely used when truly seeking the truth, because you rarely get that by it's use. Nightowl >8# "AHHHHH! Relatives coming out of the woodwork!!!!!!"
Post #155,408 by dmarker 5/16/04 7:09:24 PM Reply	There is a real dichotomy re this issue Ceratinly for me. If someone was known to have participated in a plot to do harm on a large scale and the person gets captured, I can't bring myself to oppose him being tortured to gain information. I am totally opposed to torture for revenge or just for torture's sake. I would prefer techniques that force the victim to give information without having to mutilate of physically attack them. That of course is possible but not all the time. The dichotomy is that once we accept the right to torture, someone has to make the call & sadly, not everyone given that power seems to get it right & thus we have the spectacle in Iraq of citizenry caught in sweeps, being subjected to forms of torture then being released because there was never any charge or issue against them, just a need to milk information. I have no easy answer to this problem & can see the difficulty faced by the US military in Afghanistan & Iraq. But, can't condone what was being done to people who were merely swept rather than known targets for questioning. Doug M
Post #155,422 by deSitter 5/16/04 10:29:40 PM Reply	CIA's policy ..before 9/11 was - torture not only strictly prohibited by operatives, but even association with it tangentially was grounds for termination (job-loss). This from Bob Bahr, in a Salon article. Torture as policy is the work of Rumsfeld and his brownshirts (Hersch, NewYorker.com). The man is a scum stain on the toilet bowl of history. Torture is not only morally reprehensible, it doesn't work. This has been known for a long time. Torture is used not to gain information, but to terrorize and spread fear by tyrants (such as the Rumperor). There is never any context in which it is justified. Even shooting prisoners for logistical reasons is more moral. Once again the CIA is being scapegoated for the sins of this administration. How long will they allow themselves to be sodomized by Bush and his swinging dicks? -drl
Post #155,428 by JayMehaffey 5/16/04 11:47:44 PM Reply	Re: CIA's policy CIA's policy ..before 9/11 was - torture not only strictly prohibited by operatives, but even association with it tangentially was grounds for termination (job-loss). That is rather optimistic, it would be better to say that publicity of any connection with torture was grounds for termination. And in theory the rules still say no torture. Still, evidence suggests that somebody in the PNAC crowd is responsible for markedly lowering the regulations and enforcement of torture rules. It seems to have become a "don't ask, don't tell" situation where the lower level intelligence officers produced intelligence and nobody talked about how they got it. Torture is not only morally reprehensible, it doesn't work. Depends on how you are using it. If your goal is to extract information through fear of more torture, then no. But the goal in this case was to mentally disorient the victems and prepare them for interrogation sessions. Disorient them and make them willing to talk. My understanding is that the CIA intelligence officers feel that if they can get you talking they can get information out of you, one way or another. But they need something to get you talking, and preferably in a state where you are not real coherent. Jay
Post #155,412 by rcareaga 5/16/04 7:27:40 PM Reply	Re: When to torture? tablizer asserts I don't think very many agree that our intelligence branch should never torture to get information... Count me among the Not Very Many, then. And of course, someone will trot out the old "Terrorist X, in custody, has planted a thermonuclear device somewhere in Manhattan, and it'll blow in just one hour unless we sweat 'im..." chestnut. So let's make it a little more interesting. You've rounded up ten suspects, one of whom is Terrorist X and the other nine of whom know nothing about the plot: wrong place, wrong time. Do we torture them too? Did I mention that we don't know T. X's age, gender, race or nationality? OK, a hundred suspects? A thousand? See, you can get as silly as you want to with these hypotheticals. The best reason for saying "never" is that if you say "sometimes," the special circumstances proliferate and pretty soon, well, hell, it's SOP. Only please to call it—oh, what's that nice Israeli euphemism (I honestly can't bring it to mind, but it sounds so much cleaner than torture, something we know the heroic kibbutzniks who made the desert bloom and who have that very convenient moral blank check with no expiration date from the beastly Hun, would never, never do)—and not "torture"...such an ugly word... cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #155,413 by boxley 5/16/04 7:39:34 PM Reply	any time torture is used the full consequences of the law should be imposed, torture the 10 if you wish, save the day and get 20 years in the cage for doing so. There should be consequences for such acts, serious and always imposed otherwise as you said, SOP. thanx, bill Time for Lord Stanley to get a Tan questions, help? [link\|mailto:pappas@catholic.org\|email pappas at catholic.org]
Post #155,431 by JayMehaffey 5/16/04 11:55:04 PM Reply	Better to say never Better to say never, if nothing else simply because oversight of a secret intelligence group is inherantly weak. As soon as we allow any torture the rules will be abused. Jay
Post #155,409 by boxley 5/16/04 7:14:45 PM Reply	a couple of notes on a few "standard" techniques hooding is for convenience, a prisoner should never see another prisoner, with hoods you can move more than one at a time. Nakedness is to invoke shame as your jailers (not the interigators, you will always be dressed when being interigated. sleeplessnes. Make sure the rules clearly state that you may only sleep between midnite and 6am but thats when the interigation and softening hours. poor sanitary conditions, breaking the dignity of the prisoner. Extreme hi illumine strobes accompanied by an airraid siren in a soundproofed room will break a persoality quickly to answer in a fugue state. All standard stuff around for ages standard brainwashing techniques except for the sex stuff. That part builds humiliation but also resentment against the interogators. That is not a good thing and is where these guys went off the res big time. Gay S&M movies, wont be long before you can buy them on the web with real mixed with fake. thanx, bill Time for Lord Stanley to get a Tan questions, help? [link\|mailto:pappas@catholic.org\|email pappas at catholic.org]

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