sorry Spencer

O/T

WHO just raised Pandemic Level to 5 (scale of 1 to 6) it is supposed to be an advisory to all Public Health sectors/actors – but TradMed is already going Full Metal Outbreak – cnn “swine flu pandemic imminent”

now to read your post

Thanks for this article, Spencer. I try to reason with people who say that SERE does the same things to our soldiers that we do to ‘enemy combatants’ so it can’t be torture. I’m gradually realizing that reason doesn’t work but I keep trying.

Only Traitors Torture.
Good day.

Stress positions as a technique has been part of the CIA’s torture arsenal for at least over 40 years now. In the KUBARK manual (CIA’s Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual from 1963), the spooks describe the rational for stress positions:

It has been plausibly suggested that, whereas pain inflicted on a person from outside himself may actually focus or intensify his will to resist, his resistance is likelier to be sapped by pain which he seems to inflict upon himself. “In the simple torture situation the contest is one between the individual and his tormentor (…. and he can frequently endure). When the individual is told to stand at attention for long periods, an intervening factor is introduced. The immediate source of pain is not the interrogator but the victim himself. The motivational strength of the individual is likely to exhaust itself in this internal encounter…. As long as the subject remains standing, he is attributing to his captor the power to do something worse to him, but there is actually no showdown of the ability of the interrogator to do so.”

Re sleep deprivation, it is a way to induce debility in a prisoner, to weaken their resistance and will. Kubark notes that total sleep deprivation (for days, for instance) is self-defeating, the same for starvation. What follows from the Kubark manual describes how the situation was used at Gitmo, and how it still is, thanks to the Army Field Manual instructions hardly anyone wants to pay attention to:

The available evidence suggests that resistance is sapped principally by psychological rather than physical pressures. The threat of debility – for example, a brief deprivation of food – may induce much more anxiety than prolonged hunger, which will result after a while in apathy and, perhaps, eventual delusions or hallucinations. In brief, it appears probable that the techniques of inducing debility become counter-productive at an early stage….

Another objection to the deliberate inducing of debility is that prolonged exertion, loss of sleep, etc., themselves become patterns to which the subject adjusts through apathy. The interrogator should use his power over the resistant subject’s physical environment to disrupt patterns of response, not to create them. Meals and sleep granted irregularly, in more than abundance or less than adequacy, the shifts occuring on no discernible time pattern, will normally disorient an interrogatee and sap his will to resist more effectively than a sustained deprivation leading to debility.

No category mistke. The CIA knew what they were after. Cheney wanted a confession to a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda that never existed. For that, waterboarding was the perfect technique.

Torture has always been used by Americans to elicit false confessions.

You don’t think those women in Salem were witches, do you?

Hi Margot,

So far I’ve gotten one person with, “Well, people sometimes commit suicide, too. Does that mean it’s OK to kill them?” No guarantees, though.

I really like how you’re pursuing this. One more nail into the torture-for-false-confession coffin. This dripping of truth has a cumulative effect. Very good on ya, Spencer.

Continued excellent work, thank you, Spencer.

On KSFO in San Francisco Lee Rodgers and Brian Sussman constantly bring up the SERE training as proof that waterboarding isNot torture. They focus on physical pain and damage. Then they say liberials who cry about the feeling of terrorist are wussies who will be responsible for the next terrorist attack because the US can’t torture an more. Then they read a commercial for ProFlowers for Mother’s day.

Is there a long term impact upon the individuals when debility is induced?

I’ve been wondering, why didn’t they just use an actor?

So, in my piece today I wondered how it could be that the CIA could come to view stress positions as a mechanism to induce sleep deprivation in detainees

I am still convinced it was cheney’s recruits, “team b” and not the professionals in the cia

as a mechanism to induce sleep deprivation in detainees

let’s talk about “sleep deprivation” because it sounds as benign as “water boarding”, two terms that do not indicate the violence involved

finally the public is begining to understand the term ‘water board’ is a nice way of saying, “we are drowing you” and the term really means “water torture”

however sleep deprivation hasn’t yet been demonstrated to the public for what it is

a man will go insane and will become haluniatory when deprived of sleep, this is a fact

Torture has always been used by Americans everyone to elicit false confessions.

