A pattern of torture and memory erasure is at the heart of the mistreatment of prisoners in George W. Bush's Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Indeed, torture is not so much about extracting information from terrorists, the actual result is to reduce the mental capacity of prisoners so that the false history created by the Administration and its stenographers in the corporate media can never be corrected.
PADILLA: SENSORY DEPRIVATION AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROMEJose Padilla's torture has been well-documented. He was subjected to prolonged psychological torture by sensory deprivation and isolation leaving him in a near vegetative state, unable to recall important events or assist in his own defense. The British press has described what was actually was done to him, and its effects. See,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1970084,00.html :
Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture". The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for more than three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.
The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he "does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, ie, post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation". José Padilla appears to have been lobotomised: not medically, but socially.
If this was an attempt to extract information, it was ineffective: the authorities held him without charge for three and half years. Then, threatened by a supreme court ruling, they suddenly dropped their claims that he was trying to detonate a dirty bomb. They have now charged him with some vague and lesser offences to do with support for terrorism. He is unlikely to be the only person subjected to this regime. Another "enemy combatant", Ali al-Marri, claims to have been subject to the same total isolation and sensory deprivation, in the same naval prison in South Carolina. God knows what is being done to people who have disappeared into the CIA's foreign oubliettes.
ABU ZUBAYDAH: WATERBOARDING AND MEMORY ERASURE Abu Zubaydah was the first "high value" al-Qaeda figure captured in March 2002. He had been at bin Laden's side going back at least to the early 1990s. He ran several major militant training camps on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he trained thousands of jihadists, including six of the 9/11 hijackers. Zubydah is identified by U.S. intelligence as the author of the plan to attack the USS Cole, and was a key organizer present at an al-Qaeda planning summit held in Kuala Lumpur in early January 2000 at which the Cole and 9/11 attacks were mapped out in detail.
Despite his categorization by US and allied intelligence as a very important al Qaeda leader, and long period in positions of responsibility within al Qaeda, it is now claimed -- rather implausibly -- that he had long been insane. Zubaydah's story, however, has not been adequately documented, as he's had no access to the courts. The primary source for information about his psychological state has come from a book by Ronald Suskind, whose sources appear to have spun the story to make it seem that Zubaydah was insane before his capture, in an apparent effort to cast doubt on the details that have emerged from other sources about his role within al-Qaeda. Most notably, Abu Zubaydah worked closely with Luai Sakka, identified as a double-agent working with U.S. and Syrian intelligence. See,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/10/133754/60/799/420257What has been acknowledged is that Zubaydah was the first GWOT prisoner held by the U.S. to be waterboarded, a form of torture involving partial drowning and the cutting off of oxygen to the brain. The neuropsychiatric effects of partial drowning and oxygen deprivation are well-documented in medical literature. The common results of partial or short periods of oxygen deprivation are dizzyness, disorientation, and memory loss. When blood oxygen levels fall below a certain level, the result is loss of consciousness, death of brain cells, permanent neurological damage, and if prolonged for more than a couple minutes, death. The logical conclusion is that Zubaydah, described as insane by U.S. intelligence sources, suffered lasting psychological and neurological damage as the result of waterboarding and perhaps other forms of torture while in custody. See, tp://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x245566
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WATERBOARDINGHere's a description of what happens to the human brain during near-drowning:
http://www.florida-oxygen.com/treatment.htm#10
Near Drowning
Every year, thousands of children suffer brain damage as the result of near drowning, choking, near hanging, near-electrocution, cardiac arrest, cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning, and lightening strikes. These incidents deprive areas of the brain of vital new change oxygen, causing an anoxic ischemic encephalopathy (AIE), which in severe cases can result in coma. Swelling cuts off the brain’s blood supply, leading to the accumulation of toxic levels of cell wastes which further aggravates the swelling.
Anoxia is the complete cessation for a period of time of oxygen flow to the brain, resulting in brain cell death. Irreparable damage can result after about a minute of cut-off of oxygenated blood to the brain. Brain damage can also result from a drop in blood oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. Hypoxia is most commonly encountered among victims of heart attacks, in near-drowning accidents, climbers at high altitude, and scuba divers who surface too rapidly resulting in a build-up of nitrogen bubbles in the blood. It is also a result of prolonged or repeated waterboarding with inadequate administration of oxygen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_brain_injury insult to the brain that can cause injury is anoxia. Anoxia is a condition in which there is an absence of oxygen supply to an organ's tissues, even if there is adequate blood flow to the tissue. Hypoxia refers to a decrease in oxygen supply rather than a complete absence of oxygen, and ischemia is inadequate blood supply, as is seen in cases in which the brain swells. In any of these cases, without adequate oxygen, a biochemical cascade called the ischemic cascade is unleashed, and the cells of the brain can die within several minutes. This type of injury is often seen in near-drowning victims, in heart attack patients (particularly those who have suffered a cardiac arrest), or in people who suffer significant blood loss from other injuries that then causes a decrease in blood flow to the brain due to circulatory (hypovolemic) shock. Waterboarding obviously places extreme stresses on the mind and body. The danger of brain damage is high, even if conducted by "experts" monitored by trained medical personnel. Torture that cuts off the supply of oxygen can result in permanent neurological damage or death in a very short period of time:
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/062406SchiavoPuzzle.htmlIn 1999, the Clinton County (NY) District Attorney's office and the New York Prosecutors Training Institute hosted the nation's leading experts in the prosecution and investigation of strangulation cases. Strack and McClane presented their findings at the three-day conference, "Detection and Prosecution of Strangulation in Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Cases".
