Sanctioned Degradation (Addressing Them As Though They Were "An Animal")

[kpete]

Source: Newsweek

Michael Isikoff
Sanctioned Degradation
A new Senate report says:
Bush officials quickly abandoned 'humane' interrogation techniques.

Apr 21, 2009 | Updated: 10:06 p.m. ET Apr 21, 2009

When the U.S. military began sending terror suspects to Guantanamo in 2002, President Bush proclaimed that it was unwavering U.S. policy that they would be treated "humanely." But according to a report made available to NEWSWEEK and other organizations, internal Defense Department memos show that U.S. interrogators quickly strayed from that approach, devising elaborate plans to break down the resistance of two high-value detainees by stripping them and forcing them "to bark and perform dog tricks." These techniques were derived in part from classified U.S. military training slides that recommended subjecting detainees to "religious disgrace" and a process of "degradation" that included addressing them as though they were "an animal," the memos

...............

The report, an advanced copy of which was provided to several news organizations, draws on newly declassified documents that Levin says bolsters his principal message: That the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo were not caused by "a few bad apples," as Bush administration officials repeatedly asserted. Instead, Levin said in a statement Tuesday, it was the product of high-level White House decisions to utilize a controversial series of "enhanced" and coercive interrogation techniques despite vociferous warnings by U.S. military lawyers and FBI officials that they could subject U.S. officials to prosecutions for torture and war crimes.

......................

According to the minutes of one October 2002 meeting attended by U.S. military officials at a visiting CIA lawyer at Guantanamo, also cited in the Levin report, other techniques discussed included subjecting detainees to waterboarding to simulate suffocation and identifying the phobias of prisoners—such as "insects, snakes, claustrophobia"—and using those fears against them. Those minutes and other documents quoted in the report shed new light on an Aug. 1, 2002, internal Justice Department memo, made public last week, describing CIA interrogators' plans to put another high-value detainee, Abu Zubaydah, into a dark, cramped "confinement box" and then unleash an insect inside—in an effort to exploit his fears of insects.

Some of the aggressive interrogation techniques covered in the various memos recently disclosed (including stress positions, hooding and sleep deprivation) were adopted and approved for use against Khatani, a Saudi native picked up in Afghanistan who U.S. officials have identified as a member of Al Qaeda and the 20th member of the 9/11 hijacker group. A Jan. 17, 2003, memo describing the techniques "used" against Khatani during the previous seven weeks cites "stripping, forced grooming, invasion of space by a female interrogator, treating Khatani like an animal, using a military working dog, and forcing him to pray to an idol shrine."



Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/194846

[K Gardner]

1. I watched Schindler's List again last night. The Germans did the same thing in considering them

'not human'. Chilling.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. This sort of thing makes me sick

It is against all the values I was taught, and is against the Constitution. Bush and his cabal should be tried for crimes against humanity.

[mod mom]

3. This was done in all our names! These thugs MUST be prosecuted!

[Mnemosyne]

4. Slavery was used the same way, basically. It is easy, for some, to abuse

those they consider 'not human'.

Just sickening.

[truebrit71]

5. De-humanizing them also makes it easier on the abusers and torturers...

...it worked for the Nazis too...they de-humanized the Jews and identified them as rats and filthy vermin which made it easier for the German populace as a whole to process and accept what was happening right in front of their very eyes. It also made them willing, and often times eager, participants in the eradication of the 'problem'.

The same thing is happening now in the west...all the alleged baddies (and their faith) are portrayed as dirty, unclean , unshaven animals that delight in killing anglo-saxon, christian people...It enflames and enrages the easily manipulated to hate on cue, to compromise their core values, and the core values of their otherwise measured and law-abiding lives, into accepting the torture and murder of these people as not just being defensible, but justifible and correct....