Some have used it as policy, and some have used it while claiming they don’t, but all have used it. Not a uniquely American thing.

BTW at http://www.spockosbrain.com the first audio clip is Lee Rodgers arguing that waterboarding is not torture and we do it to our own people in training. He obviously has never heard of Nance. Check out the audio.

emptywheel all over Bybee again, upstairs
Jay Bybee Speaks Quavers

Ah, that’s a good question, as “long-term impact” is or “prolonged mental harm” is the Yoo criteria for psychological torture. The answer is yes, though not inevitably. The type of harm comes under the umbrella of PTSD, panic disorders or phobias (or other anxiety disorder), depression or mood disorders, and physiologically through memory and attentional deficits, and hyperarousal of the autonomic nervous system that persists for a great deal of time, years.

So, in their downgrading of the possibility of prolonged mental harm, and their ignorance (deliberate or otherwise) of the established literature on the subject, I have long felt that even under the criteria of Yoo/Bybee/Addington/Bradbury, the CIA and DoD engaged in torture, by their own criteria, and the OLC memos provide very little backup — not least because they left the door open to prolonged mental harm.

Cheney wanted the real thing. Chicken hawks who never fought get off on someone suffering by their hand, especially second hand.

KSM: “I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.”

Interestingly, having many false red alerts seemed to aid the Bush administration’s agenda quite handily. I recall a few terror level alerts being raised during important policy decisions and elections.

It might be interesting to map the timing of these torture sessions against those threat level alerts.

A KSM in custody is worth two OBLs in the bush (pardon the pun) when it comes to spinning up the counter-terrorism apparatus.

By the way, these stress positions were well known to be illegal, even before the War Crimes Act. In fact, we have David Addington’s signature on a document that acknowledges that fact on behalf of his boss, Dick Cheney. Of course, it was in March 1992 and Cheney was the SecDef and there was a little scandal about a Spanish-language training manual that he had to deal with, but it really does make it harder for those two to argue that they didn’t know any better.

Nice catch!
Diary or EmptyWheel worthy, don’tcha think?
FunnyDiva

Some wingnut with press credentials used his question at the Obama news conference to pump Cheney’s “there is secret info that this works and saved lives” disinformation.

Obama basically said, it could be true, but it wouldn’t matter. It’s more important that it is not who we are and that it gives an advantage to our opponents and puts our own people at greater risk. He cited Winston Churchill. I love that. But I wish he’d go ahead and hammer them with the facts, too.

I wish Obama’s answer had been stronger. He I wish he’d said plainly:

1. It is both clear and well known that torture is illegal and immoral.

2. It is both clear and well known that it generates false information.

3. It is clear and well known that it is counterproductive to getting good information.

4. It is both clear and well known that it puts our troops at risk from reciprocal or worse treatment.

5. It is both clear and well known that it gladdens and creates awesome recruiting material for our enemies.

The Bush administration was a criminal gang that needs to be called to justice for these crimes.

Here we go.

The history of the .

Orange Alerts

Very clearly several of these were directly related to erroneous claims made by Al Qaida detainees. The actual costs amounted in the >$100 million dollar range in increased security, building shutdowns, and lost business.

The six Orange Alerts.

ALERT NO. 1: SEPTEMBER 10-SEPTEMBER 24, 2002, a. k. a. “The 9-11 Anniversary Worry Weeks.” Officials claimed “an abundance of credible intelligence”suggesting attacks coinciding with the September 11 anniversary….
“The threats that we have heard recently remind us of the pattern of threats we heard prior to September 11,” President Bush said at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington. “We have no specific threat to America, but we’re taking everything seriously,” he said.

