Bush’s Torture Lite=Torture (Pt. 2)

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Bush has instituted a torture regime that is comprised of ostensibly innocent sounding techniques that in reality can be as deadly, harmful and injurious as torture by horrendous physical acts. Some of the techniques have been  sourced back to Chinese torture used for the purpose of extracting false confessions from captured US soldiers, and thus are not designed to obtain valid intelligence to protect our security. The coercive psychological torture technique, which is a package of multiple methods, was renounced by the US as torture years ago. However, it was used against prisoner 063, and then again renounced as torture by a senior Pentagon official recently. Another torture technique of sleep deprivation was also renounced by the US as torture in 2001, yet is apparently still used by the US. It’s no longer just left progressives: More and more people around the world and in our government are stating the obvious – Bush and Cheney et al must be prosecuted for war crimes.

Coercive Psychological Torture

As Valtin explains, coercive psychological torture is a form of torture codified in the Army Field Manual (AFM) under the name of “Restricted Interrogation Technique – Separation” in Appendix M.  It was created by the CIA based upon both torture used by the Soviet Union and China as well as its own mind control and sensory deprivation research.

Military trainers taught these torture techniques at Guantánamo, Iraq and Afghanistan based on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques,” including sleep deprivation, prolonged constraint and exposure.  This chart had been “copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.”

Two important points. The interrogation “techniques” on the chart were long ago characterized as torture by the US.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at GuantánamoBay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Further, Congress was shocked to learn of the linkage between Bush torture and this chart of techniques used to obtain false confessions. So, aside from the expert conclusions that Jack Bauer torture does not reap reliable information, this particular Bush torture technique is one designed to obtain false confessions.  Think about that: Why would the US need false confessions other than to create more terrorists to perpetuate a continual WOT to feed the military-industrial-Congressional complex.  

Coercive psychological torture includes multiple techniques like isolation, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, sensory or perceptual deprivation, induction of fear, hopelessness and humiliation as well as the use of sensory overload and temperature or environmental manipulation.

While isolation again sounds harmless, Valtin notes that “the effect of isolation upon the brain function of the prisoner is much like that which occurs if he is beaten, starved or deprived of sleep.” A scientific expert stated that solitary confinement or isolation causes “severe psychiatric harm” that will be a permanent harm for some prisoners. Some prisoners may get isolation by the use of blindfolds and earmuffs for up to 12 hours, but the AFM warns that the prisoner must be protected because this type of sensory deprivation can result in hallucinations where the prisoner may engage in self-injurious behavior.

Each technique alone produces physical changes in our bodies, but the cumulative impacts of solitary confinement, perceptual or sensory deprivation, and sleep deprivation is to produce a “state not dissimilar” from the Chinese torture.

One example of this torture is Mohammed al-Qahtani (known as the 20th hijacker in 9/11 and “Detainee 063”): “Qahtani’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.”  Susan Crawford, a senior Pentagon official, recently stated that the cumulative methods used against this prisoner constituted torture due to the medical impacts of creating life-threatening condition. In fact, he had to be hospitalized twice.

The aggregate torture techniques used on prisoner 063 correspond generally to those described by Valtin as the passive torture package:  Prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, exposure to cold, involuntary grooming, forced dancing with male interrogator, obedience to dog commands.  Other techniques used against him included isolated contacts, strip searches, insults to his mother and sister, threatened with military working dog, forced to wear a woman’s bra and thong, leash tied to his chains and forced performance of dog tricks.

When each technique is viewed by itself, or even in combination with other techniques, some may find it hard to view the techniques as torture. However, its history proves otherwise. Moreover, it was in the context of the techniques used against al-Qahtani that Crawford explained that even authorized techniques that do not constitute horrendous physical acts associated with the word torture do constitute torture under our laws.

Sleep Deprivation

Bush also authorized “interrogation methods” that do not involve direct application of extreme physical pain but focus on psychological manipulation, such as deprivation of sleep, food, water or other basic needs, like using a bathroom, and humiliation, such as mockery and verbal abuse.  Section 5-75 of the AFM provides that “if used in conjunction with intelligence interrogations,” (and thus the use for other purposes may be permissible), the following actions are prohibited:  forced nakedness, sexual acts, or sexual poses; placing hoods or sacks over heads or duct tape over eyes; beatings, electric shock, burns, or other forms of physical pain; waterboarding; use of military working dogs; inducing hypothermia or heat injury; conducting mock executions; and “depriving the detainee of necessary food, water, or medical care.”  

Given that some of these techniques have been reported as Bush-approved torture, such as waterboarding and the sexual techniques, or viewed in news reports, like sacks over heads, it does raise the question whether all of these techniques (particularly the beatings, electric shock, burns or other forms of physical pain) were previously approved by Bush.

It is also interesting to note that the AFM apparently does not expressly prohibit sleep deprivation except when “separation” is being used: “Use of separation must not preclude the detainee getting four hours of continuous sleep every 24 hours.”

Sleep deprivation sounds innocuous because many have experienced insomnia or heavy work calendars that impaired our sleep schedule, but the US characterized it as torture in 2001 and it was a favorite torture technique used by the KGB and Japanese in POW camps during WWII.  Sleep deprivation leaves no physical marks on the prisoner, but the effects are similar to giving prisoners drugs that make them psychotic and affects their equilibrium. And, as Valtin notes, the physical impacts of sleep deprivation include stress and high blood pressure.

The US used “frequent flyer” sleep deprivation where the prisoner is constantly relocated to another cell every 3 hours for 3 weeks on Omar Khadr to prep him for a Canadian interrogation.  While the Geneva Convention mandates 4 hours of uninterrupted rest a day, the US interpreted and implemented this requirement by not providing consecutive or uninterrupted sleep, but providing only 15 or 30 minutes here or there where the prisoner was alone, but the US did not have to allow the prisoner to shut his eyes or sleep.

This video provides a glimpse of the sleep deprivation effects on Khadr, whose “indistinct moans” have been interpreted as calls for his mother, begging for help or pleading to be killed:

Sleep deprivation is accomplished by a number of methods. For example, Murnat Kurnaz wrote a book about his 5 years imprisoned at Guantanamo. His “sleeping quarter” was a “giant refrigerator” used as a cell. The floor was metal that felt like ice, there were no mattress or wool blanket while icey air streamed into his cell. After awhile, he could not feel his hands or legs.

In 2007, doctors examined the issue of “Torture vs Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment” to determine if the distinction was real or apparent.   The doctors found that aggressive interrogation techniques “appear to cause as much mental distress and traumatic stress as physical torture.” Under US law, torture is defined to include both physical as well as mental pain and suffering.

The doctors “interviewed 279 survivors of torture from Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Luka in Republica Srpska, Rijeka in Croatia and Belgrade in Serbia between 2000 and 2002.” The study concluded “aggressive interrogation techniques,” such as deprivation, stress positions, forced nudity, hooding or blindfolding, humiliating treatment, “do not substantially differ from physical torture in terms of mental stress and long-term traumatic effects.

There is no such thing as torture lite. The US government presumably knew, as experts have opined repeatedly, that torture does not provide information useful for national security. The US government knew that some torture techniques would reap false information, yet proceeded to use these techniques. This is not a matter of policy, but simply an administration that intentionally violated international and domestic laws governing torture.

Bush’s Torture Lite=Torture was part 1 of this two-part series, and discussed the Bush torture methods of waterboarding and stress positions.

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