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In reply to the discussion: Charlie Hebdo suspect said Abu Ghraib torture pics drove him to enlist in Jihad against USA in 2008 [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)97. Thank you CIA, all you NAZIs thereabouts, and your puppet, George W Bush.
The U.S. Has a History of Using Torture
by Alfred W. McCoy
Mr. McCoy is J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
In April 2004, Americans were stunned when CBS broadcast those now-notorious photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. As this scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the abuses were "perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military," whom New York Times columnist William Safire soon branded "creeps"--a line that few in the press had reason to challenge.
When I looked at these photos, I did not see snapshots of simple brutality or a breakdown in military discipline. After more than a decade of studying the Philippine militarys torture techniques for a monograph published by Yale back 1999, I could see the tell-tale signs of the CIAs psychological methods. For example, that iconic photo of a hooded Iraqi with fake electrical wires hanging from his extended arms shows, not the sadism of a few creeps, but instead the two key trademarks of the CIAs psychological torture. The hood was for sensory disorientation. The arms were extended for self-inflicted pain. It was that simple; it was that obvious.
After making that argument in an op-ed for the Boston Globe two weeks after CBS published the photos, I began exploring the historical continuity, the connections, between the CIA torture research back in the 1950s and Abu Ghraib in 2004. By using the past to interrogate the present, I published a book titled A Question of Torture last January that tracks the trail of an extraordinary historical and institutional continuity through countless pages of declassified documents. The findings are disturbing and bear directly upon the ongoing bitter debate over torture that culminated in the enactment of the Military Commissions law just last October.
From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with costs that reached a billion dollars a year. Many have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research -- the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects and the tragic death of a CIA employee, Dr. Frank Olson, who jumped to his death from a New York hotel after a dose of this drug. This Agency drug testing, the focus of countless sensational press accounts and a half-dozen major books, led nowhere.
But obscure CIA-funded behavioral experiments, outsourced to the countrys leading universities, produced two key findings, both duly and dully reported in scientific journals, that contributed to the discovery of a distinctly American form of torture: psychological torture.With funding from Canadas Defense Research Board, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in just 48 hours. What had the doctor donedrugs, hypnosis, electroshock? No, none of the above.
CONTINUED...
http://www.hnn.us/article/32497
by Alfred W. McCoy
Mr. McCoy is J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
In April 2004, Americans were stunned when CBS broadcast those now-notorious photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. As this scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the abuses were "perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military," whom New York Times columnist William Safire soon branded "creeps"--a line that few in the press had reason to challenge.
When I looked at these photos, I did not see snapshots of simple brutality or a breakdown in military discipline. After more than a decade of studying the Philippine militarys torture techniques for a monograph published by Yale back 1999, I could see the tell-tale signs of the CIAs psychological methods. For example, that iconic photo of a hooded Iraqi with fake electrical wires hanging from his extended arms shows, not the sadism of a few creeps, but instead the two key trademarks of the CIAs psychological torture. The hood was for sensory disorientation. The arms were extended for self-inflicted pain. It was that simple; it was that obvious.
After making that argument in an op-ed for the Boston Globe two weeks after CBS published the photos, I began exploring the historical continuity, the connections, between the CIA torture research back in the 1950s and Abu Ghraib in 2004. By using the past to interrogate the present, I published a book titled A Question of Torture last January that tracks the trail of an extraordinary historical and institutional continuity through countless pages of declassified documents. The findings are disturbing and bear directly upon the ongoing bitter debate over torture that culminated in the enactment of the Military Commissions law just last October.
From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with costs that reached a billion dollars a year. Many have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research -- the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects and the tragic death of a CIA employee, Dr. Frank Olson, who jumped to his death from a New York hotel after a dose of this drug. This Agency drug testing, the focus of countless sensational press accounts and a half-dozen major books, led nowhere.
But obscure CIA-funded behavioral experiments, outsourced to the countrys leading universities, produced two key findings, both duly and dully reported in scientific journals, that contributed to the discovery of a distinctly American form of torture: psychological torture.With funding from Canadas Defense Research Board, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in just 48 hours. What had the doctor donedrugs, hypnosis, electroshock? No, none of the above.
CONTINUED...
http://www.hnn.us/article/32497
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Charlie Hebdo suspect said Abu Ghraib torture pics drove him to enlist in Jihad against USA in 2008 [View all]
Octafish
Jan 2015
OP
And we believe mass murderers now? Look...some people just like to kill, and like to find
msanthrope
Jan 2015
#2
Like the US leadership gives a rats ass about the millions of civilians they've killed either.
