Torture is against the law. It is always wrong. It shocks the conscience. It shames the nation. It now turns out it was shaped by psychologists. Even before it was "legally authorized." Let's look at the facts.
Abu Zubaida was captured in March of 2002. And for the first two weeks, during which time his wounds (from being captured) were treated, he was questioned in a non-threatening manner by the FBI. He was cooperative and gave valuable information, the most important of which was the name of Kalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11.
Two weeks after the initial interrogations, the treatment was changed:
A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.By the summer it was changed drastically:
When the CIA began what it called an "increased pressure phase" with captured terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida in the summer of 2002, its first step was to limit the detainee's human contact to just two people. One was the CIA interrogator, the other a psychologist.Psychologists would have known about the experiments where volunteers were willing to follow orders given by a psychologist, to administer increasing levels of electric shocks to persons who failed to "learn" a task. Who better, then, to utilize that information so as to enforce compliance with the torture program they designed?
During the extraordinary weeks that followed, it was the psychologist who apparently played the more critical role. According to newly released Justice Department documents, the psychologist provided ideas, practical advice and even legal justification for interrogation methods that would break Abu Zubaida, physically and mentally. Extreme sleep deprivation, waterboarding, the use of insects to provoke fear -- all were deemed acceptable, in part because the psychologist said so.
Psychologists would have known that the first rule of our profession, as in medicine is: Do no harm.
So why did they torture?
Like everyone else in this despicable torture "program" the psychologists and physicians were carefully selected. Nothing was left to chance. Lawyers were willing participants, ready to bend the law to achieve the aims of extracting information via torture. Psychologists were willing participants, ready to use their skills and knowledge against human persons to achieve the aims of personality breakdown as enablers of the interrogation process.
How was this accomplished? Via psychological assessment. Of both a prisoner and his torture designers and monitors:
The CIA dispatched personnel from its office of medical services to each secret prison and evaluated medical professionals involved in interrogations "to make sure they could stand up, psychologically handle it," according to a former CIA official.If you were able to stomach the so-called DoJ "authorization" to torture Zubaida, you saw the description of his personality. And rather than "weak points" they describe him as resilient, they seem to have built a case for why it is necessary to break down his personality:
.........
The agency then used a psychological assessment of Abu Zubaida to find his vulnerable points.
He is confident, self- assured and possesses an air of authority. ... He is intelligent and intellectually curious. He displays "excellent self-discipline." The assessment describes him as a perfectionist, persistent, private, and highly capable in his social interactions. He is very guarded about opening up to others... tends not to trust others easily. He is also "quick to recognize the moods and motivations of others." Furthermore he is proud of his ability to lie and deceive others successfully.So they built a "case" - using psychological assessment - of a person they describe as so strong and so resilient that nothing but torture will break him down. So I am asking:
Where is that report? Where is the raw data upon which that assessment was made? Where are the tapes that would prove how uncooperative they say he was? Where are the tapes that would prove how narcissistic and unbreakable he was deemed to be? Does the psychological report really "fit" the raw data?Let's subject that report to the same careful scrutiny as these torture memos.
Because that report was used to "justify" stepping up the interrogation in ways that broke the law.
Mind you, all of this was done well before any secret legal memos purported to "legalize" torture! And mind you, torture is always 100% wrong, unethical, illegal.
A detainee, held in secret, without recourse to the Red Cross, without recourse to any legal protection, was systematically probed by psychologists for his weak points, while described by these same psychologists as so strong and resilient that only torture would break him down. The point of the torture was personality breakdown. And its willing designers were psychologists.
Personality breakdown is not temporary. Personality breakdown is, in effect, a state of permanent mental torture, where nightmares and flashbacks and every other sort of PTSD symptom becomes one's daily life. All of that happening while the person remains jailed in secret, subjected to isolation, humiliation, degradation and deprivations of every sort. Induced mental illness of the worst possible sort - and left to languish in solitary confinement with no legal recourse.
This is what we've done to a human person. (Even animal research would never allow such treatment.)
We have legal memos supposedly justifying torture. Where were the ethicists?
Personality breakdown of Abu Zubaida was the aim. Some say he was crazy to start with. Some claim he was mentally strong as a rock. The latter claim was used to justify torture. But either way, torture is wrong.
But there was another effect. His captors were also traumatized by what they witnessed. They were traumatized watching a man systematically degraded and dehumanized, stripped of clothing, deprived of sleep and adequate nutrition, forced to listen to deafening sounds, to endure cold, to endure painful forced positions, to endure physical abuse of the worst sort. The captors had to watch this. This too is a kind of torture. Imagine yourself - forced to watch, day by day, as a human being is deliberately MADE to break down physically and mentally. Even an animal would get better treatment than they gave this human person. And others.
Permanent personality breakdown. A lifetime of PTSD symptoms. Of nightmares. Flashbacks. Depression. Anxiety. A living hell - deliberately induced - after they knew he really had nothing more to tell.
Where are these other poor souls that we now know are also suffering, likely from PTSD symptoms, simply from having been forced to witness someone break down right in front of their eyes? We know the health care personnel were carefully selected (sadists?). What about the regular CIA interrogators? Where are they? How many folks are now on disability? With possibly a lifetime of PTSD symptoms - due to watching the dehumanization of a human person? Oh, they're out there. We now have proof:
Abu Zubaydah had provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs, according to one former intelligence official with direct knowledge of the case. Instead, watching his torment caused great distress to his captors, the official said.I'm beginning to think that the reason why there will be no prosecutions of lower level folks is because the government knows they too have broken down mentally, they too are emotional wrecks, and if they were brought to trial, then we would have the public acknowledgment, based on psychological assessments - that torture destroys normal human personalities on both sides of the torture chamber. Unless, of course, they have been carefully screened to make certain they won't break down.
Even for those who believed that brutal treatment could produce results, the official said, "seeing these depths of human misery and degradation has a traumatic effect."
What type of personality does not break down watching torture - day after day? You be the judge. Among them, likely, the health care professionals, carefully screened - to not break down.
How did they know to carefully screen them to not break down?
PERMALINK
We, as a people, must be.
April 18, 2009 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
After hearing everybody accuse Bush of being a "torturer" I was expecting to read about electrocution, decapitation, dismemberment, execution, etc.
April 18, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry to hear your conscience is not shocked...
April 18, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
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April 19, 2009 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
If torture's aim was to inflict the greatest amount of pain, then yes you would be correct. Things like knives under fingernails and gasoline in open wounds would be torture. But if torture is about inflicting the greatest amount of fear, then putting people in certain situations or making them believe certain things would be the worst kind of torture.
Because, Bill, ultimately fear is about belief/anticipation. You're afraid if you believe/anticipate something really awful is about to happen--whether it's that you're going to drown, or that the object of your greatest fear is going to present itself to you.
I understand your confusion. I think you're just mistaking the objective of torture.
April 19, 2009 9:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Torture is an actor turning a character into a prop.
To be a character and experience an actor turning you into a prop is to experience what Marlin Brando described as "the horror... the horror."
And you're so right: it's existential horror and existential disintegration. This does not necessarily entail physical pain. It doesn't have to. To lose your personhood is the greatest pain of all.
April 19, 2009 10:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're so right. Because it's an "interaction" where one party alone determines the next cruelty.
April 19, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 19, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's distinguish between two different kinds of fear. There's fear of death and then there's fear of life--life as nightmare. The ultimate aim of torture is fear of life. Bill, think that through.
April 19, 2009 2:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
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April 19, 2009 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
But just because I wouldn't want it done to me does not mean that it's torture.
