Psyche, Science, and Society

Republicans run torturer as Congressional candidate

It takes Johann Hari in the British newspaper the Independent to inform us that the Republicans are running a know torturer for Congress in Florida. Col. Allen West took Iraqi Yehiya Hamoodi and threatened to kill him, a clear unambiguous violation of the Convention Against Torture. When Hamoodi did not give up the information he was believed to have, West again threatened to kill him and shot a pistol a foot from his head. For torture, West was fined $5,000. Now he’s running for Congress

At National Review Online, Jed Babbi, a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, argued in December 2003 that what Col. West did was no big deal, not heroic, but not criminal either. Such is the right wing today. Torture is simply no big deal, even long before Abu Ghraib shed a harsh light upon officially-sanctioned torture.

If John McCain’s opposition to torture still had any substance, he would be denouncing Col. West’s support within the Republican Party.

Here is Hari’s article:

The Republicans’ dirty secret… torture
Allen West oversaw the brutal treatment of an Iraqi. Now he is running for Congress

By Johann Hari

So what will be left of the Republican Party after next week’s US election? The answer lies in the sands of Florida, where the sunshine-state Republicans have nominated an unrepentant torturer as their candidate for Congress. They view his readiness to torture an innocent Iraqi not as a source of shame, but as his prime qualification for office. This is American conservatism in the dying days of Bush – and it points out the direction that Sarah Palin would like to take it in 2012.

In August 2003, Colonel Allen West – commanding a US unit in Baghdad – heard a rumour that one of the Iraqi policeman he was working with was a secret insurgent. He ordered his officers to go and seize Yehiya Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, from his home. They dragged him into a Humvee, beat him, and then handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded him. In a dank interrogation room, they told him he had better start talking.

Perplexed and terrified, Yehiya explained he didn’t know what they were talking about: why was he here? So West was called in. He told Yehiya he was going to be killed. While his men beat him again, he explained he had one last chance to save his life – by talking.

Yehiya protested: I am innocent! What are you talking about? So West took him outside, had him pinned down, and began to shoot. First he fired into the air. Then he ordered his men to ram Yehiya’s head into a barrel used for cleaning weapons – and fired right next to his head. Then he began to count down from five. Finally Yehiya began to scream out names – any name he could think of, just to make it stop.

The men he named were seized and roughed up in turn. No evidence was found of any plot, and after another 45 days of terror, Yehiya was released. Today, he is severely traumatised, and collapses when he sees a Humvee approaching. The story only came to light after one of West’s soldiers began to protest against these practices, and the Pentagon launched an investigation. At a pre-trial hearing, West was fined $5,000, and now concedes grudgingly: “It’s possible I was wrong about Mr Hamoodi.” But he says he would do it again, and again, and again.

West has even taken to joking about it, gaining applause for telling Republican audiences: “It wasn’t torture. Seeing Rosie O’Donnell naked would be torture.” But the 1994 Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is explicit: “Threat of imminent death” is the third form of torture it outlaws. There are reams of studies showing it can traumatise a person for life.

Yet the Republican Party has rallied to the defence of this torturer, and of torture in general. The Bush administration has ordered the simulated drowning of “high-value” suspects, and set up secret black ops sites across the world where it is practiced. After Afghan detainees were hanged from the ceiling and beaten to death, the officers responsible were merely given a “letter of reprimand”.

West’s “toughness” is fawned over; one leading conservative magazine has even named him its Man of the Year. And Sarah Palin, the Party’s darling, mocks Barack Obama’s opposition to torture. She complains: “Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America [and] he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” Palin is fond of saying that she “won’t blink when it comes to terror”, but if you don’t blink, your corneas dry out, and you go blind.

At first, the rise of John McCain looked like a repudiation of torture. McCain was tortured by the Viet Cong for three years, and the beatings were so vicious that even today he can’t raise his arms to brush his own hair. For a time, he was a loud, proud opponent of torture – but then he caved. In February 2008, he voted to allow the CIA to be excluded from the ban on torture – when he knows the CIA who are the prime American torturers today.

Then, when the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees have basic habeas corpus rights, McCain called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of the country.” If McCain will compromise on this, he will compromise on anything. He has tried to flip-flop back, saying he would ban torture after all, but if he tried now, he would face mass rebellion from his own party and Vice-President. It is unthinkable he would permit war crimes tribunals of the Party colleagues who ordered this torture.