NewDeal_Dem
Jan 2015
#117
Well, shit.....people never lie in court, or come up with excuses for their anti-social behavior! nt
msanthrope
Jan 2015
#12
Agreed. Like how Dennis MILLER and his ilk claim they turned wingnut over 9-11. n/t
UTUSN
Jan 2015
#7
Without the invasion of Iraq, those determined to kill would have to find another excuse.
msanthrope
Jan 2015
#44
So you don't think anyone was motivated by the Abu Ghraib tortures and murders?
riderinthestorm
Jan 2015
#66
I think plenty of people take tragedy and murder and use it as motivator to do the really
msanthrope
Jan 2015
#73
That's fine but the State department has specifically said there's been blowback
riderinthestorm
Jan 2015
#77
The comment was made in 2008 to explain why he wanted to become a jihadist
riderinthestorm
Jan 2015
#213
george w bush made it to iraq though, with divisions. speaking of mass murderers.
NewDeal_Dem
Jan 2015
#120
I'm in full agreement with your post. (And with this OP in general as well)
dissentient
Jan 2015
#40
I totally see how you could mistake French cartoonists for US Army reserves. nt
msanthrope
Jan 2015
#13
"starting with April Glaspie" -- actually, I think you need to go back a bit farther in time, at
KingCharlemagne
Jan 2015
#38
Thanks (I think). I'm not sure there's any way to 'love' a specific post the way
KingCharlemagne
Jan 2015
#58
We could push the starting point back to 1953 when the CIA and FDR's grandson
KingCharlemagne
Jan 2015
#83
prescott's dad sam: war industries board WWI, rockefeller/harriman associate,
NewDeal_Dem
Jan 2015
#128
Just think if the BFEE would have stuck to the Afghanistan war and left Iraq alone.
Rex
Jan 2015
#37
Does anyone bring up the CONNECTIONS between the House of Bush and House of Bin Laden anymore?
Octafish
Jan 2015
#42
I suspect they are defending the status quo, meaning the Military Industrial Complex.
Octafish
Jan 2015
#96
Why do alleged progressives think that right wing homophobes, anti-Semites and racists are credible?
SidDithers
Jan 2015
#171
Why do alleged progressives laugh about the BFEE and try to pretend it doesn't exist?
Rex
Jan 2015
#172
You're just going to ignore the promotion of blatant homophobe shitbag Wayne Madsen?...
SidDithers
Jan 2015
#180
Beside giving your word, you have failed to show where he is any of those things.
Octafish
Jan 2015
#183
Interesting, that same asshole was instrumental if fucking up the BOG when it first started
Rex
Jan 2015
#98
The source was ''In These Times.'' You really don't contribute a thing, do you, SidDithers?
Octafish
Jan 2015
#95
Because you have an agenda? What do you think about Bush, Bin Laden and HARKEN?
Octafish
Jan 2015
#107
No. I was not shocked because you never give a shit how loony or disgusting your source is.
zappaman
Jan 2015
#108
Wayne Madsen is a homophobic, anti-Semite who writes for a Holocaust denial site.
zappaman
Jan 2015
#136
Is that the same rense your Tag Team buddy SidDithers of DU quoted in post 75?
Octafish
Jan 2015
#148
Why are you deflecting from your support of a writer who is a homophobic, anti-semite?
zappaman
Jan 2015
#150
You are acting desperate, zappaman. As the facts aren't on your side, understandable.
Octafish
Jan 2015
#154
Never. That's why I post on the BFEE and the crimes of the national security state.
Octafish
Jan 2015
#193
No. Our difference is that I don't give legitimacy to homophobes, racists and anti-Semites...
SidDithers
Jan 2015
#203
You could wipe out my entire state and I still wouldn't travel to another country and kill people.
randome
Jan 2015
#55
And they made easy targets for terrorists who were on the No-Fly List for Years.
Octafish
Jan 2015
#129
So the years of the little bush were a massive give-away to the...
Dont call me Shirley
Jan 2015
#181
If it was me, I would have self deleted when shown I was using turds as sources.
zappaman
Jan 2015
#124
I never knew the staff at Charlie Hebdo worked at Abut Ghraib... N.T.
Donald Ian Rankin
Jan 2015
#190
Poor sociopath needs a map of the world. He's got the 2 sides of the Atlantic ocean mixed up
Pooka Fey
Jan 2015
#197
We have and still are the driving force behind their recruitment efforts in the ME. We are still
jwirr
Jan 2015
#207
Yes, out corporations and their stockholders are making bundles off of endless war and they finally
jwirr
Jan 2015
#211
In 2009, Gen. Jones reported Al Qaeda was down to less than 100 members in Afghanistan.
Octafish
Jan 2015
#216