Video: Interrogators threatened to quit over waterboarding

From Denny: Here's something I knew years ago when the prisoner torture started. It was reported here and there in the news but the Bush White House squashed the reports of CIA personnel balking at doing this torture which is why Bush and Cheney turned to the military to do it for them.

It's nice to finally see the truth brought to the light of day. In every organization there are people who say No! to doing wrong, even when they lose their jobs, even their lives over it. More is to come out about this shameful period in America's history from the Bush years. Just the tip of the iceberg folks.

Torture in 60s South Shows Error of Waterboarding

Tom Gardner:

When I read about the increasing acceptance of waterboarding as a form of torture, I vividly recall how in 1968 members of the Memphis Police Department believed I could tell them information about civil rights insurgents arriving to create havoc. Forty years later I still hide my serrated scars.

I was 14 years old and forgot I was a black boy living in racist America and heading for the devil's den of discrimination.
[...]
Who were these people I supposedly knew who were ready to disrupt the city's infrastructure? My wild eyes could only register pain as the large men kicked, punched and beat me with nightsticks because I was unable to speak coherently between my sobs of sorrow and moans for my mother.
[...]
Like relentless Stalinists, the policemen gave me a few hard, calculated kicks with steel-toed boots in my back and ribs for making them exhausted from their beating. I promised them the names of protesters, when they were coming, and what they were driving. I could hardly speak from my busted lips, chipped teeth and broken jaw, but I forced words from my mouth that sounded like what they wanted as long as they stopped their feverish beating to decipher what my cracking voice was revealing.

But I didn’t know anyone, and I certainly didn’t know about a conspiracy to take over Memphis...

Torture, not only cruel and immoral, but ineffective for intelligence gathering. The rest of the article at Common Dreams. And find out about the history of waterboarding at the torture museum: barbarism then and now.

Happy Birthday to Gitmo: An astrological reading

Wow. I feel so honoured to share my birthday (yesterday) with Guantanamo Bay.
Indymedia:

JANUARY 11, 2008 -- On the day six years ago that the first prisoners began arriving at the U.S. torture camp at Guantánamo, protests were staged across the country and around the world demanding that Guantanamo be shut down. Prisoners are kept in Guantanamo under horrific conditions for years without trial.

That makes good old Gitmo a Capricorn, just like me. I think I'd like to offer an astrological reading, modified from wikipedia, which informs us that "According to astrological beliefs, celestial phenomena reflect or govern human activity on the principle of 'as above, so below', so that the twelve signs at the same time are held to represent twelve basic personality types or characteristic modes of expression."

Celestial phenomena say that Gitmo is ambitious, and hard-working. (After all, those dang prisoners won't torture themselves.) It is methodical and focused, businesslike and persevering - if Gitmo all of a sudden discovered it was at the top of a cliff, it wouldn't flip flop or turn around. Nope, it would keep on going. That's just the kind of place it is. It is so dedicated it won't stop, not even waterboarding, unless prisoners manage to commit suicide.

Gitmo can also be calculating, suspicious, cold, and sometimes displays a lack of emotional depth. It believes in self-reliance, preferring to keep prisoners isolated and in sensory deprivation. It is possessive (certainly doesn't want to let Canada get Omar Khadr) and controlling. It is narrow-minded, vindictive by nature, and truly lacking hope.

Likes: Force feeding prisoners on hunger strikes, Making long term relationship plans (Khadr has been there 5 1/2 years), Unquestioning Loyalty, Dick Cheney, Rummy.

Dislikes: Human rights

Yup, me and Gitmo, two capricorns in a pod.

On Torture

Today, while reading this article, published in the 70s, I started thinking about torture as it is practiced by the US in places like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. We usually think of it as a method of extracting information, since that is what they lead us to believe. The debate about this interrogational torture revolves around questions like: are the acts of torture morally justified, when considering the importance of the information sought? Some of us say no, some say yes.

Torture's real purpose, however, instead of or in addition to the purpose of extracting information, can better be described as terroristic. That is, it primarily functions to intimidate "people other than the victim". In other words, there's a message being broadcast to actual or potential enemies: Don't Fuck with Us.

There are few, if any, clear cases of a regime's voluntarily renouncing terror after having created, through terror, a situation in which terror was no longer needed. And there is considerable evidence of the improbability of this sequence. Terroristic torture tends to become, according to Amnesty International, "administrative practice": a routine procedure institutionalized into the method of governing. Some bureaus collect taxes, other bureaus conduct torture. First a suspect is arrested, next he or she is tortured. Torture gains the momentum of an ingrained element of a standard operating procedure.

Several factors appear to point in the direction of permanence. From the perspective of the victim, even where the population does not initially feel exploited, terror is very unsuitable to the generation of loyalty. This would add to the difficulty of transition away from reliance on terror. Where the population does feel exploited even before the torture begins, the sense of outrage (which is certainly rationally justified toward the choice of victims, as we have see) could often prove stronger than the fear of suffering. Tragically, any unlikelihood that the terroristic torture would "work" would almost guarantee that it would continue to be used. From the perspective of the torturers, it is rare for any entrenched bureau to choose to eliminate itself rather than to try to prove its essential value and the need for its own expansion. This is especially likely if the members of the operation are either thoroughly cynical or thoroughly sincere in their conviction that they are protecting "national security" or some other value taken to be supremely important. The greater burden of proof rests, I would think, on anyone who believes that controllable terroristic torture is possible.

Henry Shue, "Torture", Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Winter, 1978), pp. 124-143.

Psychological Torture as bad as Physical Torture

Archives of General Psychiatry (vol 64, p 277):

...the findings challenge the common perception that psychological torture is less distressing than physical torture. "Implicit in this distinction is a difference in the distressing nature of the events. The evidence takes issue with that," he says. "And since psychological torture is as bad as physical torture, we shouldn’t use it." (New Scientist)

All I can say is: "duh". How can anyone think mock execution, starvation, or rape threats are ok?

The US psychological torture system is finally on trial.

To understand the effects of trauma, I recommend Judith Lewis Herman's Trauma and Recovery.

The New Abu Ghraib Photos - Yet Another Failure of the Media

The new photos from the Iraqi prison obliterate any idea that what happened there wasn't torture. So why is CNN treating it like nothing more than a military scandal?

On Wednesday 16 February 2006, Australian public broadcaster SBS current affairs program DATELINE telecast a segment featuring 60 new photos of the torture inflicted on prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It's much worse than previously imagined. The images are bloodier and more sexually charged than the originals. The new photos depict new incidents of homicide, torture and sexual humiliation and indicate a broader pattern of abuse than was previously understood.

To see these very disturbing photos for yourself, click here or download the video from dahrjamailiraq.com THESE PHOTOS ARE VERY DISTURBING. Please do not view this video if you are easily disturbed by graphic imagery of torture and death.

Honestly, these photos will bring tears to your eyes, sickness to your stomach, and pain to your heart. How could any human with a conscience feel otherwise? Well, apparently if you work for CNN, the real transgression was the documentation of the torture, not the actual torture itself.

Here's how CNN framed this:

Let's start by reminding everybody that under U.S. military law and practice, the only photographs that can be taken are official photographs for documentation purposes about the status of prisoners when they are in military detention. That's it. Anything else is not acceptable. And of course, that is what the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal is all about.

(story here)

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