SNIP
Carotid arteries are the major vessels that transport oxygenated blood from the heart and lungs to the brain. These are the arteries at the side of the neck that persons administering CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) check for pulses. Jugular veins are the major vessels that transport deoxygenated blood from the brain back to the heart.
The general clinical sequence of a victim who is being strangled is one of severe pain, followed by unconsciousness, followed by brain death. The victim will lose consciousness by any one or all of the following: blocking of the carotid arteries (depriving the brain of oxygen), blocking of the jugular veins (preventing deoxygenated blood from exiting the brain) and closing off the airway, causing the victim to be unable to breath. Only 11 pounds of pressure placed on both carotid arteries for 10 seconds is necessary to cause unconsciousness. However, if pressure is released immediately, consciousness will be regained within 10 seconds.
After 50 seconds of continuous oxygen deprivation, the victim rarely recovers. FALSE MEMORIES AND FALSE HISTORIESThe well-documented torture of Jose Padilla shows the effect of obscuring the facts of his alleged involvement in terrorism, aiding an effort by the Administration to develop a false history. People being tortured tend to say what they think their torturers want to hear, and the trauma of torture often results in degraded or altered memories: See,
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/worthington.php?articleid=11548 Quite what rubbish was spouted by Padilla during these years of "dependency and terror" – before he lost his mind to such an extent that his warders described him as "so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for 'a piece of furniture'" – is unknown. His own desperate confessions – and where they led – have yet to be revealed. What is clear, however, is that other confessions, themselves produced under duress by "high-value" detainees held in secret CIA prisons, formed the basis of the "dirty bomb" allegation. According to the government, Padilla approached training camp facilitator Abu Zubaydah (captured in Pakistan five weeks before him) and 9/11 kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (captured in 2003) with plans for the bomb and was apprehended after Zubaydah identified him to the FBI. Less vigorously reported were admissions by the government itself that both Zubaydah and KSM were "skeptical" about the plot. Other insider comments indicated that Zubaydah actually dismissed Padilla as "a maladroit extremist," telling his interrogators that he was so "ignorant" that he believed he could "separate plutonium" from other nuclear materials by "rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material."
It's also clear that another man who was picked out by Zubaydah in relation to the same dubious plot – Binyam Mohammed al-Habashi, an Ethiopian-born British resident who was captured in Pakistan a week after Zubaydah – suffered even more severely than Padilla. Rendered by the CIA to Morocco, where he was tortured for 18 months and had his penis repeatedly cut by razors, and then transferred to Guantánamo via the CIA's own "Dark Prison" near Kabul – a medieval torture prison with the addition of 24-hour amplified music and noise – Mohammed admitted to being a part of the whole Zubaydah-KSM-Padilla "dirty bomb" plot, but later explained that he had confessed to whatever his U.S.-directed Moroccan torturers told him to, and had never even met Padilla.
While Binyam Mohammed remains in Guantánamo – unsure if the authorities will release him (as requested by the British government) or will attempt to reinstate the charges against him in a military commission (following their collapse in June 2006, when the Supreme Court judged them illegal, and their reintroduction via last fall's Military Commissions Act) – the "dirty bomb" allegation against Padilla was dropped in November 2005, just days before the Supreme Court was due to look at the legality of his detention. Apparently the administration was unwilling to allow Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to testify, lest they reveal that they had been tortured.
Unlike in Guantánamo's "enemy combatant" tribunals – and in the military commissions, which the administration is still trying to revive after further setbacks in June – evidence obtained through torture is inadmissible in U.S. courts, because it is illegal, immoral, and unreliable. And however much the administration may try to deny it, the "dirty bomb" allegation is a perfect demonstration of the hole into which the administration has dug itself: a "plot" whose existence was only ever announced through torture – whether of Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, José Padilla, or Binyam Mohammed – that lives only in this world of tortured confessions and cannot be verified in the real world.
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THE WAR ON HISTORYTorture of prisoners, particularly sensory deprivation and water boarding, have spoilt any chance of developing a complete and accurate public record documenting exactly what al-Qaeda was doing, who was directing the organization, and for what reasons. This is not mere conjecture.
In addition to the confirmed cases of CIA waterboarding of Abu Zudayah and Abd al-Rahom al-Nashiri, detainees rendered to third countries have been reportedly waterboarded, including Khalid Sheikh Mohamed (KSM) and Ramzi bin al Sheibh. These "high-value" detainees also planned or attended the January 2000 Kuala Lumpur meeting from which several 9/11 hjackers transited to the U.S. as the CIA watched.
The consequences of torture of prisoners are not just moral and legal. They go to what we understand about events, our responses to them, and Bush-Cheney' war on history.
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