April 19, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I definitely would not enjoy it if done to me. It's probably why I haven't committed any terrorist acts against our country."
Any other reason why you haven't committed terrorist acts? Other than what would happen if you got caught? Anything about the act itself being wrong? Just wondering...
April 19, 2009 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
You say, "it's not as bad as everyone makes it out to be." What's not? The techniques? You think that the human psyche is impenetrable? You think that you're so strong that your personality would never break? You think that you have not a single weakness?
Bill, if you value anything in this world, anything at all, then "torture" (properly understood as the induction of fear of life) means that whatever you value would be stolen from you and destroyed in front of your eyes. Your reality, your beliefs, your worth, your relationships, and most importantly you yourself... gone. Not so bad??? How are you going to make that judgment??? What would be left to say, "this isn't that bad." You're not there anymore "Bill"
April 19, 2009 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bill is also mistaken about death threats. People who do not fear death will not be moved by death threats, so there again the fear is the factor in the torture. I didn't see you or TheraP mention this aspect.
Bill is simply looking to minimize, but he's doing so quite illogically and probably irrationally. It's hard to believe he's sincere (not a polite troll). It could be he represents a kind of '24' viewer extremist mentality which does factor in as a political force to be dealt with even if marginal. And not just '24', but other fiction which depicts torture in ways which might become archetypical and thus focal points for attention which distract from the realities of torture.
April 19, 2009 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was once told that the Shah of Iran (installed after the CIA-led coup against their modern, moderate and democratically elected president) used to cut a small slit in a prisoner's scrotum and pour in hot lead. Would that satisfy your definition?
You see, that sounds like a very painful thing and that kind of torture is all about the severest physical pain. But, regardless of denials, our enhanced torture also used pain but in combination with scientifically researched psychological torment such as constant psychological harassment, degradation, deprivations and convincing threats of death.
That the pain was targeted, controlled(only 20 minutes of waterboarding at a time), prolonged, and combined physical and psychological methods for effect does equate to severe torture.
In this excellent article on our torture lite (as much as was known in 2003) Mark Bowden gives a rundown of CIA history of experimentation. They found that sensory and sleep deprivation were more effective than the other methods they were trying like LSD. Anyway, even if it was only "torture lite," it was still illegal torture and done in our name.
April 19, 2009 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
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April 19, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand you want to believe these are people with the purest of intentions. And you're trying to convince the majority of people here that a "pure end" justifies any means.
I hope it never happens to you.
April 19, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I also never said that "any means" is justified. There are plenty of acts that I would consider torture and I would not approve of them
April 19, 2009 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 20, 2009 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
So that means that only one-third of the country agrees with me. Maybe if the minority was closer to single-digits then you'd have some ground to stand on when you put me in the lunatic fringe.
April 19, 2009 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
In reality, torture is a very complex thing. It's painful to even think about some of it. If this isn't painful for you to think about, then you're probably blocking an empathic level. I don't know why, maybe something traumatic has happened in your past, you haven't dealt with it, and so to activate your empathic level means that past pain floods your whole system. So instead, you would rather ignore it.
I don't think that makes you crazy. I just think that's a poor strategy for living. And every day is another day to change strategies.
April 19, 2009 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."
The only pain and suffering explicitly ruled out as NOT torture is specifically that. So any added pain or suffering *inflicted* on a detainee etc. is a reasonable grounds for a claim that torture occurred. That is, absent further definition of "severe" we have a working definition.
That Bill ignores such obvious factors is simply dishonesty on his part. But you probably knew that...
April 19, 2009 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Three or more of the following are required:[1]
1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
April 19, 2009 11:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
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April 19, 2009 11:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 11:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
And more... here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19sun1.html?ref=opinion
April 18, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was once a faculty member in a clinical graduate program. I'm not a clinician, but as you probably know, "non-clinicians" (as we were referred to, hilariously, I thought) taught the clinical graduate students. One person continues to haunt me whenever I think about the role psychologists played in our government's policy of torture. He was an undisciplined individual who wasn't interested very much in learning about his field--he was mostly interested in getting his degree and getting out. And the quality of his work reflected that.
Once he was out, after his internship, he started working for the government, and served as a consultant on the issue of treatment of prisoners.
You're right: they were chosen carefully.
April 18, 2009 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is so agonizing. But it had to be written by a psychologist. It sickens me.
April 18, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
The project evolved via a reverse engineering of the SERE program, used to teach our own military how to withstand torture. And they used the Learned Helplessness principles developed by Martin E.P. Seligman, a trail blazer psychologist. What a twisted thing to do. I have the clear sense, by the way, that he was "used" early on without knowingly participating as it evolved. I hope that is the case.
Thanks for this post. It draws a brilliant bright line just where it's needed.
It is early on with this and we're impatient. But we must be, huh?
April 18, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that for any of us in the helping professions this is a very dark time. Very dark!
April 18, 2009 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
These techniques apparently drew heavily on the theory of "learned helplessness" developed by former American Psychological Association President Martin Seligman. (Seligman’s work involved tormenting dogs with electrical shocks until they became totally unable or unwilling to extract themselves from the painful situation. Hence the phrase “learned helplessness.”),/i>
First do no harm, indeed. What kind of trail blazing was Seligman doing? He went on to lecture at the CIA (and Drs. Jessen and Mitchell who were most responsible for the reverse SERE program also followed him). The APA, despite loud protest from its members, basically endorsed the program and agreeing with Seligman (who was not opposed to torture).
As Mary2002 points out below Jane Mayer has been out front on this all along: But at the Nuremberg trials, after the Second World War, revulsion at Nazi atrocities led to the establishment of rules barring medical mistreatment, even for reasons of national security. A section of the 1950 Geneva Convention, for example, states that “no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned.” In 1962, the U.S. passed the first law requiring doctors to obtain “informed consent” from patients. And in 1975 the World Medical Association, or W.M.A., issued the Declaration of Tokyo, which barred medical personnel from participation in either torture or abuse, even as monitors. The American Medical Association is a member of the W.M.A., which means that U.S. doctors must follow its ethical standards.
The methods they developed were meant as a scheme or combination of torture practices, not any single application of some “technique” like stress positions. The objective is, as TherP says, a psychological breakdown and many were permanently damaged; many committed suicide. I don’t know much about this but it seems like sensory deprivation or a week without sleep would probably do it alone, but as the guards at Abu Ghraib were told, the detainees have to be “softened up first”.
What fails to get much attention in all this is that many, probably a majority, of these "terrorist enemy combatants," with no rights as human beings, who were physically and psychologically tortured were and are-
innocent.
April 18, 2009 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 10:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
But the clamdown was on. I think there were many individuals trying to stop this stuff but were dismissed by the powerful establishment including the media. Reporters exposing and condemning this as early as 2002 went mostly unheard by the broader public and warnings unheeded. It seems like a failure of institutions all around. The whole system was poisoned from the top down. It was not only SERE that was reverse engineered but much of the Constitution.
An imbalance has been instated and power needs to be restored to the people not the elite. Reformers need to take back the implements of power both in government and the institutions that colluded with them (one reason I was vehemently opposed to telecom immunity). Did those that were in power believe they were doing the right thing? It don’t know if it really matters.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.-Hannah Arendt
April 19, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's what they've done!
April 18, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 6:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now.... what does that tell us about Condi Rice and her little team of torture-watchers?
April 18, 2009 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
And they seek out the minions who are both sadistic enough in their own right and pliable enough with regard to "authority" to carry that infliction of misery out, as they are then able to stand at a distance, disclaim their own involvement in the name of "bad apples", and keep their own hands (relatively) clean.
