How to force a false confession by digby

[EFerrari]

Establishing the baseline state is important to demonstrate to the HVD that he has no control over basic human needs. The baseline state also creates in the detainee a mindset in which he learns to perceive and value his personal welfare, comfort, and immediate needs more than the information he is protecting. The use of conditioning techniques do not generally bring immediate results; rather, it is the cumulative effect of these techniques, used over time and in combination with other interrogation techniques and intelligence exploitation methods, which achieve interrogation objectives. These conditioning techniques require little to no physical interaction between the detainee and the interrogator. The specific interrogation techniques are:

a. Nudity. The HVD’s clothes are taken and he remains nude until the interrogators provide clothes to him.

–CIA memo describing combined interrogation techniques, December 30, 2004


I have often thought that one of the problems with our obsessive focus on waterboarding was that we may have inadvertently legitimized all the other torture techniques they used. It's a common problem in advocacy --- you focus on the worst because it's the thing that will instantly convey the horror of the practice, but in the process you normalize lesser horrors that are just as wrong. It's a problem for which I have no solution. It happens all the time.

The case of Bradley Manning may be illustrative of that. He's been held, without charges, under punitive conditions that mirror in some respects the treatment of terrorist suspect detainees in the nation's foreign prison camps. However, he isn't being waterboarded, so there is resistance to the idea that this is torture. But it is:

“Removal of clothing was authorized by the Secretary of Defense for use at GTMO on December 2, 2002,” acknowledges the recently released U.S. Senate Armed Service Committee report on the use of harsh interrogation techniques. It also reports that the use of prolonged nudity proved so effective that, in January 2003, it was approved for use in Afghanistan and, in the fall of 2003, was adopted for use in Iraq.“Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody”

The Senate report came out shortly after a secret International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on CIA torture techniques used as part of its detention program was leaked by Mark Danner of the “New York Review of Books.” These reports provoked a storm of media attention, much of it focused on the use of waterboarding (or what the ICRC more aptly calls “suffocation by water”) and, in particular, its use on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times and Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-force-false-confession.html?

[Bragi]

1. Well done - kick

[leftstreet]

2. Remember Fox News and their 'waterboarding reporter' stories?

There were many threads here at the time.

See!? It's no big deal !!!111

Ugh. I always wondered why a Fox reporter didn't volunteer to experience rape


kick

[EFerrari]

4. It's frightening, the way abuse is so easily rationalized.

:(

[gratuitous]

3. I have been reliably informed

That Manning deserves whatever is meted out to him, because some very important people believe he might have done something very wrong. I'm still hung up on that whole due process thing, as well as that quaint old prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, so I have serious doubts. But there are folks - even right here at DU - who are eager and willing to tell me how wrong I am.

[EFerrari]

5. The charges are most serious, it's for his own good, do you have any proof?

[Solly Mack]

7. !

You rock

[Bragi]

8. I don't understand your posting

Are you invoking a secret of some sort known to "some important people" which would justify torture?

Seriously, I've no idea what you're talking about. Have you something specific?

(Also, are you saying you do care about due process and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, or not? It isn't clear.)

[Solly Mack]

9. gratuitous doesn't support torture and believes in (the) freedom from cruel and unusual punishment

gratuitous does support due process. gratuitous was being sardonic.

[Bragi]

10. Got it! thanks. /nt

[Poboy]

6. Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

[WingDinger]

11. This can be used to go after torturers, hammer and tong.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO immediate gratification. The only valid scenario, and it was presented millions of times, was: If your dear grandmother was slated to be decapitated, in some location that only the person you had hold of knew, would you give them a foot massage, or would you do anything, to find your grannies whereabouts? If there is no ticking timebomb, and this is known by all high ranking, any and all torture henceforth is with full malice, and aforethought. Only useful for creating a virtual "throwdown". Use a screwball to prop your evil agenda.

Good, we are now clear. Obama, don't torture. I dont know of any NEW victims. Watching Manning closely.

[EFerrari]

12. I have seen no evidence to suggest the black site at Bargram is closed.

And, what started all of this with Manning was his job processing prisoners out to Iraqi control and certain torture.

[WingDinger]

13. Negative evidence is not positive evidence.

[EFerrari]

14. What we'd need to do (and someone like Andy Worthington might be doing)

is to see what the replacement for "Hide prisoners from the Red Cross" McChrystal is up to.

[WingDinger]

15. Isn't Wikileaks still up and running? At least to start the heat.

I don't think there is enough pertinent info at this point for Obama to even want to torture. Personally, I don't think terrorists will extend themselves until all these mideast struggles are sorted out. If we keep democracy, and personhood obtainable and near, the terrorists will find very stingy funders of anarchy.

[EFerrari]

16. Well, it's sort of not about Obama.

McChrystal had a number of illegal "black" programs going. The Red Cross found a black site at Bagram. Worthington has documented that McChrystal was farming prisoners out to isolated positions to avoid the ICRC. This pre-dated Obama but it also kept going after he took office.

This is more about the Pentagon/CIA/State, corruption and the degree of lawlessness that is the norm in those places.

And, it's not about terrorists, but about prisoners.

[WingDinger]

17. If we went after the christian slayer, Mc Crystal, we would soon be going after Bush. ETC>

[EFerrari]

18. Yep. n/t