Internal Rifts on Road to Torment - Interviews Offer More Nuanced Look At Roles of CIA Contractors

[kpete]

Source: Washington Post

Internal Rifts on Road to Torment
Interviews Offer More Nuanced Look At Roles of CIA Contractors, Concerns Of Officials During Interrogations

By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 19, 2009

In April 2002, as the terrorism suspect known as Abu Zubaida lay in a Bangkok hospital bed, top U.S. counterterrorism officials gathered at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., for a series of meetings on an urgent problem: how to get him to talk.

Put him in a cell filled with cadavers, was one suggestion, according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the brainstorming sessions. Surround him with naked women, was another. Jolt him with electric shocks to the teeth, was a third.

One man's certitude lanced through the debate, according to a participant in one of the meetings. James E. Mitchell, a retired clinical psychologist for the Air Force, had studied al-Qaeda resistance techniques.

"The thing that will make him talk," the participant recalled Mitchell saying, "is fear."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/18/AR2009071802065.html

[Vidar]

1. Dr. Mengele would be proud.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. Who gets to pick the naked women for this assignment?

These morons actually think they are in some Hollywood production. The fact is that effective interrogations have been conducted for decades by investigators without having to pull fingernails or waterboarding or repeatedly slamming a head into a wall. Fear is an acceptable motivator as are greed, revenge, salvation and a host of other aspects of the human condition that do not include physical torture.

[Liberation Angel]

3. k&R everyone should read this

important

[Liberation Angel]

4. Jesus! These creeps called themselves "Masters of the Mind Fuck"

read the link, page 2 of this incredibly informative article.

these reporters deserve a pulitzer for this reporting.

Getting that tidbit: "Masters of the Mind Fuck" is simply priceless insight reporting.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. Not so sophisticated as James Bond!

[bobthedrummer]

15. But highly effective...

[bobthedrummer]

6. "The CIA's torture teachers: Psychologists helped the CIA exploit a secret military program to

develop brutal interrogation tactics-likely with the approval of the Bush White House" by Mark Benjamin (6-21-07 Salon)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/21/cia_sere/print.html

"The Psychologists Behind Abusive Interrogations of Detainees" by Eric Umansky (7-2-08 ProPublica)
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-psychologists-behind-abusive-interrogations-of-detainees-702

#10 Most Suppressed Story of 2008 (Project Censored)
"APA complicit in CIA torture"
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/10-apa-complicit-in-cia-torture/

"Tortured Profession: Psychologists Warned of Abusive Interrogations, Then Helped Craft Them" by Sheri Fink (5-5-09 ProPublica)
http://www.propublica.org/article/tortured-profession-psychologists-warned-of-abusive-interrogations-505

"Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From The Past" (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 122)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/index.htm

"The Interrogation Documents: Debating U.S. Policy and Methods" (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book 127)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/index.htm

"The Militarization of Neuroscience" by Hugh Gusterson (4-9-07 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/the-militarization-neuroscience

"In Contravention of Conventional Wisdom: CIA 'no touch' torture makes sense out of mind control allegations" by Cheryl Welsh (January 2008 Mind Justice)
http://www.mindjustice.org/wisdom.htm

I especially loathe professional mind fuckers...

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

7. kicking and recommending

[crickets]

8. Sick. Bastards. All.

No amount of nuance is going to change that. In addition to hammering home how illegal and immoral torture is, I dearly wish we were having a national discussion about the corrosive psychopathy that underlies the desire to torture at all.

[bobthedrummer]

12. kick

[Wednesdays]

9. K&R

:kick:

[Liberation Angel]

10. kick

[bobthedrummer]

11. "Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq: A CorpWatch Report on L-3/Titan, (updated Dec. 2008) with

Recommendations from Amnesty International" by Pratap Chatterjee (CorpWatch)
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15253

[bobthedrummer]

13. This is another one of those threads that needs to be kicked ever so often...

"Torture: An Author and a Resister" by Ann Wright (5-1-09 Truthout)

"As a Bush administration political appointee Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, Jay Bybee, a Mormon, wrote one of four torture memos released last month."

http://www.truthout.org/050109A

[Liberation Angel]

14. Master of the Mind Fuck Kick

jut a reminder of what we are STILL up against until Obama imprisons these sociopathic cretins.

[dccrossman]

16. Tried to rec, but been 24 hours

This just pisses me off more than I can even express. These morons knew they were over the line.

They were simply living out Cheney's fantasies.

If you get a chance, kpete, repost during the day when it'll get the recs to hit the front page. More people need to see this.

Thanks,