No doubt this makes me sound a real misanthrope. Well, to a certain extent I am. We as a species have a very dark and dangerous side.
April 18, 2009 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
You sound eminently realistic!
April 18, 2009 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post, TheraP.
April 18, 2009 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
They were deliberately picked for this. I am sure of it!
They must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
April 18, 2009 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
It doesn't surprise me at bit that we can elect people who do the wrong thing. What terrifies me is that the opposition party enables them to do it again by refusing to hold them accountable.
April 18, 2009 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's time to take responsibility, and demand responsibility.
April 18, 2009 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Prosecutor
April 18, 2009 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.democrats.com/no-amnesty-for-torturers
April 18, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The repubs are itching to get their power back. But let us call for more and more to come out. Let us keep asking for more info. We must do this. I simply can't throw in the towel here - or we are done for as a nation!
April 18, 2009 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I well recall the fire in cheney's office. I also recall the reports of huge paper-shredding trucks outside the VP's residence for at least a month several years back.
My hope is whistle-blowers. Maybe these same folks who are traumatized by having watched torture. We may yet see these tapes surface - or maybe they have already surfaced but that info is right now classified. I have no doubt more info will come to light. It is inevitable!
Keep pressing for that info on the ICRC report! Good going!!!
April 18, 2009 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what do we do? Send lots of e-mails, question our elected officials (I hesitate to say leaders). Or take a page from the French and protest in the streets, call general strikes. After all a lot of people will be at loose ends due to the economy. No justice, no peace perhaps?
April 18, 2009 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
But here's the thing: If some of these people who were closely involved in the torture are now disabled and thus no longer able to work, they know a lot. And they have nothing to lose now! Indeed, it may be healing to them if they come forward and tell what they know.
We cannot expect that everyone will come forward. All it takes is a few.
And kudos to you for your whistle-blowing stand - whatever it was for.
April 18, 2009 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Torture destroys human beings. The only way for reconciliation to occur is for us as a society to go through the long process of truth, and justice. Torture carries pain to the infinite. There is no way to dismiss torture as if it were ever justified because some AG or lawyers thought so. I cannot accept the President’s statement – I signed the petition (above). For national healing to ever proceed we must continue to resist this false absolution. Forgiveness is way down the road…
Excellent post. Thank you TheraP.
April 18, 2009 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the pressure didn't from the top down, then it came from some middle source(s). But would that be a kind of mid-level cabal or just overeager managers NOT subject to pressure from their bosses?
April 18, 2009 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are many speculations about how this occurred, eds. One is that they wanted excuses to prolong the wars. Another, that they were trying to find excuses for having taken so many nobodies into custody. Sadism? Could be that too.
I think your fingering of cheney is likely correct. As he had his own chain of command and was obsessed with intelligence gathering - to fit his preordained view of the world.
Thanks for your questions.
April 18, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256
April 18, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP: "he was questioned in a non-threatening manner by the FBI. He was cooperative and gave valuable information, the most important of which was the name of Kalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11."
ABC: "After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh. "
The article also suggests that valuable info was given by Mohammad after waterboarding.
So, who is lying?
I'm not justifying the methods here, btw.
On the larger topic of the thread -- cruelty is a pretty broad notion as indicated by this entry for 'cruel':
2 = sadism
3 requires "great pain or distress"
I don't see anyone that we know of in the USA's chain of torture fitting 2. 4 seems unremarkable. 1 is pretty vague. So, are you talking about 3? That requires a standard of pain or distress in order to establish "great" as something like "8 or more on a scale of 10". I think the psychologists and lawyers etc. were there not to torture but to maintain an orderly and controlled environment in which conduct approaching or perhaps exceeding definitions of torture would occur.
"first do no harm" applies to medicine (and I suppose to psychology outside of strict medicine), in a diagnostic, therapeutic or research setting.
Bush's statement that "we don't torture" could be true, ignorant, or a lie. Waterboarding as described in the memos as creating physiological and psychologically based perceptual equivalents to drowning surely amounts to imposition of "great distress".
We have the OLC memos. Are there any memos which presented an alternative or contrary view (eg, that some or all of the techniques were torture or violations of treaties or US law), and did anyone on the Principals Committee consider them seriously? Do the OLC memos in a close reading overtly approve torture or are they parsed to only suggest that?
April 18, 2009 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cruel - as you say:
Yes, they willfully did it! It was cruel. They were out to cause personality breakdowns. That is cruel. It was deliberate. And it was designed by psychologists - who would have known the results.
First do no harm is exactly what the psychologists and medical personnel are ethically bound to carry out.
Problem with the OLC memos is that they carefully screened for the lawyers who would do their bidding. And there is no evidence, according to the legal folks, that they looked at the law in any way except to try and circumvent it. Many legal experts view these torture memos as very poorly reasoned from a legal point of view.
As for the link above, it was the best I could do, but it's not the best link. You can search for a better one if you have the time.
April 18, 2009 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/04/deliberate-acts-of-kindness.php
And you could also consider this post to be the flip side of the post related to Erikson's Stage 8:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/04/people-of-wisdom-part-iv-of-a.php
April 18, 2009 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, there were 4 simple points.
We don't agree about cruelty. I accept #3, you base your argument on #1. But not all knowingly inflicted pain or distress is properly called cruelty in general. We don't live in "nice-nice" world, and from kids to adults, sometimes what other people knowingly do causes us pain or distress. Thus I require additional criteria, whether as to quantity or quality (thus a scale of 0-10 as a start).
We can hope that more info about the workings of the Committee come out.
And I'm not defending an assault on a personality...
If you think all interrogations are cruel to the point of torture, that's a defensible but radical and anti-pragmatic position. If you accept some interrogations, then where is the line drawn between the acceptable and the unacceptable? Whatever your point in this blog, I think this is the large-view question for politics and conscience.
April 18, 2009 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, who is lying? Well, go read Suskind's and Mayer's books, get all the info on the disclosed sources of that info, read up on Daniel Coleman then ask yourself, who has the reason to lie? Coleman et al (who can point to the alternative sourcing as well, and who were integrally tied to and vested in tracknig down al-Qaeda and who wanted info themselves pretty desparately) or CIA torturers?
Re: not seeing anything that brings sadism to mind, again, it depends on what all you have looked at. From Mayer's reports and book we find out that the same female CIA officer who caused the CIA to keep Khalid el-Masri for months even after they figured out the had the wrong guy (and despite a cadre of non-CIA guys in Macedonia knowing about the snatch) and who arranged for el-Masri to be dumped in a woods in a foreign country (while they all grinned over how no one would believe his story) - that same woman pined to see waterboarding done, to the point where she booked a trip and imposed herself into a waterboarding just so she could watch. According to Mayer she was given a censure and advised that the waterboarding wasn't being done just for her pleasure - and then when things got hot, CIA gave her a covert assignment so that her name couldn't be given in the investigations.
We also know that there is an IG report the size of two Manhatten phone books replete with issues and that several sources have mentioned a CIA agent the report has indicated became shockingly dehumanized. We also know that Jack Cloonan mentioned that the CIA sendoff for al-Libbi invovled some detailed discussion of how his mother was going to be picked up and raped and we know that there were multiple instances of threats of rape to family members - something not listed in the "memos" as approved and also something that is done in particular in Egypt which was at the heart of many of the threats.
