So Is It Torture If Done To These Two Americans?

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/42176

So Is It Torture If Done To These Two Americans?
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2009-04-30 16:02.

By Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent


The North Korean regime will indict two American journalists from Current TV who had been reporting on North Korean refugees in China. After holding them for the past five weeks, they’ll be charged with “illegal entry” into North Korea and the perpetration of “hostile acts” against the paranoid Communist nation. What happens in North Korean jails? Why, the sort of things that the Bush administration said were legal to perform on detainees in U.S. custody. Is it torture then, Mr. Cheney?

Take a look at the most recent State Department human rights report on North Korea, updated in February. Under the section forthrightly titled “Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” it lists that among other tortures, the North Koreans prefer “prolonged periods of exposure to the elements”; “confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down”; “being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods”; and “being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.” If these aren’t exactly the “confinement box” or “stress positions” or the “cold cell,” they’re close cousins. Shall we get into a debate about whether stripping someone naked and placing him in a cell chilled to 50 degrees and dousing him with cold water is materially different than “prolonged periods of exposure to the elements”?

And I wonder how this sounds in Korean: “With respect to physical pain, we have concluded that ’severe pain’ within the meaning of Section 2340 is pain that is difficult for the individual to endure and is of an intensity akin to the pain accompanying serious physical injury. … We conclude that none of these proposed techniques inflicts such pain. … Section 2340 defines severe mental pain or suffering as ‘the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from’ one of several predicate acts … (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the application or threatened administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that any of the preceding acts will be done to another person. … f the methods that you have described do not either in and of themselves constitute one of these acts or as a course of conduct fulfill the predicate act requirement, the prohibition has not been violated.” After all, the SERE techniques that formed the basis for the CIA interrogation regimen emerged from “Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war,” says the Senate Armed Services Committee, so we’re coming close to full circle here.

Has Kim Jong-Il written his thank-you note to Dick Cheney yet?

[bullimiami]

1. so by bush doctrine i suppose its fair game to torture false confessions from them

and then use them as evidence.
that is unless they just jail them without any trial.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

2. Not Torture.

Section 2340 defines severe mental pain or suffering as ‘the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from’ one of several predicate acts … (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the application or threatened administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality;




3 Americans.

:sarcasm: ?

[babylonsister]

3. I'm not getting your post.

No one knows what the No. Koreans are doing to these women.

[readmoreoften]

4. SERE was not developed from "Chinese Communists" but from our fantasies of communist war techniques

A chapter in my dissertation dealt with this subject. Our entire foray into psychological torture is basically a hysterical reaction to the House UnAmerican Committees testimony from a paranoiac self-proclaimed "Red China expert", Edward Hunter who had buddies in the CIA. US Intelligence was convinced that Communists possessed the powers of hypnosis. The CIA looked at Stalin's show trials and interpreted the event as evidence of "advanced powers of hypnosis" (it actually had nothing to do with hypnosis and was a complex and tragic instance of group hysteria/paranoia); they believed they desperately needed to learn mind control techniques to compete. This is, in part, the origin of MK Ultra (Naomi Klein talks about this at the beginning of the Shock Doctrine.)

The "expert" Edward Hunter testified that during the Korean War, POWs found themselves in a classroom environment, treated very well, but left with nothing but "communist propaganda" to read. After reading communist literature and looking at photographs of what they (as US soldiers) had done to Korean children in terms of biological warfare as many as 10% were returning to the US as communists and peaceniks. (Not too hard to imagine, Utah Phillips himself came back greatly politicized after witnessing post-war Korea.) To Hunter and his ilk, all this indicated intensive brainwashing. He considered those POW schools to be a form of advanced technological mind control. In fact, the commies were so good, returning soldiers didn't even know they were brainwashed! Pretty slick, huh!

Well, of course, we've been trying to discover their "great mind control secrets" ever since. While SERE was developed due to the perception that the US needed to gain psychological control of its enemies, it has nothing to do with China or Korea. It was developed at the University of Pennsylvania by psychiatrist Martin Siegelman--father of positive psychology/virtue psychology. You know, all that Oprah, positive thinking, self-help stuff. Siegelman did tests on dogs to understand fear (i.e. he traumatized puppies) in order to understand what holds humans back from "achieving their full potential." Well, SERE just reverses the experiment in order to figure out how to better traumatize and dehumanize captured animals.

Other than being a hysterical reaction to the Communist enemy's supposedly mystical powers, the US military's history of mind control experimentation and psycho-social control has nothing to do with communism. But of course this myth is perpetuated because it allows us to fantasize about ourselves as victims of hostile societies who want to destroy "our way of life."