On September 24, 2002: Citing disruptions in the al Qaeda terrorist network, lowered the threat level. “Contributing to this decision were the recent arrests of six men in suburban Buffalo who are alleged to have provided material support to al Qaeda,” they said. “In addition, senior al Qaeda operatives have been captured in Pakistan and other al Qaeda members have been apprehended in Singapore and Yemen. These actions have disrupted terrorist operations by neutralizing certain senior al Qaeda leadership and removing other terrorist planners and operatives.” The group in Buffalo had nothing to do with imminent attacks or Zubaydah or KSM. In fact KSM eluded capture in September.

ALERT NO. 2: FEBRUARY 7-FEBRUARY 27, 2003, a. k. a. “The Great Duct Tape and Plastic Sheeting Panic of 03.”
On February 7, 2003 AG John Ashcroft said reports indicated that so-called “soft” targets- even apartments, hotels, sports arenas and amusement parks -were at risk. Al Qaeda was thought to be procuring materials to make a so-called “dirty bomb”.
DHS Secretary Tom Ridge “suggested an attack on the United States and the United States’ interest – both within the United States and outside- is imminent.”…On February 13, 2003: A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York. The claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a “dirty bomb” sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

“I’d like to remind people that the information we have to work with is very vague,” Ridge said. “There are occasions you learn it was not as accurate or was inaccurate.” (Washington Post, February 15, 2003)

ALERT NO. 3: MARCH 17-APRIL 16, 2003, a. k. a. “Here We Go Again: The Iraq War Starts.”
Tom Ridge-”The Intelligence Community believes that terrorists will attempt multiple attacks against U.S. and Coalition targets worldwide in the event of a U.S led military campaign against Saddam Hussein.” [Does this coincide with the efforts to get KSM to confess to AQ-Iraq links]. Ridge lowered the nation’s terrorist alert threat level because “hostilities in Iraq are coming to a close…”

ALERT NO. 4: MAY 20-MAY 30, 2003, a. k. a. “Al Qaeda Activity Abroad Means Worries At Home.” “The U.S. intelligence community believes that al Qaeda has entered an operational period worldwide, and this may include attacks in the United States,” Ridge said after consulting with President Bush and other top administration officials….”Possible means of attack include the suicide bombings seen in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, as well as “small arms-equipped assault teams and large vehicle-borne explosive devices.” … “It’s hard to know where this might happen,” a senior U.S. official said. “Something is up somewhere.”
“The intelligence community has concluded the number of indicators and warnings that led to raising the threat level have decreased, and the heightened vulnerability associated with the Memorial Day holiday has passed,” said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. [CBSNews.com, May 30, 2003]

ALERT NO. 5: DECEMBER 21, 2003-JANUARY 9, 2004, a. k. a. “Les Francais? Non!”
DHSecurity Secretary Tom Ridge warned Sunday of possible terrorist strikes “more devastating than the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001″. A “substantial increase” in intelligence pointing to “near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11.”… Homeland Security also ordered the dispatch of scores of Energy Department radiation experts to cities planning large public events…. Starting on Dec. 22, the teams crisscrossed those cities, taking measurements 24 hours a day.[Washington Post, January 7, 2004]The FBI has concluded the information that led to a nationwide hunt for five men suspected of infiltrating the United States on Christmas Eve was fabricated by the informant, and the agency called off the alert sparked by the information today. [ABCNews, January 7, 2004] The alert led officials to shut down New York’s harbor to all ships except emergency vessels from New Year’s Eve through New Year’s Day, and to ban vehicles from roads alongside the harbor. FBI officials said no terrorist suspects were arrested as a result of the alert.

Newsweek, January 12, 2004: Six Air France flights bound for Los Angeles over Christmas were canceled. Other international flights were shadowed by F-16 fighters. Believing they had disrupted a terrorist plot, the United States asked French authorities to track down several passengers on an Air France flight whose names a list. None had any evident connection to terrorism. One was a 6-year-old child. The FBI’s screening of Vegas hotel visitors and questioning of Arab immigrants were equally fruitless. As one counterterrorism official put it, the efforts produced “zilch.”

ALERT NO. 6: AUGUST 1-???, 2004. a. k. a. “The What’s Old is New Again Threat.”

It is amazing how so many former Cia analyst/and other officials who completely oppose torture. The list is long