We know that KSM's two young children (6 and 8 or 7 and 9, depending on who you read) were also picked up by a joint US/Pakistani force and have stayed disappeared- something that not much other than sadism would seem to explain. Moreover, we multiple reports of things that were being suggested and started for Zubaydah getting so far out of hand - to the point of actual plans to bury him alive and pursue other options as well - that an FBI agent was threatening to arrest the interrogators over what they were doing. Those things sound to me like there was quite a bit more sadism involved than you mention. Add in the modus operandi of stripping, hooding and then anally assualting with suppositories (rather than given a tranq via other methods) and that seems pretty calculatingly sadistic. Add in Bush telling Tenet that they had to make sure he (Bush) did not lose face as the justification for the torture and once again, the huge IG report that has never been made public and I think it's hard to get around almost any definition of cruelty you wish to use from your list.
Bush's statement that "we don't torture" could be true, ignorant, or a lie.
It had to be a lie, even using their own definitions. According to both Dana Priest and Jane Mayer's reporting, in Nov of 2002, we froze to death a "young detainee" in Afghanistan. Jamadi, the "ice man" from Abu Ghraib was killed during his interrogation with a CIA agent. Dilawar, a cab driver, had his legs pulpified while he was tied in a position so that he could only breath if he stood on them - and he died. The interrogation treatments sent Qhatanis heartbeat to almost non-existant land. Did I mention that we've never heard what happened to KSM's children?
In addition, the memos very deliberately stayed away from the issues of forced drugging (which has been repeated reported); simulated sodomy (also repeatedly reported) actual application of waterboarding in a manner that went beyond simulating drowning and included actual drowning and revivals; isolation for years; threats (which may well have become much more than threats) to family members; threatened and actual shipment to other foreign countries for more torture; etc.
Are there any memos which presented an alternative or contrary view (eg, that some or all of the techniques were torture or violations of treaties or US law)
Well, we have actual cases, like the prosecutions for waterboarding (none of which are mentioned in the OLC memos) and cases like Hilaos v. Marcos, where the combination of isolation, waterboarding and sleep deprivation is absolutely treated by the court as torture. As to any memos, I'm not sure I know what you mean but early on there were some memos from Taft, as Powell's General Counsel, STRONGLY advising that Geneva Conventions do and should apply to all detainees (the Sup Ct later agreeed with his position) and then we have that huge IG report as well, which the Principals would have had by the 2005 memos, advising that things were going well beyond what the memos mention repeatedly, that people were lying, that people had died, etc.
all fwiw
April 18, 2009 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
The context was meant to be the Principals Committee or other relevant body(ies) dealing with oversight of detainee/subject interrogations and other management. The OLC memos tell a story, but hardly the whole story.
Thanks for all the other leads.
April 18, 2009 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very helpful for the questions asked by eds.
April 18, 2009 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
ABC: "After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh. "
So, who is lying?
Answer: The Bushies are lying. And it turns out Zubaida was never even a 'high value' target.
Zubaida gave up KSM before the waterboarding.
The only 'lead' the interrogators got that didn't blow up in immediate smoke after the use of torture, was the name of Jose Padilla, who spent 3.5 years in a navy prison without ever being charged.
Turns out none of the EITs (Enhanced Interrogation Techniques) were valuable for stopping plots.
April 18, 2009 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You need to read the two stories carefully. If he gave up the name right away but not the whole story until later, then waterboarding did get more info. I'm not up to wading through all the sources, I'm simply pointing out obvious issues.
April 19, 2009 4:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're not doing anything to clarify or refute here. Are you feeling complacent or merely overloaded today?
It could that both stories are true, but that people take false implications from one or both of them, as if the illusion were the reality or the deeper truth of the matter. But since we cannot seem to agree on even the operant definition of 'cruelty' there doesn't seem to be any point in trying to get at finer distinctions here.
April 19, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
These people are sick.
I can see international warrants being posted but have a very hard time seeing our courts take up the challenge. At the very least I would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation type investigation with all the DOJ lawyers disbarred.
April 18, 2009 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 10:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
But that doesn't get Cheney off the hook. The Committee might have effectively rubber-stamped the initiatives of one or more of its members, and clearly Cheney was "a force to be reckoned with", so to speak.
April 18, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Setting out to psychologically destroy a person, this needs to be proven clearly (if alleged seriously). Silently allowing that to happen as a side-effect is also a problem but a different problem. Complaining about the side-effect up the chain of command is something else. Quitting your job ... Blowing the whistle ... It sounds like lots of reports and instructions flowed both ways from the general political vicinity of the White House to the "torture chambers".
In any event, I'm not arguing against investigations or rational prosecutions.
April 18, 2009 7:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is all about Einstein's remark eds. I trust you will not be complacent?
April 18, 2009 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for being a force for good.
=D
April 18, 2009 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The entire post is excellent, but all that really needs saying is in the begining:
"Torture is against the law. It is always wrong. It shocks the conscience. It shames the nation."
All of the methods described in the torture memos released this week that our country has been using to torture captives and which the President refuses to either investigate or prosecute are exactly, let me repeat exactly, the methods used by the Nazi's during their reign of terror as well as those used by the NKVD in Stalin's Soviet Union against prisoners both foreign and domestic. Torture generally and the methods in question particularly are nothing but uncivilized brutality and the tools of tyrants, dictators and despots throughout history. We prosecuted more than a few Japanese and Germans for using these mothods on human beings and would not have entertained the idea of failing to do so. I would add that Nazi, Soviet, and Japanese torturers all committed their crimes under color of law and lawful orders. That is why international conventions explicitly rule out the use of any legal mechanisms as cover for this behavior or as an admissable defense for these crimes.
If we allow these crimes to go unpunished then our nation descends to the level of the worst totalitarian thugs in world history. I simply do not see how we can allow this to be.
April 18, 2009 4:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
But this aspect of the torture was not being adequately covered - as I've tried to do it above. And I simply felt duty calling this morning - though my preference and need was to rest.
Thank you for adding the excellent background information, oleeb. And your stirring words. You are correct that all we should need to write is what I started out with. A few short sentences. And it is a tragic and reprehensible place we've come to - where all of this needs to be discussed and parsed and castigated. I am sickened by all of this.
Like you, I am certain we must face it all. Sign the petition for a special prosecutor:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Prosecutor
April 18, 2009 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand needing a break so get your rest but don't be away too long!
April 18, 2009 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
He was involved in intelligence for years and for 3 of them, he served as an interrogator in an Israeli prison holding it's most prized enemies, including the later assassinated founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. (Despite the conditions he endured for five years, the paralyzed Yassin did not break).
Germaine to this discussion is the following:
"A well-known psychologist among personnel in the Mossad, the Shin Bet security service and the army, Sela says that he, too, is waging a constant struggle with old memories that haunt him.
"The everyday activity in these professions generates anxieties and intense fears," he admits. "You are always in an unclear world and involved in existential situations. I remember one case I experienced when I was chief of detectives and intelligence in the Sharon District in the 1980s. Benny, a good friend of mine, was a Shin Bet regional commander at the time. At 2 A.M. we received a phone call that a terrorist had been caught after being seriously wounded in a city in the center of the country. He was taken to Meir Hospital [in Kfar Sava]. At 2:45, Benny and I and another Shin Bet interrogator were there. He was about to undergo surgery and was going to be anesthetized in five minutes, so we could not question him. But he was the only source who could tell us whether he had planted bombs in the city, or whether there was a terrorist squad waiting in some school."
They decided to go ahead with the interrogation, Sela recalls: "We kicked out the doctors, and the Shin Bet interrogator and I started to question the terrorist, even though we knew he might die because of it. He gave us the locations of all the bombs he had planted in the city. You carry a pain like that with you all your life. Questions of morality and legality don't make much difference. Those are the kinds of materials that security personnel bring to sessions with me. People live in that nightmarish world."
