You gotta be kidding me: We tortured Iraqis with SEAL training

[WilliamPitt]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/opinion/14blochemarks.html?hp

Doing Unto Others as They Did Unto Us

By M. GREGG BLOCHE and JONATHAN H. MARKS
Published: November 14, 2005

Washington — How did American interrogation tactics after 9/11 come to include abuse rising to the level of torture? Much has been said about the illegality of these tactics, but the strategic error that led to their adoption has been overlooked.

The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession.

Fearful of future terrorist attacks and frustrated by the slow progress of intelligence-gathering from prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Pentagon officials turned to the closest thing on their organizational charts to a school for torture. That was a classified program at Fort Bragg, N.C., known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Based on studies of North Korean and Vietnamese efforts to break American prisoners, SERE was intended to train American soldiers to resist the abuse they might face in enemy custody.

The Pentagon appears to have flipped SERE's teachings on their head, mining the program not for resistance techniques but for interrogation methods. At a June 2004 briefing, the chief of the United States Southern Command, Gen. James T. Hill, said a team from Guantánamo went "up to our SERE school and developed a list of techniques" for "high-profile, high-value" detainees. General Hill had sent this list - which included prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation, stress positions, physical assault and the exploitation of detainees' phobias - to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who approved most of the tactics in December 2002.

...more...

[NNN0LHI]

1. That is why we were warned that Osama was coming to get us in scuba gear

Chances are I too would be very creative if someone were applying electricity to my genitals.

Don

[Squatch]

2. I looked over that article twice, now, and have not found any

reference to SEALs or the training (other than SERE) that they go through.

[WilliamPitt]

3. SERE is integral to SEAL training

It's one of the last things they go through.

[Squatch]

4. Your OP was misleading...

SERE is only a small component of SEAL training. In fact, SERE training is available (and sometimes compulsory) for military airmen and air crew, non-conventional forces (like Rangers, etc), and covert members of civilian agencies who operate in foreign areas.

[Aviation Pro]

8. One of the finest American warriors

..ever to serve in uniform, the late Col. Nick Rowe (assassinated int he Phillipines in 1989), developed the current SERE (Level C) curriculum taught at Bragg. He developed the content based on his experience at the hands of the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam conflict. His book, "Five Years to Freedom," is the bible and textbook for resisting the interrogation techniques that are used against POWs.

[Wilber_Stool]

10. During my Army Infantry training

in '69-'70, we had a 24 hour escape and evasion course we had run. Same thing with capture and interrogation. A lot of high stress shit.
I didn't get caught.

[sellitman]

5. Where is the outrage at Rumsfeld?

It seems to have slipped a bit. Has our outrage at Cheney and junior overshadowed it? It shouldn't. Torture is not an American Value.

[ComerPerro]

6. I can't wait until they take this even further

And start comparing torture to S&M practices that some "values voters" and Rush listeners probably get off on.

Can't wait until I hear Limbaugh say "Some detainees, it reports, were tied up, bound and gagged, had their body entirely shaved, were forced to lay naked on the floor with a pile of other men, were sexually molested, and had electrodes connected to their testicles.
Folks, where I come from, we call that 'Friday night'". In fact, my lovely wife Daryn and I..."


:puke:

[DBoon]

7. This is our "room 101"

It is worth noting that what finally broke Winston Smith was not physical torture but the exploitation of his deepest fears ("psychological pressure"). Orwell understood that what it takes to break a soul is not physical pain, but psychological terror.

Remember thsi when some right wing gasbag tries to justify use of psychological terror by claiming it isn't really torture, just "fraternity pranks"

'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'

The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.

'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.'

He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.

'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'

[leveymg]

9. This may be one source of many for the new doctrine. . .

but, this makes the practices at Abu Ghraib seem more benign than they actually were. The beatings to death and actual dog attacks are definitely not part of any training program which US Special Forces might employ on themselves. I'm not sure about the smearing with feces.

The Israelis and the US seem to have perfected the current regime of torture -- waterboarding, immersion in ice water, sleep deprivation, nauseous colors, accoustical assault, isolation, induced phobias -- that don't leave visible permanent scars.

Then, there's the torture techniques used in Uzbekistan, Egypt and Poland/Romania. Those are a cross between the Inquisition and Gestapo techniques - lots of hot instruments and electrical generators. Regimes in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa that were trained by the KGB and CIA used the beating of the bottom of the feet and suspension from the ceiling by the elbows -- the so-called MIG position -- a lot during the 1970s and 1980s.

The KGB and CIA also developed a host of drug-induced interrogation methods during the MK-ULTRA and Artichoke programs during the 1950s and early 1960s. The use of psychotropic drugs during interrogations was outlawed by international agreement. I haven't heard that these are again being employed by the US, but nothing surprises me any more about this Administration and its goons.