The advocates of torture love to wheel out the ticking bomb scenario served up every week on 24. But think about what it requires. You have to (a) be certain you have captured a bomber in the very brief window between him planting a bomb and it blowing up, yet (b) have no idea where the bomb is. This has never happened, anywhere in the world, ever.

No: what happens in reality is Yehiya Hamoodi. You get a man you kinda-sorta suspect; you torture him; and you get junk intelligence leading you up wrong paths. What would you confess to if I put a gun to your head and started counting down from five?

Once you start to torture it doesn’t just stay in the neat mind-experiments favoured by philosophers. After the Israeli supreme court approved torture in very limited circumstances, soldiers were soon torturing two thirds of the Palestinians they held captive. Professor David Luban explains: “Escalation is the rule, not the aberration. Abu Ghraib is the fully predictable image of what a torture culture looks like.”

There are no recorded instances of getting useable intelligence from torture – but even if in some freak instance after you have tortured a thousand Yahiyas you finally did, would it outweigh the damage of handing al Qaeda a thousand new recruits, vindicating Bin Laden’s hate-talk and breaching the most basic moral codes?

The gap between the Republican and Democratic Parties is too narrow, but on this issue it is hefty. The Republicans have curdled into the Party of Torture, bullying their torture-victim nominee into backing their barbarism, and proudly picking a torturer as their candidate for Congress. That sound of screaming from inside the Palin-drome isn’t just from fawning Republicans – it’s from men like Yehiya.

1 comment October 29th, 2008

Argentine paper shocked that some American psychologists support helping interrogations

I’ve been sent this article in Clarín, which I’ve been told is one of the top two newspapers in Argentina:

My correspondent provided a rough translation of the first paragraph:

US psychologists decided, after 7 years, that it’s not good to help military personnel in interrogation and torture sessions in the GTMO prisoner camp. And the decision was not unanimous. Through an internet-based referendum, the APA succeeded by 8792 votes to 6157 in incorporating a prohibition on working at the naval base, where thousands of prisoners from the war against terror have come through. That means that over 6000 american psychologists think that it’s useful for one of their kind to help interrogators.”

Quite different than the US mainstream media coverage! Are any of my readers willing to translate the complete article?

Here is the full Spanish article:

Psicólogos de Guantánamo

Por Gustavo Sierra

Los psicólogos estadounidenses decidieron, después de siete años, que no es bueno ayudar a los militares en los interrogatorios y sesiones de tortura en el campo de prisioneros de Guantánamo. Y la decisión no se tomó por unanimidad. En una votación realizada a través de Internet la American Psychological Association logró incorporar la prohibición de trabajar en la base naval, por donde pasaron miles de prisioneros de la guerra antiterrorista, por 8.792 contra 6.157 votos. Es decir que más de seis mil psicólogos estadounidenses piensan que es útil que uno de ellos ayude a los interrogadores.

Hasta ahora, el código de ética de la APA permitía a sus asociados participar de interrogatorios relacionados con la búsqueda de información relevante para la seguridad nacional siempre que no se estuviera presente en el momento en que se aplicaban algunos de los 19 procedimientos cohercitivos como la tortura conocida como “el submarino”.

El debate que llevó a la votación se produjo después de que los abogados del prisionero Mohammed Jawad revelaran que había sufrido aislamiento y otros tormentos por consejo de un psicólogo. Jawad fue trasladado a Guantánamo desde Afganistán cuando tenía 15 años. De acuerdo a la transcripción de algunos interrogatorios, el chico sufrió graves consecuencias psicológicas durante su detención hasta terminar intentando el suicidio en varias oportunidades. A pesar de eso, el psicólogo recomendó continuar con los interrogatorios. Cuando los abogados quisieron llevar al profesional ante los tribunales, éste se amparó en el artículo 31 del código de justicia militar y logró que su nombre no trascendiera.

Desde las filas del ejército se insiste en que es fundamental la participación de los psicólogos en los llamados “grupos de consulta del comportamiento” (conocidos en la jerga carcelaria como “galletas”) para mantener esas sesiones “seguras, efectivas y legales”.

A partir de ahora, ningún psicólogo que quiera seguir ejerciendo su profesión podrá participar de ninguna sesión de tortura ni en Guantánamo ni en ningún otro centro militar. “Esta fue una lucha por la continuidad de la profesión misma”, dijo el nuevo presidente de la APA Alan Kazdin. “Logramos recuperar la ética que nunca debimos perder”.

