Psyche, Science, and Society

American prisoner tells of SERE-type techniques in Iraq

June 23rd, 2007

In the April of 2006, American Donald Vance was imprisoned by the American military in Iraq for 97 days, without access to an attorney. An FBI informer on arms smuggling by the company he worked for, Vance was himself accused of aiding insurgents, he eventually found out. He was held at the infamous Camp Cropper prison near the Baghdad airport. Dateline NBC Sunday reported on the Vance case yesterday.

In addition to the outrage of Vance being held on charges he was himself informing the FBI about, his case is important because it demonstrates that SERE-type techniques are still Standard Operating Practice in US detention facilities in Iraq. SERE, of course, is the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program for those military units at highest risk of capture, such as special forces and aviators. During SERE training, the trainees are subjected to torture (prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload, sexual and cultural humiliation, painful “stress positions,” etc.,), with the idea that this will inoculate trainees against breaking if they are captured and maltreated. A recently declassified Department of Defense report has confirmed earlier reports that SERE techniques were “reverse-engineered” to develop the abusive interrogation techniques so familiar from the Abu Ghraib photos and numerous media accounts of abuses to US detainees at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US officials have given the impression that the use of these techniques has ceased. however, Donald Vance’s experiences, as described by NBC, demonstrate that these techniques were in routine use at Camp Cropper as recently as last summer:

Here’s what Vance and Ertel say happened in that prison: They were strip-searched and each put in solitary confinement in tiny, cold cells. They were deliberately deprived of sleep with blaring music and bright lights. They were hooded and cuffed whenever moved. And although they were never physically tortured, there was always that threat.

“The guards employ what I would like to call as verbal Kung-Fu,” says Vance. “It’s ‘do as we say or we will use excessive violence on you.’”

Since he’s an American, Vance got out after only97 days. Many Iraqis are not so lucky. Vance recognizes the absurdity and counterproductive nature of American military practices:

“What doesn’t need to happen is throw people in a cell, we’ll figure out the answers later. That’s not the way to do things.”

The question is, when will the US military, and those they are supposed to be defending, the American public, realize the counterproductive nature of brutalizing tens of thousands of Iraqis?

Meanwhile, I have been writing about the support of the American Psychological Association for psychologists’ participation in interrogations of US detainees. The APA obsessively chants its mantra that psychologists keep interrogations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.” Now we don’t know how many psychologists there are at Camp Cropper, though an earlier New York Times account mentions Vance seeing a psychologist, though not as part of interrogation. [Oddly enough, the psychologist counseled him to remember every detail of his ordeal, but neglected to intervene to stop his abuse or to get him released.] However, Vance’s experience shows that interrogations of those in US custody are anything but “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.”

Entry Filed under: APA, Interrogation, Iraq, Psychology, Torture, US Troops