Psyche, Science, and Society

Military psychologists brag of defusing interrogations issue

In the newsletter of the American Psychological Association Military Psychology Division (19), they brag again of their success at undermining the anti-participation in interrogations movement:

APA Council Representative’s Report

Steve Sellman reviewed Council activities from Wednesday’s meeting….

The Surgeon General of the Army (LT Gen Kiley) addressed the Council, focusing on describing what psychologists actually do in relation to interrogations of detainees. General Kiley’s presentation was followed by a presentation by Dr. Steve Reisner, who advocates exclusion of psychologists from any role in interrogations. Council took no action on Dr. Reisner’s position; instead, Council passed “A Resolution Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” jointly proposed by Division 19 and Division 48 (Peace Psychology).

Debra Dunivin and Hank Tay lor (both of whom represent other Divisions on Council) credited Steve with working with Division 48 to defuse this issue as far as Council is concerned.

1 comment March 22nd, 2007

Senator Graham brags about US torture to hundreds

Senator Graham, who together with McCain and Warner, engaged in phony opposition to the Torture Legalization and Indefinite Arbitrary Detention Act of 2006 (aka Military Commissions Act), apparently acknowledged with a wink and a smile that the United States tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As reported by 29-year retired US Army Reserve colonel and long-term US diplomat Ann Wright, in February, Graham addressed a crowd of 400 people. Her article:

The Sheikh and the Torture Senator
By Ann Wright

Thursday 22 March 2007

Last week, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly confessed during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) at the US prison in the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He is said to have admitted planning virtually every al-Qaeda attack on the United States. But during the military tribunal proceedings, he also said he was tortured during his four-year confinement in CIA secret prisons. Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) viewed the Guantanamo proceedings over a special video link into the US Senate. Afterwards, Levin said that Sheikh Mohammed’s allegations of torture by US officials must be investigated.

Senator Levin, you don’t have to go far to find someone who knows about Sheikh Mohammed’s torture.

I was in the audience February 12, 2007 during the Washington, DC, screening of the new HBO documentary, “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.” After watching the documentary, panelists Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) discussed prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib.

To the amazement of the audience, Graham said with a twinkle in his eye that “Americans don’t mind torture; they really don’t.” Then he smiled broadly, almost gleefully, and said that the US had used certain interrogation techniques on “Sheikh Mohammed, one of the ‘high-value’ targets” - techniques that “you really don’t want to know about, but they got really good results.”

I firmly believe that Graham’s statement acknowledged that US officials have tortured prisoners, and he, as a senator, knew what was done and agrees with the torture because “it got results.”

Except you don’t know what the results are. In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it appears that with torture you can get someone to confess to masterminding the entire al-Qaeda attack on the United States. Senior FBI officials are questioning some of Sheikh Mohammed’s assertions of guilt. It reminds us of the FBI’s concern about torture techniques used by both the CIA and the US military on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo - techniques that can elicit confessions just to get the torturers to stop.

In January 2007, I was in the city of Guantanamo with human rights activists, calling for the closure of the US military prison on the fifth anniversary of the first prisoners being sent there. With us was former prisoner Asif Iqbal, a 23-year old who told us that he had been beaten by US interrogators until he confessed to helping plan the 9/11 attacks. In reality, he was a completely innocent young man who happened to be in Afghanistan when the US attack began and he was swept up with hundreds of other local people. He told us how prisoners in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo confessed to anything the interrogators wanted, to prevent further torture.

I am horrified that US senators have been complicit in knowing of criminal acts of our intelligence agencies and doing nothing to stop them. Graham told 400 of us in the audience on February 22 that he knew of the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Graham is a military lawyer and a civilian lawyer. He knew that the torture of Sheikh Mohammed was a criminal act and did nothing to stop it.

Senator Levin, if you want to know about torture committed by US government officials, please put under oath your colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham, and ask him “what he knew and when he knew it.”

P.S. HBO filmed the senator’s remarks. Please watch the HBO video and see his comments for yourself.

Ann Wright is a 29-year retired US Army Reserve colonel and also a 16-year US diplomat who served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001. She resigned from the US diplomatic corps in March 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq.

This truly illustrates the depths to which the United States has fallen. Senator Graham [Corrected typo: Levin] is aware of war crimes and laughs.

Add comment March 22nd, 2007

Washington Post calls on Congress to do its job and investigate torture

Yesterday’s Washington Post editorial:

Top-Secret Torture
What’s stopping the Democrats in Congress from investigating?