2 comments October 29th, 2008

Did McCain use a Bermuda naval base as his family’s resort?

Ross Tuttle at the Nation describes yet another of the multitude of John McCain’s “ethical lapses.” Evidently McCain views the US military as his private golf club and family resort. This episode, coming as it does only six months after McCain was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee, suggests that, when it comes to abuse of his office, John McCain is incapable of learning:

McCain’s Bermuda Triangle

By Ross Tuttle, The Nation, October 28, 2008

Just six months after being rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising “poor judgment” when he interfered with federal regulators on behalf of a wealthy donor, Senator John McCain engaged in activities that may have constituted an abuse of his office for personal gain. In August 1991, McCain hosted a family reunion at the Bermuda Naval Air Station (BNAS) for at least seven days at taxpayer expense. McCain’s entourage of eleven included his wife, Cindy, and several of his children. The trip took place as Washington was still dealing with the fallout from the Keating Five scandal, an episode that involved other improper luxury Atlantic-island trips for McCain.

McCain’s junket to BNAS was first reported by ABC’s Primetime Live in a postscript to a December 1992 story on Senior Petty Officer George Taylor, the whistleblower who exposed the use of the Navy base by top officials for nongovernmental purposes. A March 1993 Navy Inspector General report, precipitated by the Primetime Live segment, as well as a BNAS log record and a new interview with Taylor corroborate and amplify the substance of ABC’s story.

The Navy IG report, obtained by The Nation and never before made public, redacts the name of the “one U.S. Senator” who used BNAS as a “vacation site.” But in an interview with The Nation, Taylor, who was stationed at BNAS from May to November 1992, confirms that the senator in question was John McCain. A log book from BNAS, also obtained by The Nation, lists McCain as the only senator to have stayed on the island between 1989 and 1992.

In his interview, Taylor now recounts a conversation he had with a military psychiatrist who examined Taylor in 1992 for a psychiatric evaluation ordered by his supervisor in the wake of the Primetime Live show, in an apparent act of retaliation for his whistleblowing. The anecdote raises the disturbing possibility that McCain’s Senate office attempted to influence the outcome of Taylor’s psychiatric evaluation.

In his 2002 memoir, McCain declared that he had learned from his mistakes in the Keating Five affair, writing, “I have carefully avoided situations that might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office.” But this most recent disclosure casts doubt on that claim.

“It was a family reunion…and the guests included grown children from a prior marriage…and minor children…a baby and a nanny,” the IG report says of the McCain family vacation–some aspects of which may have violated the law.

Taylor, who had been highly decorated for his service aboard the USS Antietam, was the chief of military police at BNAS, commanding a staff of about seventy MPs. Shortly after his arrival at BNAS, he came to recognize that rather than serving a strategic military purpose, the base functioned mainly as a taxpayer-subsidized vacation spot for high-ranking officials.

“We’re not running a military installation,” Taylor told ABC. “We’re running a Howard Johnson’s.”

In accordance with Taylor’s claims, the IG report counted an inordinately high number of officer and VIP visits for a base that had one plane and no ships, and that was, according to ABC, “a cold war military relic that has outlived its usefulness.”

“The tally for our two-year period was 80 flag/general officers [admirals and generals] and 99 0-6’s [captains or colonels],” the IG report said, in addition to a number of other VIP visitors, one of whom was McCain.

According to the report, McCain’s trip was likely also the largest to the installation, as it was “the only identifiable case in which a visiting VIP…and guests required accommodations over and above the quarters” normally made available to visitors.

The operation at “Club Fed,” as it was called by the MPs, was not cheap. The IG report estimates the cost for military flights to the island at about $6,000, but Taylor and other MPs say this doesn’t account for indirect costs like maintenance, salaries and hangar space, which they believe bring the expense closer to $40,000 per flight. Taylor also learned that funds were diverted from security operations and poured into hospitality, and the Primetime Live segment reported that $53,000 was used to redecorate one of the guest cottages on the base in 1992.

Both the IG report and the Primetime Live segment make clear that military officers or military retirees–like McCain–and their dependents had been entitled to stay in BNAS guest quarters on a space-available basis. But their visits crossed the line when other military resources were used for nonofficial purposes.

