Joe Conason: Liz Cheney's Pro-Torture Front Sembler, Enabled "Enhanced Interrogation" of U.S. Teens

[Hissyspit]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2010/02/09/torturedkids/index.html?source=newsletter

TUESDAY, FEB 9, 2010 19:10 EST
Behind Liz Cheney's group, a weird legacy of torture
Financing Cheney's pro-torture front is Melvin Sembler, who once enabled "enhanced interrogation" of American teens
BY JOE CONASON

- snip -

For a sergeant who tortures his child, however, the relevant model probably comes from somewhere high in the chain of command. At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his daughter Liz Cheney. The financier behind that outfit is one Melvin Sembler, a curious character whose résumé indicates that he is all too familiar with the "enhanced interrogation" of children.

- snip -

His own creation was a federally funded outfit known as Straight, Inc., which eventually fell apart amid multiple lawsuits and accusations of torture by teenagers abused in its secretive facilities.

The best reporting on Straight’s frightening history in recent years has appeared in Reason, the libertarian magazine, under the byline of Maia Szalavitz. Some of the techniques that eventually brought Sembler’s organization to the attention of law enforcement authorities will be eerily familiar to anyone who remembers what happened at Abu Ghraib: humiliating punishments, broken bones, starvation, sleep deprivation, stress positions, verbal assaults, eight-hour sessions of questioning, and so on.

- snip -

Eventually Straight crumbled amid those multimillion-dollar settlements, newspaper exposés and government probes, thanks to the activism of Richard Bradbury, a young man whose experience resembles the stories of innocent Iraqis who were caught up in the torture machine over there.

Again according to Szalavitz, Bradbury "was forcibly enrolled in the program in 1983, when he was 17. His sister had had a drug problem, and Straight demanded that he be screened for one as well. After an eight-hour interrogation in a tiny room, Bradbury, who was not an addict, was nonetheless held. He later described beatings and continuous verbal assaults, which for him centered on sexual abuse he’d suffered as a young boy. Staffers and other participants called him a 'faggot,' told him he'd led his abusers on, and forced him to admit 'his part' in the abuse."

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[Zoeisright]

1. And what happened to those who ran 'Straight'?

Why is Sembler not in a federal prison? Where is the justice here?

[slay]

2. K&R - It's fucked up...

this is fucked up what happened to these kids - not surprised there's a cheney connection. it's fucked up that cheney and bush got away with their illegal war - that cheney's old company haliburton profited so greatly from the war. but hell, they are doing it RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN! i'm not sure why people just accepted that bush and all his evil buddies would get away with it - but we fucking let them! i think americans are like battered wives at this point. we're trapped in an abusive relationship with huge corporations and a government that does not care what we think, or about what's right, at all - but we are afraid to leave them - or even stand up for ourselves. least some of these kids stood up to their abusers. where is the war investigation here in the USA like they are having in the UK? where is the investigation into war profiteering by haliburton, kbr, and whatever else they call themselves.. yeah - it's fucked up. ugh. :banghead:

[SpiralHawk]

3. "Torture. It's our Republicon thing. Sneer." - xVP Dickie 'Five-Military-Deferments' Cheney (R)