Asked if this is why he feels a need to fix or heal himself now, Sela says: "I do not consider myself a writer. Dostoyevsky I will never be. I see myself as someone who tries to be a better person from year to year, but finds that it becomes more difficult from year to year."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078849.html
April 18, 2009 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Blessings upon you.
This man has a conscience. And it has been shocked!
April 18, 2009 4:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am sad for the tortured. I am sad for the torturers. I am sad for the people who convinced others that the torturing was necessary. I am sad for the people who were convinced. I am sad for the families of all of these people who have been irreversibly harmed by whatever their involvement was.
I know there are many in this country who believe with all their beings that this is necessary for our country's safety, given the fact that radical Islam has no regard for the lives of the people they are killing.
Even if I could be convinced that this is true (and I am not) the fact that many who are tortured are absolutely innocent, yet their lives are destroyed anyway, tells me this is the wrong path to go down. For a country whose core belief is that many guilty should go free rather than see one innocent man punished for something he didn't do, I have a hard time seeing how we can tolerate this.
Torture is against the law. It is always wrong. It shocks the conscience. It shames the nation.
Great words, Thera...they should be our country's mantra.
April 18, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to use this in my letter to my reps. If that is OK.
April 18, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
My honor
April 18, 2009 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can see my larger comment to TheraP below.
I haven't commented on TPM in a while but this was too compelling not to.
April 18, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, he had the courage to release info. And I'm sure he knew it would result in calls for investigations. I doubt he has ruined his presidency. There is yet time for many more things to come out and for investigations to go forward.
I think we need to take the focus off of Obama. And put the focus on calling for Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor. On contacting our elected reps. A focus on Obama here, in my view, is a distraction from calling for the appropriate authorities to take action.
April 18, 2009 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Saying "Obama has tarred himself with this issue" goes overboard, imho. It's a subjective statement without good evidentiary basis in fact (that I've seen). But that doesn't mean Obama himself should get a free pass at this point.
April 18, 2009 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The United Nation’s top torture investigator has suggested it is illegal under International law for President Barack Obama to announce that the United States government has no intention of prosecuting low-level CIA officers who carried out torture sanctioned by the Bush Administration.
and
“President Obama deserves credit for rejecting arguments that official disclosure of these ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques would set a dangerous precedent,” opined the LA Times on Saturday. “But he continues to hedge about whether the CIA might once again be freed from the standards of conduct imposed on interrogators for the military. Indignation over these shameful documents should convince the president that a double standard for interrogation is intolerable.”
I think that, having elicited this type of comment from a professional whose business is the investigation of torture that 'tarred' is a relatively mild word to use.
April 18, 2009 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
What did the "expert" actually say?
He "suggested" -- that's kind of weak. And here's more:
"Nowak did not think Obama would go as far as to seek an amnesty law for affected CIA personnel and therefore U.S. courts could still try torture suspects"
So it's pretty clear that your expert witness doesn't agree about "tarred" here unless "tarred" means "Obama raised a legitimate issue in a nuanced fashion. Extremists jumped on him for it and labeled him a criminal."
Thus it's subjective at best.
My cite was from Reuters, btw.
April 18, 2009 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://derstandard.at/?url=/?ressort=amerika
STANDARD: CIA-Folterer sollen laut US-Präsident Obama strafrechtlich nicht belangt werden. Ist das vertretbar?
Nowak: Ganz sicher nicht. Die USA haben sich - wie alle anderen Vertragsstaaten der UN-Konvention gegen die Folter - verpflichtet, Folterungen strafrechtlich zu untersuchen und alle Personen vor Gericht zu stellen, bei denen sich die Beweise als stichhaltig erweisen. Das wäre dasselbe in Österreich: Wir könnten nicht einfach ohne Verletzung dieser Konvention sagen, "aber für bestimmte Folterungen wollen wir eine Ausnahme machen, da gibt es keine strafrechtliche Verfolgung".
April 18, 2009 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nowak
"Violation of international law"
17. 17. April 2009, 19:03 April 2009, 19:03
Manfred Nowak calls for an independent investigation of the torture methods Expräsident Bush.
The U.S. violates the UN Convention against Torture when CIA employees assure impunity, says the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak in an interview STANDARD
STANDARD: CIA torturers, according to U.S. President Obama is not criminally prosecuted. Is this acceptable?
Nowak: Absolutely not. The USA has - like all other States Parties to the UN Convention against torture - committed criminal acts of torture be investigated and all persons to court, where the evidence as proving unfounded. That would be the same in Austria, we simply could not without violating this convention to say, "but for certain acts of torture, we want to make an exception, since there is no criminal prosecution."
STANDARD: In other words: With this announcement Obama runs against international law?
Nowak: Right. Against binding international treaty law in the case, because this is an international convention - and since it is quite clear that the states not only to commit torture a criminal offense to make, but also the torturer to prosecute.
April 18, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
It could happen that on every trip abroad Obama is faced with leaders needing to bring these issues up. International shaming.
I appreciate the drumbeats for Justice. Let them come from all quarters. At home. And abroad.
April 19, 2009 12:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Source: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/04/deliberate-acts-of-cruelty.php#comment-3442083
April 18, 2009 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
At the same time, we have to work to hold him to a higher standard. He's a man who responds to what voters want. Thus our task is clear!
April 18, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Im my eyes ... It's cut and dried . . .
continues: reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE53H1Y020090418
Obama and his administration in conjunction with congress better sh*t or get off the pot.
No ifs ands or buts . . .
~OGD~
April 18, 2009 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, OGD!
April 18, 2009 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is quite topical . . .
The meat of the discussion begins at 16:30 . . .
Conversations With History UC Berkeley
"The Rumsfeld Memo and the Betrayal of American Values"
(My bold)
Backgrounder on Harry Kreisler and Conversations
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/iis/Kreisler.html
~OGD~
April 19, 2009 3:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
The movie 'A Few Good Men' addresses the issue of following orders as an excuse for 'doing what is ethically, legally, and morally wrong'. Accountability is about our choices including a choice that we know is wrong and violates the law. In the movie two soldiers are dishonorably discharged for 'following an order' to do something that they knew to be a violation of military code. I am beyond outrage at the notion that the current administration has offered immunity and absolution when whatever the resulting consequences...every person should be held accountable.
We must include demanding accountability from ourselves all the way to those who did the actual criminal acts supposedly on 'our' behalf. Bottom line in my perception, these crimes occurred due to ignorance. In particular, ignorant (ie ill-educated, ill-informed) persons in positions of leadership. We knew they were ignorant and suspected they were capable of such abhorent acts.
On a personal level I must look at whatever I did and did not do to contribute to these wrongful acts and not doing more to put them to an end sooner. I can own my tendency to give up too much power to leaders who are clearly too ignorant to be allowed to operate ethically without a high degree of oversight. Public participation is a form of 'oversight' on our leadership. I knew these leaders to be incredibly ignorant as demonstrated by a multitude of actions including the behavior at Abu Gharaib. I failed to seek out others who were speaking out to give more volume to their voices.
What I feel now, is that I must demand accountability and encourage others to do so all the way up and down the chain in every way that I can in order to make amends and regain my integrity. I feel that this is reprentative of our culture and our country.
We must own the shame of what has been done in the name of our 'safety and security' and learn from this so that it will not be repeated. Otherwise it surely will, even the Obamas must understand this. To regain our integrity there must be accountability.
