US approved sleep depravation, nudity for Guantanamo inmates: report

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040509/pl_afp/us_iraq_prisoners&cid=1521&ncid=1478

(Posting this here because more than 12 hours old. Previously posted by someone else and locked in LBN because links didn't go to story.)


WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government last year approved interrogation techniques for use at its detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that permit reversing the normal sleep patterns of detainees and exposing them to heat, cold, loud music and bright lights.

Citing unnamed defense officials, The Washington Post newspaper said a classified list of about 20 techniques was approved at the highest levels of the Pentagon (news - web sites) and the Justice Department (news - web sites) in April 2003, according to a report on its website.

The list represents the first official policy permitting interrogators to use physically and psychologically stressful methods, the paper added.

(snip)

"We wanted to find a legal way to jack up the pressure," The Post quoted one of the lawyers involved in writing the guidelines as saying. "We wanted a little more freedom than in a US prison, but not torture."

(snip)


"They hate us for our freedoms!" I guess in this case, it's really true.

[MikeG]

1. Just how does that nudity thing get approved?

[many a good man]

2. This *resident has a morality problem

Immoral leadership goes straight to the top. Do these guys have a thing for seeing Middle Eastern in the nude?

I want to see that classified list of "about 20 techniques."

[robbedvoter]

3. I remember it was discussed on Crossfire and Carville was approving

No details - just torture 'for the sake of National security". That's when he lost any respect from me.

[rucky]

4. From Newsweek 08/03: "We Have Ways of Making You Talk"

This is no surprise. Here's an article where a Military Intel insider reveals their tactics...

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068190/

(snip)
Actually, we know from other documents declassified over the years that when it comes to questioning hard cases, dependency is a whole lot more important than “trust.” Suspected bad guys are isolated and dependent for every bit of information they receive, even the time of day. The interrogators have the power to grant or withhold permission for every bodily function, including sleep. It’s amazing how fast most people break down under such circumstances.

If that doesn’t work, the treatment can get rough. But you have to read between Jacoby’s lines to figure that out. Because the enemy in the war on terror is so hard to identify and doesn’t fight the kind of war the United States spent trillions of dollars to wage, Jacoby tells us “innovative and aggressive solutions are required.” A “robust program” has been put in place during which “interrogations have been conducted at many locations worldwide by personnel from DIA and other organizations in the Intelligence Community.”

As one of Jacoby’s subordinates in the U.S. Navy explained to me, the idea is to keep most of the important players out of the United States. Apparently there is no shortage of black holes in which to soften up the bad guys, although only a few are publicized. “The most interesting thing about interrogations is how the U.S. government and military capitalizes on the dubious status (as sovereign states) of Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and aircraft carriers to avoid certain legal questions about rough interrogations,” my friend told me. “Whatever humanitarian pronouncements a state such as ours may make about torture, states don’t perform interrogations, individual people do. What’s going to stop an impatient soldier, in a supralegal location, from whacking one nameless, dehumanized shopkeeper among many?”

Not the law, certainly. But should we complain? These American interrogators have worked their magic on some of the very bad actors in Al Qaeda, which is one reason the United States is a little safer today than it was two years ago.

But there are some real problems with all this. First of all, as a Lebanese torturer—er, interrogator—of my acquaintance once told me, the real challenge comes if someone is telling the truth: “How do you know?” And what if that truth doesn’t fit with what you really want to hear? And what your bosses really believe—really know in their souls to be the truth? What if, for instance, there really are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because they really were destroyed to keep United Nations inspectors from finding them? The United States now has captured 37 of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis in the famous pack of cards. That’s what all of them are saying, and lesser-known scientists have told the same story. Yet still the WMD beat goes on.