Americans Don't Have A Clue Of What Happened After Bush/Cheney Decided To SPIT On Geneva Conventions

[kpete]

Torture Generates Turmoil at the APA
by Meteor Blades
Tue Aug 12, 2008 at 06:42:44 AM PDT

Unlike the people in Stalin’s Soviet Union, no U.S. official risked disappearing into the prison for dissent. Senior State Department and Defense Department official, field commanders, intelligence and FBI officers, and frontline soldiers dissented. They were usually ignored. A few were threatened with administrative sanctions; a few were reassigned; a few requested reassignment. The possibility of dissent makes the silence and complicity of senior and frontline medical personnel in the abuse and neglect of prisoners that much more inexplicable and inexcusable.
– Dr. Steven H. Miles, M.D., Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror

Despite Dr. Miles’s book, despite Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, despite reports such as the Physicians for Human Rights' Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and its Impact, Americans still don't have anywhere near a full picture of what happened after the Cheney-Bush administration decided to spit on the Geneva Conventions, redefine and fine-tune torture and treat human beings like the inferior creatures it thought them to be.

What we do know is horrible enough. Most horrible of all is knowing that medical personnel and psychologists violated the most basic ethics of their professions – Do No Harm – by participating in and helping to design "enhanced" interrogations designed to break prisoners. Some did break. Some were killed. This systematic torture focused on sensory and sleep deprivation, overstimulation, and dependency creation. Massive amounts of pain and fear were also included. For their part, psychologists "reverse-engineered" the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) program – designed to help American soldiers and marines resist torture – as a means to teach interrogators how to employ torture against captives.

Let me repeat that. Training established to help American prisoners of war cope with, or at least anticipate, their captors' efforts to break them down was "reverse-engineered" as a means to break down prisoners at Guantánamo and "black sites" run by the CIA or military intelligence operations in Europe, Asia, North Africa and the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Talk about becoming the enemy.

much more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/12/4517/58276/901/566587

[lonestarnot]

1. K & R

Reverse engineering disgusting!

[NightWatcher]

2. most people dont not want to (nor cannot) fathom what "we" have done

If they opened their minds to the possiblities of all the horrible, evil things we have done, their fragile little thought precept of what "the good old USA" stands for would come crushing down. They need to think that we have god on our side and that we stand for all things good, mom, apple pie and such. This is why it is far easier to label and questioners as "conspiracy nuts" instead of re-evaluate your perception when new information comes to light.

What would happen if some former official came out and said (and could prove), "the cia killed JFK, RFK, MLK, and blamed it on patsies", "we faked the moon landing", and "we created 9/11"???

To ponder this would challenge everything that the vast majority believe to be true. They cannot handle it and would stick their heads back in the sand to carry on like everything was okie dokie.

[Arctic Dave]

5. Peoples self-deception is one the greatest assets

the government has for keeping the masses corralled. This is what makes false flags so easy to accomplish. No one ever wants to believe that their own team would screw them over and lie to them about it.

You know this.

[gratuitous]

3. You're saying what, then? That we should investigate or something?

Wouldn't that be unnecessarily divisive, and expose our country and its military to ridicule and embarrassment? And point out not only who promulgated and carried out the policies of torture, but who was complicit in keeping the facts from the public? What if there were some Democrats involved?

Wait, this is sounding better all the time. Never mind.

[NashVegas]

4. The APA Should Revoke The Licenses Of Every Enabler

[The Stranger]

6. Outrage fatigue.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. and it will ultimately provide justification for the torture of Americans who are captured.

[Senator]

8. K&R&Impeach For Torture Alone