And that’s what happened on just about every trip, according to Taylor. “Once they arrive they have the government vans here, which provide the transportation. They have the drivers, maid service,” Taylor told ABC in 1992.

“Sailors had been assigned to be [Cindy McCain's] driver, and they carried her bags after she went shopping at the expensive shops on the island,” says Taylor now. “It’s like they were her servants.” Taylor, who was not at the base when McCain visited but had been extensively briefed about it by subordinates, said this situation was not unique to Mrs. McCain. “That was the case for admirals and generals and other high-ranking officials that were coming into the installation for supposed military and governmental purposes.”

Taylor believes that this use of military resources violated the law. According to Title 31 USC 1349 Section B, it is illegal if an officer or employee of the US government “willfully uses or authorizes the use of a passenger motor vehicle or aircraft owned or leased by the United States Government (except for an official purpose…).”

Taylor told The Nation that he spoke up in part about the waste and abuse in Bermuda because he had seen a disturbing pattern. “They were closing all these bases stateside–like in Alabama, where I’m from, and good people were losing their jobs. And then, here’s one that everyone’s using, going to do their golfing weekends.”

The conclusions in the IG report are also redacted, and it is not clear what the consequences of the report were or if McCain faced any reprimands or sanctions. Calls to McCain’s campaign were not returned. But because of Taylor’s disclosure and the ABC report, BNAS was shuttered in 1995 after the Navy conducted another investigation that showed that the base was not serving any military purpose.

There was other fallout as well. Shortly after Taylor blew the whistle, he was removed from his duties on the island. One month before the Primetime Live episode aired, he was ordered by his commanding officer to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Taylor had been a stellar serviceman, having received multiple commendations and superior evaluations and having exhibited no symptoms of psychological distress. He believes that the psychiatric evaluation was a punitive measure. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all,” he told ABC. But his commanding officer, Capt. James Arnold, denied this to ABC.

In fact, the military had used psychiatric evaluations to discredit and stifle whistleblowers before. At the time, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) had been pushing Congress for years to address this type of abuse. According to GAP lawyer Tom Devine, “Taylor’s ordeal was the straw that broke the camel’s back”; in late 1992 Congress passed the Boxer Amendment to curb the use of mental health evaluations as retaliation against whistleblowers, though the practice still occurs.

In November 1992, Taylor was packed onto a jet and ordered to appear at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, to see psychiatrist Peter True and undergo a “fitness for duty examination.” Dr. True evaluated Taylor on November 13 and arrived at the following diagnosis: “No psychiatric diagnosis at this time. 1) Patient is psychiatrically fit for duty. 2) He is fully responsible for his actions. 3) This is not a psychiatric problem. This is a problem between this member and his employer and needs to be worked out as such. There are no psychiatric contraindications to any administrative or legal action. 4) No psychiatric follow-up indicated.”

According to Taylor, True also told him at the time, “You’ve really upset a lot of people.” When Taylor asked the doctor what he meant, True replied, “I’ve been contacted before, but never in advance by a fleet commander’s staff, a senator’s staff and the secretary of the Navy’s staff to try and influence my evaluation.”

Neither McCain’s office nor True responded to The Nation’s requests for an interview to determine whether McCain’s staff contacted True and attempted to influence the outcome of Taylor’s psychiatric evaluation. But it was McCain’s office that had reason to intervene.

According to the official “VIP Log Book” on the island, McCain was the only senator to have stayed on the island between 1989 and 1992.

McCain had also been a classmate at the Naval Academy of Adm. Henry Mauz, who was heavily implicated in the BNAS scandal. Admiral Mauz had used the excuse that he’d been conducting official business on the island, but a Pentagon official said of one of Mauz’s junkets, “It was a golfing trip. That’s why he got in trouble. It was allegedly a training trip, but they ended up golfing the whole time.”

Tom Devine, one of Taylor’s lawyers from the Government Accountability Project, speaking in an independent capacity, hopes for a more comprehensive and transparent inquiry into McCain’s involvement in the matter.

“It was Senator McCain who made character an issue for the election. He says that Senator Obama should answer questions about associations from his distant past so that we can make a fair assessment about his character. But Senator McCain has some troubling questions to answer about his own behavior,” says Devine. “It’s one thing to go on a junket. It’s another thing to have taxpayers finance a family reunion.”

October 29th, 2008