I encourage all to take a degree of personal responsibility and whatever actions seem appropriate to make amends and regain integrity. It is easy to say 'he' or 'they' did this... we did not do these acts... but in whatever way we 'neglect' to act we contribute to and are complicit in all of the abuses our leaders engage albeit military, political, or financial etc.
Thanks again Therapy for your loud voice of disdain at these outrageous acts.
April 18, 2009 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
On a personal level. On a collective level. You've laid it out so well.
Bless you for your candid comments and your commitment to this goal.
April 18, 2009 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, amigo! :-)
April 18, 2009 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even more than watching through the torture sessions with the function of ok-ing the continuation or restart of torture, the pre-torture issues were so repellant.
Who sits there and smiles and asks questions and establishes rapport with a patient when they know they are only doing it to "approve" them for torture. That's just - well, repellant is all I can think of - finding the places that hurt, the fears, etc. and noting them for use in torture and giving the checkmarks on which the authorization to torture will be based - it is really awful to think about.
April 18, 2009 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
"CIA" suggests black deeds best left unknown. We've never wanted to know the details, lest they were even more horrible than we could have imagined. We put the nastiness out of our heads and went on seeing ourselves as pure and above such things. We believed in the Geneva Convention, and assumed our government believed in it, too. The CIA was a shadow force--a necessary evil used only, we thought, when all else had failed. Then the shock of it: Word came that the Geneva Convention did not apply in these cases. We learned that prisoners were being held without due process, sometimes for years on end. We heard that they were allowed no rights, no communication with their families, no communication with courts of law. That is when most of us knew our government had gone rogue.
Proof positive came with the snapshots from Abu Ghraib. "Interrogation methods" took on a ghastly new meaning. And most of us were rightfully horrified. We couldn't get over it then; we can't get over it now.
We know that something must be done. As TheraP and others in the psych professions have so articulately defined, we can't as individuals or as a nation condone the inhumanity of torture. Not just because it's a terrible act, which it is, but because we can't live with ourselves if we do.
Someone said it saddened them to read this post. I feel the same way. When I think of how far we've fallen I have to wonder if we can ever hold our heads up again. I'm 71 years old and I'm tired. The last eight years have worn me out. I want the government I fought for. I want to see some understanding of our need to see justice served. I don't believe we can come to terms with our own humanity if we let this go.
At the same time, I understand the complex problems facing the White House. At every turn there are crises that need immediate attention. The enormity of the potential prosecution of a past president, vice president and cabinet members for what amounts to war crimes requires such exquisite preparation and care the process can't be rushed, no matter how much we want it to happen now.
The outrage is out there. I have to believe there are those in power who understand the need to see the prosecutions through. We need to keep the issue alive and support any of the legislators who feel the same way. We, as citizens, have a voice. We need to use it every chance we get. (I'm reaching for my Geritol right now. Give me a minute. I'll be right back on the bandwagon.)
April 18, 2009 9:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Being a therapist, I'm used to focusing on the small steps in the right direction and looking to see how we can get the obstacles out of the way. So as long as we keep slogging and get elected officials to slog along with us - and some are willing to do that - then together we'll remove the obstacles, one by one.
Thank you for your presence here, Romona. And your support in this cause. And all the ones that came before it.
April 18, 2009 10:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to represent as many levels of response as I can. This post was extraordinarily painful for me to read, so it touched on many.
Personality breakdown is a mental torture infinitely more painful than physical pain. If we think of it in terms of Eriksonian development, personality breakdown, I think, starts in stage six (intimacy - isolation). Instead of the mental movement of losing and finding oneself in another, the mental movement of personality breakdown is having oneself taken away, locked away, to never be found again. It is to be turned into a ghost. It is to live a nightmare from which you cannot awake. Time stops. Hell starts.
Thinking in terms of mirror neurons: to see that happen to someone would generate a coinciding sensation in an observer--a very real re-creation. I've never understood so well what Nietzsche meant by, "If you stare into the Abyss long enough, the Abyss stares back at you."
The most ominous part, Thera, is the note on which you end. I'm reminded of Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time." When the children first begin to travel through spacetime, they transport to a planet from which the universe can be seen entirely differently from the way it can be seen on Earth. The first thing the children see is a shadow which is not cast from anything. IT is a Darkness existent unto Itself. IT is eventually revealed to be a disembodied brain which thinks for people.
Back to this world: "What type of personality does not break down watching torture - day after day?" We ultimately have to make judgments on this pattern of behavior. We have to say Evil. Or we have to say a total lack of personhood. Or we can judge metaphorically: people connected to IT--the shadow which is cast from nothing.
Thera, thank you--as always. But especially for this.
April 18, 2009 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is what I most love about posting here. Some comments, such as yours just now, really move the argument forward.
Yes, I considered calling this part of the series. But again, it deserved to be its own separate post. Nevertheless, the theory keeps working very well. Over and over.
Trust is betrayed. Shame is induced. All sense of control and worth is obliterated. Identity shattered. Intimacy destroyed. Humanity is turned into Depravity.
I can hardly bear to think about it. But think and act we must.
Thank you for your stunningly helpful comment!
April 18, 2009 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eric Harris--one of the Columbine killers--wrote in his diary, "How dare you think that you and I are part of the same species when we are sooo different? You aren't human. You are a robot."
Eric Harris could only see human beings as automatons if his mirror neurons were misfiring. Is the next question, which came first, the mirror neuron misfiring or IT? I don't want to be too philosophical, but I think that question can be dissolved. Maybe there isn't a causal relationship between mirror neuron misfiring and that which we judge to be Evil. Maybe it makes the most sense to say that mirror neuron misfiring is a manifestation of that which we judge to be Evil.
The difficulty is that this is more than just a genetic disorder. Unless we want to say that all of Nazi Germany was inflicted with a genetic disorder, then we have to acknowledge the situational part of mirror neuron misfiring. So we're into a bit of reverse engineering now. What causes the mirror neurons to misfire? Or better: what social circumstances cause mirror neurons to misfire? Or even better: what basic assumptions underlying a social structure cause mirror neurons to misfire?
Funny, I'm referencing "Systemic Deception and the Breakdown of Civic Trust" to answer that question.
April 18, 2009 11:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
So for us the mirror neuron is like "raw data" and we just react with empathy. We "are" victims, alongside what we observe.
But for these folks, could they just tune into their own perverted sexuality? Or could they be processing the torture as part of gaining further info about the victim - for the purpose of exploiting the next weakness in the breakdown process?
It all may depend on our neural circuitry to start with - and how our mirror neurons are plugged into the whole circuitry. Because they can't operate in isolation. Think all those stages and all those domains. And everything else about our personality (or anyone's).
You make me think!
April 18, 2009 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
So the question becomes who and/or how could anyone look into the Abyss and (deliberately) not notice that it stares back.
I love the way you're formulating the 'how'. Instead of the data registering directly, it's filtered into sexual desires, into strategies to reinforce the filtering process, into strategies to better inflict harm.
Before I saw your last response, I was reading back over "Systemic Deception." Something really stuck out under these lights. Sokol was expressing his frustration with "subjectivist thinking." Senselessness, the championing of abstraction, and a preference for intrapersonal reasoning over interpersonal reasoning in all instances. "Subjectivist thinking" seems to be the method by which one filters the data of mirror neurons. In order to (intentionally) ignoring the feelings of others, one would have to invert the thought process. Maybe that inversion is the method of filtering.
