you saying that <...> the US had to teach other nations how to torture people. No, I'm suggesting that the US taught US-supported regimes how to torture people more effectively, and that these techniques ultimately comprised the repertoire of our in-house torture operations in Iraq:
FOR many Latin American victims of torture, the infamous pictures of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison brought back not only chilling recollections of their own experiences, but also confirmed what they have long maintained: that their torturers were following interrogation guidelines set by the US Army School of the Americas (SOA).
"I had flashbacks when I saw the guy with the hood
," says Carlos Mauricio, a Salvadorean who was tortured in 1983. Founder of Stop Impunity, a group that seeks to prosecute human rights violators, dismisses as a "whitewash" the Bush administration's view that Abu Ghraib abuse was the work of a few US army misfits.
"What happened at Abu Ghraib was torture by the book; they were implementing US policy," Mauricio, 51, told the Sunday Herald.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1212-02.htmThe U.S. military's interrogation techniques and treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib are consistent with its treatment of noncombatants in past conflicts, including for example in Vietnam (see Phoenix Program) and with its training of military personnel of U.S. allies (see School of the Americas).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuseThe basic techniques -- the use of stress positions, sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation -- are aimed at making victims feel responsible for their own pain and suffering. But McCoy added that while it appears less abusive than physical torture, the psychological torture paradigm causes deep psychological damage to both victims and their interrogators, who can become capable of unspeakable physical cruelties.
The results of the CIA torture experiments were codified in 1963 in a secret manual known as "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation." Four years later, the CIA was operating some 40 interrogation centers in Vietnam as part of its Phoenix Program, McCoy said. Eventually the CIA's psychological methods were spread worldwide through the U.S. Agency for International Development's Public Safety program and U.S. Army Mobile Training Teams.
In 1983, the KUBARK manual provided the model for the CIA's "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual," whose methods were used by the brutal, U.S.-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16 during the tenure of then-U.S. ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte, now ambassador to Iraq.
About the same time, the CIA compiled the "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare" manual for the Nicaraguan contra commandos, then seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government with the aid of the Reagan administration.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hodge11032004.htmlThe two CIA manuals, "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983" and "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation-July 1963," were originally obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Baltimore Sun in 1997. The KUBARK manual includes a detailed section on "The Coercive Counterintelligence Interrogation of Resistant Sources," with concrete assessments on employing "Threats and Fear," "Pain," and "Debility." The language of the 1983 "Exploitation" manual drew heavily on the language of the earlier manual, as well as on Army Intelligence field manuals from the mid 1960s generated by "Project X"-a military effort to create training guides drawn from counterinsurgency experience in Vietnam. Recommendations on prisoner interrogation included the threat of violence and deprivation and noted that no threat should be made unless the questioner "has approval to carry out the threat." The interrogator "is able to manipulate the subject's environment," the 1983 manual states, "to create unpleasant or intolerable situations, to disrupt patterns of time, space, and sensory perception."
After Congress began investigating reports of Central American atrocities in the mid 1980s, particularly in Honduras, the CIA's "Human Resource Exploitation" manual was hand edited to alter passages that appeared to advocate coercion and stress techniques to be used on prisoners. CIA officials attached a new prologue page on the manual stating: "The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults or exposure to inhumane treatment of any kind as an aid to interrogation is prohibited by law, both international and domestic; it is neither authorized nor condoned"-making it clear that authorities were well aware these abusive practices were illegal and immoral, even as they continued then and now.
Indeed, similar material had already been incorporated into seven Spanish-language training guides. More than a thousand copies of these manuals were distributed for use in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru, and at the School of the Americas between 1987 and 1991. An inquiry was triggered in mid 1991 when the Southern Command evaluated the manuals for use in expanding military support programs in Colombia.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/
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