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

KHALID SHEIK Mohammed’s cold-blooded confession of responsibility for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other horrific crimes before a tribunal in Guantanamo Bay got a lot of attention when the Pentagon released a partial transcript last week — and understandably so. But another set of disclosures by the al-Qaeda leader that could also be sensational received almost no attention. That’s because the Pentagon swiftly classified a document submitted by Mr. Mohammed in which he detailed the torture he says he suffered. The rationale is that disclosure of those allegations would harm national security. In fact, the harm the Bush administration’s abuse of prisoners has already done to this country’s ability to combat Islamic extremism will only be compounded if it succeeds in making this shameful record a state secret.

The administration claims it has not used torture on prisoners such as Mr. Mohammed. Yet it has been working aggressively to ensure that he and 13 other accused terrorists formerly held in secret CIA prisons are never allowed to reveal how they were treated. In addition to classifying Mr. Mohammed’s statement, the administration is making the surreal argument in court that in being subjected to “alternative” interrogation methods, al-Qaeda detainees were receiving top-secret information — and so may be prohibited from ever discussing their experience, even to the defense attorneys seeking to represent them.

The government claims that this looking-glass policy is necessary to prevent al-Qaeda members still at large from learning of the CIA’s methods so that they can train against them. Yet some of the harshest action taken against Mr. Mohammed has already been widely reported: He was treated to “waterboarding,” or simulated drowning, an ancient torture method that every U.S. administration prior to this one has considered illegal. CIA detainees are also known to have been subjected to temperature extremes and sleep deprivation. The administration has assured Congress that it has dropped some of these methods, including waterboarding. If that’s true, Mr. Mohammed’s statement will not alert future detainees, but it will open a debate about whether the CIA’s past practices were legal or morally justifiable.

That is what the administration is really trying to stop. If al-Qaeda members are allowed to talk about the abuse they suffered, President Bush’s frequent contention that no one was tortured will come under question; so will his determination to maintain the CIA’s secret detention “program.” If the administration strategy succeeds, much of the trials and appeals of the al-Qaeda suspects will have to be conducted in secret — something that will strip the proceedings of credibility and legitimacy.

Two senators who attended Mr. Mohammed’s Guantanamo hearing, Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), issued a statement calling for an investigation of the torture charges. Yet any administration investigation — especially one conducted in secret — will almost certainly conclude that the waterboarding was approved by senior administration officials. What’s needed is a genuinely independent investigation, one that airs Mr. Mohammed’s charges and tests the administration’s claim that the CIA’s actions were legal. Mr. Levin — as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee — could conduct such a probe in cooperation with the Intelligence or Judiciary committees. What’s stopping him?

Add comment March 22nd, 2007

Valtin on ICRC, psychology, and torture

Valtin at Daily Kos reports on the new leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on the torture of the “high-value” detainees recently transfered to Guantanamo from the CIA’s “black site” prisons [aka, "torture centers"]. Valtin then goes on to mention the recent Michael Gelles letter to the APA supporting their policies [and kindly links to this site].

Valtin concludes with some observations on the state of our society where torture and abuse are routinely tolerated:

But I fear the main reason is a moral rot, an emptiness that has taken root in the society and spread throughout the body politic.

It strikes me that many of my colleagues are morally dead. Psychologists are supposed to seek knowledge and enlightenment, and to share that knowledge for the benefit of all humanity. But something terrrible happened. And then, what was worst, a silence grew. In secret, terrible things happen.

There is a justifiable uproar over the secrecy Bush and Gonzales are maintaining over Executive Branch plots to usurp the machinery of the Justice Department. I wrote only yesterday on the behind the scenes push to bring the Unitary Executive into complete power, using the Patriot Act to stymie the judiciary and Congress.

But there is another secrecy, one that comes to the surface, one that we are afraid to look at because it is so awful. It explains why diaries on torture regularly only get a few dozen recommendations, or why this explosive report by the ICRC — “the first independent accounting of the detainees’ allegations against the CIA since its detention and interrogation program began in 2002″ — will be forgotten by almost everyone by tomorrow.

The secret is this: there is a moral nothingness at the heart of this society. A black hole. And like a black hole it threatens to suck everything into its obliterating maw.

The time is almost too late. The clock is ticking backwards. The hours are being swallowed up.

Are we even alive?

Add comment March 22nd, 2007