Another part of "Systemic Deception" becomes relevant. You mention the "misuse of language." Since subjectivist thinking is observable, and groups of subjectivist thinkers form around their subjectivist thinking, then naturally a language would emerge out of their communication. That as a closed system would be one thing. But all languages intertwine with other languages.
We could call the subjectivist thinking the "language game of filtering raw data," or the "language game of ignoring the eyes of the Abyss," or whatever. What's important is that such a language is not isolated. It--as you say--oozes pus into other languages. So it becomes epidemic. That would account for Nazi Germany or 80% of Americans thinking that invading Iraq was a good idea.
It's speculation, but it may hold descriptive power...
April 19, 2009 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
That seems to be part of what happens in the torture cell. Culture shock. An assault upon one's expectations of everything that is human.
I just read a phrase I've been thinking about (in a Sunday Times, Week in Review article):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/weekinreview/19shane.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=torture%20versus%20war&st=cse
That phrase captures what we're looking at. And it affirms your view that we're talking Stage 6. Stage 6 in both directions. Except the "intimacy" is the terrible intimacy of deliberate destruction. Isolation punctuated by the terrible intimacy of torture. (I may do a post with that title - exploring Stage 6 in its worst nightmare edition.)
There's a difference between close combat and killing (which is terrible enough) and close torture with "not quite killing." Oh, my god! (I never thought I would have to deal with such things!)
April 19, 2009 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're dead on with the notion of "language worlds." I think what's so painful about what we're doing right now, is that we're looking into--in some literal sense--the "world of torture."
I wish it were just isolated to the cells we're learning about. But I don't know if that's the case. I once heard Jonathan Turley mention "torture program" with extra emphasis. What I felt was--what I thought was just--paranoia at first. The feeling was something like this: {a torture program is systemic in the same way consumerism is}. Wide eyed, I started considering the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay not as something from which we were isolated. The torture in Guantanamo was more like the far end of a spectrum. And we experience the less intense domains of that spectrum all throughout our social lives. Sometimes, in truly loving and honest interactions (like we are often engaged in through the Cafe), we move off the spectrum entirely--out of torturous relationships. But that is the exception, not the rule.
I think this highlights why it's so important that we raise our consciousness to what torture is all about. Torture is not quarantined to a torture cell. The belief in torture comes from somewhere else.
April 19, 2009 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Like you say though, the people who are creating/recreating the language and spreading it, defending it, those people, who are aware of what they're doing. They MUST be prosecuted.
I just read "Distinctions - Torture Versus War." Excellent article. Thank you.
It makes me think about war in general. I mean, war is only possible through dehumanization. Dehumanization is only possible through torture. So torture is logically prior to, and in a strong causal relation to war. Another way of stating the importance of all this: Torture is the direct manifestation of dehumanization. Plain and simple. Torture is not an act in isolation. Torture is the bridge from The Immoral into our world.
April 19, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
And torture is occurring right here in the USA via sadists every day!
April 19, 2009 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sadism. Yeah, sadism: satisfaction from cruelty. What is that? Where does that come from? I mean, it's not relief from the release of anger. Because releasing anger does not necessarily entail being cruel. Is it relief from the release of anger onto another form of life--and only onto another form of life? If that's the case, then it wouldn't be about the release of anger, but the reaction of pain from the other form of life. But what inherent worth would another person's pain hold? Is it that another person's pain signifies one's own superiority over them? Is it that another person's pain makes someone feel like a master over them? Is another person's pain, then, the fuel that keeps the master in the role of master?
Boy, that's not a fun road to think down. Seems like this is the point where mercy yields to justice.
April 19, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
The mechanism? Honestly, I don't know. Right now I feel so sickened by forcing myself to go down this mental road, that I need to give myself a break.
These poor souls....
April 19, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You forgot to say "God Bless America."
April 19, 2009 11:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 18, 2009 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, you point to something very sad about the human condition. Very scary too.
April 19, 2009 12:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Those in power; those to whom we have given the power, choose the pace of our legal and historical evolution. It is the larger duty of the rest of us to force them to keep up when they lag behind. Then, when they are breathing hard and falling to their knees, to replace them. Then to watch the new ones very carefully.
When we are slow to act, lazy to recognize and anxious to avoid the unseemly we ignore the fear inherent to human nature. We look the other way and then decry the result. Or we don't. Either way, all we really want is to keep living our lives without thinking too much. Without being scared.
Until it's "us" instead of "them".
April 19, 2009 12:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see some comments in this thread loudly proclaiming that Obama's Administration must now proceed farther down this path. They still are blind to the reality, and still wish to make a messiah out of our President. America is a Constitutional Republic. What these persons desire would break The Constitution, and America with it. They need to quit issuing lamentations and supplications to the President, turn to face the other two separate, but equal branches, and demand that justice now be served by them.
I want justice done as much as anyone. I am appalled, disgusted and deeply depressed by the actions of GW Bush's Administration. Yet, vengeance is not a rightful emotion for humans; it is best left up to the gods. The forms must be properly adhered to, or we risk losing everything in this rush to judgment.
April 19, 2009 1:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama threw this ugliness into OUR laps, and sure, into Congress and the Judiciary's lap
So what are you going to do? I'm going to make sure that my reps and everyone I know hear that it it is UNACCEPTABLE, and to demand they bring charges against those who spit on everything this country ever stood for.
Anything less is unthinkable.
April 19, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I completely agree with your comment. And I wonder if you should consider making it a post to stand on its own. It is powerful. It is accurate. And it shows the way forward. It upholds the power of We the People, in whose hands lies the fate of the nation. As it should.
Focusing on Obama is a side-issue and a distraction. Because he has become, for many, a projection upon which people place hopes and fears, as if he could be the Savior. And as if, failing to be the Savior, he then becomes the Scape Goat.
Absolutely, it is up to us, We the People, assured in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that the powers of any elected officials are merely held in TRUST. That We the People need to understand our role, our sacred duty, to assume leadership ourselves, to insist our elected officials follow our desire for the Rule of Law, for Justice (which yes, takes its slow and steady pace), for equality before the law, and so on.
Thank you for clarifying this. Indeed, it is central to this whole issue of torture. As torture is an effort to effect total control. And the dismantling and investigation of this societal horror MUST not be done via executive fiat - which does no more than perpetuate dictatorial powers.
Blessings upon you, PCA. You are a clear voice of reason here in the Cafe.
April 19, 2009 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Agreeing with Thera, this would make a great post on its own. Agreeing with Bwak, I think my Senator (a member of the judiciary committee) will be receiving an open letter soon. I think I'll submit it to the local paper as well. Does anyone have a bullhorn?
April 19, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Our walking strings?
Abominations lure us
To their side.
Each day we take
Another step to hell
Descending through
The stench
Unhorrified."
-- Baudelaire
"Fleur du Mal"
April 19, 2009 2:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 5:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
WE are not cowards; we will stand up against the power of the lawless. We cannot sit idly by, hoping our elected officials find a conscience.
Throw it right back at the Rightwing Fundamentalists. Either Obama stands up for righteousness sake or he'll be judged by his inaction.
Passing the buck is what got us here.
We should not shrink back now.
Why should those of us, who are appalled at the lawlessness of our elected officials shut up? Lawless leaders and their supporters; who hid behind the flag and with a fevered Patriotic pitch, telling us about how our enemies hate our way of life and our values.
Even suggesting that if WE did not go along with their lawlessness, we would be persecuted as Un-American.
All the while WE THE PEOPLE were misled, Lied to. And it has been determined that we were not guiltless and that we too, are guilty of crimes against humanity.
