Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo
Yesterday I posted Steven Miles’ comments on the new Defense Department Inspector General’s report documenting the central role that psychologists played in the development of abusive interrogations at Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Today my article on this was posted on CounterPunch and InformationClearinghouse as Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo: Pentagon IG Report Details Central Role of Psychologists in Detainee Interrogations and Abuse. [The title was edited a bit from the one I gave it.]
It delineates how these new documents contain definitive evidence that psychologists were at the center of the development of Bush’s torture regime. All the while the American Psychological Association was chanting its mantra about psychologists making interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective,” those psychologists were developing the specialized torture techniques for which the United States is now so infamous. Further, it now is extremely likely that the APA did, indeed get “subject matter experts” onto their PENS Task Force. In fact, it is now extremely likely that they did, indeed, appoint some of America’s most creative torturers to the Task Force to formulate APA ethical policy on interrogations.
It will be interesting to see how the APA spins this new evidence, as the Department of Defense wipes its hands of the most brutal torturers. Will APA do a mea culpa? Unlikely.
Stay tuned.
1 comment May 29th, 2007