Hypocrites. Take the rafter from your own eyes, before you try to remove your neighbors’ splinter.
WE THE PEOPLE have been humiliated and dishonored by our leaders.
Would you have us whitewash the Truth, in order for the perpetrators to get away with their sins?
Will the American people be judged as complicit, and stupid followers of unrighteousness, deserving of the fate that awaits the lawless, and the cowards who dare not stand against them.
We must remove the cancer or it will kill us.
Enough of this Patriotic cover up.
We cannot allow the previous Administration, to have a blatant disregard for the men and Women who fight to defend the principles and Good values of what our Nation Under God Stands for.
Or why should we defend her? Seeing as how she has become captive to an enemy from within, who has defiled OUR precious things? Liberty
This Nation does not stand up for Cover-ups and torture, or hypocrisy.
To the Most High, The God WE ARE UNDER, he will expose the Hidden things, in order to bring to light, those who profane the Sacred trust, and we should not protect, or excuse those who would trample our Values, as of no worth.
Hidden things like Secret Renditions, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, came to light despite attempts to keep these detestable things, hidden from the American people.
Now there are those, who believe America will not stand if she is criticized, and I say she will not stand for long, if she does not correct her ways.
Quit lying to US.
Take your reproof and learn from it.
Justice is not without mercy, but we must first bring to justice, those who violated the law.
April 19, 2009 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 10:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I did a blog months ago: In the Service of Justice.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/therap/2009/02/in-the-service-of-justice.php
It is up to We the People to insist our elected officials and appointed officials do their jobs - to obey the Rule of Law and enforce the Rule of Law.
I love every bit of your comment, with one exception: We can't expect one man to do it all. Or you're asking for a dictator!
We must all stand up in the service of Justice! We must stand up. And we must call for all of our elected officials to stand up with us. And we must call for our appointed law enforcement and Judicial authorities to stand up with us. Congress is charged with oversight. Law enforcement and the Judiciary are charged with investigation and prosecution. (Those are not the jobs of the executive - but Obama's job is to get out of the way and let the appropriate authorities do their jobs.)
Justice means all who are investigated and prosecuted will get every protection that they denied others!
April 19, 2009 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
How many of the criminals, 'professionals' and otherwise were involved?
I read that KSM was waterboarded 183 times, surely there were more than just a handful of people who participated.
Now as we sit preaching to each other, many of these monsters continue to practice as physicians and psychologists, EMT's and nurses, policemen and prison guards.
They are here, now and have not forgotten.
We must see them all brought to account, and if Obama stands in the way for political reasons, he too must be dealt with.
April 19, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
But it must all be done with deliberate Justice employed.
April 19, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
We know how to do this, and in doing so, we make everyone stronger as an ally to ultimate healing.
Thanks TheraP for leading it on the right path.
April 19, 2009 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I feel like we inching closer to the absolute center of this issue. That it devolved on the assessments of health care professionals, who assisted lawyers in devising torture and providing personality assessments to justify it and plan how to do it. Disgusting!
I picture cheney just rubbing his hands together in glee that they identified willing psychologists and willing medical personnel and willing lawyers. To authorize "almost killing" of individuals without any recourse to justice!
April 19, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Extracted from http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/us-provance-2006.pdf at page 3/4)
I befriended SPC Hannah Schlegel, an analyst who was being retrained to be an
interrogator (many others were being retrained in this same way). Schlegel told me
detainees were routinely stripped naked in the cells and sometimes during interrogations
(she said one man so shamed had actually made a loin cloth out of an MRE (Meal Ready to
Eat) bag, so they no longer allowed him to have the MRE bag with his food). She said they
also starved them or allowed them to only have certain items of food at a time. She said
they played loud music – “Barney I Love You” being the interrogators’ favorite. I was
shocked by this and told her I couldn’t understand how she could cope with the nudity.
Wasn’t it embarrassing or at least uncomfortable? Schlegel said that this was one of the
new practices and they got used to it. Moreover, she got a thrill out of being a woman
interrogating them, knowing how much it angered and offended them to have a woman in
P=
=
a position of authority and control over men. She said they used dogs to terrify and
torment the prisoners. She also said they deprived them of sleep for long periods of time.
This was all part of a carefully planned regimen that had been introduced after the arrival
of the teams from GTMO.
April 19, 2009 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Page 3 of above link)
The first alarming incident I heard about was that some of the interrogators had gotten
drunk, and then under the guise of interrogation, molested an underaged Iraqi girl
detainee. It could have been worse, but MP on duty stopped them. Friends of some of the
interrogators involved were concerned that COL Pappas would deal severely with the
incident. They asked me to recite a falsehood about COL Pappas, in the hope that he
would be disqualified from serving as convening authority. I refused to do this.
April 19, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240159000&sr=8-1
This book, which is very painful but excellent, details how soldiers are systemically "brain-washed" (my word) to eliminate the taboo of killing. And how "killing" is so taboo that soldiers in the Civil War pretended to fire weapons, rather than kill. That self-defense is not enough to allow for killing. That the closer you are to the "victim" you may have to kill - the harder it is to inflict death. And torture would, I'm sure, fit within that taboo.
We are looking at something very dark, premeditated in so many ways, and so destructive. In that book discussing having killed is the hardest thing for any veteran the author interviewed. But imagine the torturer - how could one discuss that? How can one live with that? With having destroyed a living person?
I am honored that you chose to comment here today.
April 19, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dick was probably on the speakerphone with some of his pals, rather enjoying the tormented cries of the victims. Probably taped them to listen to themlater, in private..
TheraP, once again, a big personal thank you for your depth of logic and reason, you have provided us with another tool for teaching. Your post and this whole consequent thread is comprehensive, and revealing.
April 19, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
April 19, 2009 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
She ist one of the faces symbolizing the Iraq war. Pictures showing her abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Graib prison brought her notorious fame throughout the world. In her first interview in three years Lynndie England talks about Abu Ghraib, about Charles Graner, about guilt, her current life - and the role of the Bush administration.
.....
You live in Ashby, a small town with a population of 1300. How do people treat you now?
They don't treat me any different. I haven't met a person yet that's been negative to me. Not since I got home. Most of them back me up one hundred percent. They say, "What happened to you was wrong." And some even say they would have done the same thing.
What do they mean by "They would have done the same thing"?
That they would have followed orders, just as I did in Abu Ghraib.
April 19, 2009 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our population is so uneducated! People don't really understand the Constitution, let alone know much about history, and so on. Ignorance is the root of so much that has gone wrong here. Ignorance and propaganda and apathy. sigh....
April 19, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not that I am defending her. She should have known better and said that her orders were illegal, but having been in the military I can just say it's far harder than it might seem from the outside.
May 26, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampart_Scandal
The Rampart Scandal refers to widespread corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (or CRASH) anti-gang unit of the LAPD Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers in the CRASH unit were implicated in misconduct, making it one of the most widespread cases of documented police misconduct in United States history. The convicted offenses include unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of evidence, framing of suspects, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury, and covering up evidence of these activities.[1]
Or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States
Extraordinary rendition and irregular rendition are terms used to describe the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one state to another.[1] "Torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the United States has purportedly transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to employ harsh interrogation techniques that may rise to the level of torture. It has been alleged that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of the United States (a transfer of anyone to anywhere for the purpose of torture is a violation of U.S. law). Condoleezza Rice, (then the United States Secretary of State), stated in an April 2006 radio interview that the United States does not transfer people to places where it is known they will be tortured
April 19, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama is a pusillanimous wretch. Coward, fool and traitor to us all.
April 19, 2009 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink