Psyche, Science, and Society

Rice defends torture policy

Condoleeza Rice defends administration torture “enhanced interogation” [a.k.a. "torture"] program to Stanford students, while lying thrugh her teeth. As for her claim about the ICRC, here’s what the New York Times reported they said:

The report of the June visit said investigators had found a system devised to break the will of the prisoners at Guantánamo, who now number about 550, and make them wholly dependent on their interrogators through ”humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions.” Investigators said that the methods used were increasingly ”more refined and repressive” than learned about on previous visits.

”The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture,” the report said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to ”some beatings.”

And as for the OSCE statement on Guantanamo she refers to, it was made, I believe, in 2007. True or not, it wasn’t describing 2002-2006.

I guess it’s Rice who needs to do some reading. Meanwhile, watch the supreme torture defender:

Here are Jack Balkin’s comments, along with a partial transcript:

In this excerpt, she seems to suggest that (1) President Bush directly ordered enhanced interrogation practices, (2) that she did not authorize these practices, but merely conveyed the authorization to others, and finally, (3) that because the President authorized them, these practices did not violate the Convention Against Torture. Rice did not, however, explain why they did not violate the Anti-Torture Statute or the War Crimes Act, both passed by Congress.

Several people have noticed the eerie resemblance of these remarks to Richard Nixon’s statement to David Frost that “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” It’s worth noting, however, that Rice says nothing about domestic law. (Unless, of course, she is suggesting that if techniques do not violate the Convention Against Torture, they cannot violate domestic law.)

Moreover, by trying to excuse herself on the ground that she was only following Bush’s authorization, she is implicitly suggesting that the responsibility for torture (which, she insists, could not occur “by definition”), must rest with the President himself.

Here are some of the key excerpts:

How are we supposed to continue promoting America as this guiding light of democracy and how are we supposed to win hearts and minds in the world as long as we continue with these actions?

Well, first of all, you do what’s right. That’s the most important thing — that you make a judgment of what’s right. And in terms of enhanced interrogation, and rendition, and all the issues around the detainees. Abu Ghraib is, and everyone said, Abu Ghraib was not policy. Abu Ghraib was wrong and nobody would argue with…

Except that information that’s come out since then speaks against that.

No, no, no — the information that’s come out since then continues to say that Abu Ghraib was wrong. Abu Ghraib was. But in terms of the enhanced interrogation and so forth, anything that was legal and was going to make this country safer, the president wanted to do. Nothing that was illegal. And nothing that was going to make the country less safe.

And I’ll tell you something. Unless you were there in a position of responsibility after September 11th, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans. And I know a lot of people are second-guessing now, but let me tell you what the second-guessing that would really have hurt me — if the second-guessing had been about 3,000 more Americans dying because we didn’t do everything we could to protect them.

If you were there in a position of authority, and watched Americans jump out of 80-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people, then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again. And so I think people do understand that.

Now, as to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and so forth — I agree with you. We have tried to use the trafficking in persons and all of those measures, human rights reports and so forth, to put a spotlight on the kinds of problems that you have in places like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Oman or other places. But you can’t — you don’t have the luxury in foreign policy of saying, alright, I won’t deal with that country because I don’t like its human rights record. You don’t have that luxury. So if you need Saudi Arabia to fight al Qaeda internally — which is by the way where al Qaeda came from — or if you need Saudi Arabia to be part of a coalition that’s going to help bring a Palestinian state, you can’t decide not to deal with Saudi Arabia because of its problems with human rights. Or, if you need to make sure that the Gulf is safe from Iranian influence — you want to talk about human rights abusers? — Iran.

. . . .

So, foreign policy is full of tough choices. Very tough choices. The world is not a bunch of easy choices in which you get to make ones that always feel good.

Even in World War II, as we faced Nazi Germany — probably the greatest threat that America has ever faced — even then…

With all due respect, Nazi Germany never attacked the homeland of the United States.

No, but they bombed our allies…

No. Just a second. Three thousand Americans died in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

500,000 died in World War II, and yet we did not torture the prisoners of war.

And we didn’t torture anybody here either. Alright?

We tortured them in Guantanamo Bay.

No, no dear, you’re wrong. Alright. You’re wrong. We did not torture anyone. And Guantanamo Bay, by the way, was considered a model “medium security prison” by representatives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe who went there to see it. Did you know that?

. . . .

I read a recent report, recently, that said that you did a memo, you were the one who authorized torture to the — I’m sorry, not torture, waterboarding. Is waterboarding torture?

The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against torture. So that’s — and by the way, I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency. That they had policy authorization subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did.

Okay. Is waterboarding torture?

I just said — the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so, by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.

Thank you.

Alright.

April 30th, 2009

ANBC News films Mitchell and Jessen refusing to talk.

ABC News has an article on reputed torture psychologists James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen: The CIA’s $1,000 a Day Specialists on Waterboarding, Interrogations.  It seems that it may have been broadcast on ABC World News tonight. It doesn’t say anything new. But they do have video of each of them refusing to answer questions, citing their nondisclosure agreement.

Click here to see Jessen refusing to talk to ABC News.

Click here to see Mitchell refusing to talk to ABC News.

Worth watching if you’d like to know what a torture psychologist looks like. Meanwhile, we should demand that the CIA cancel their nondisclosure agreements, so they can talk about their activities.

The Comments on the article are dominated by the loony right torture supporters. It seems they have organized a Mitchell-Jessen fan club.

1 comment April 30th, 2009

The Mormon connection to US torture

David R. Irvine writes in The Salt Lake tribune of the Mormon connection to US torture:

LDS lawyers, psychologists had a hand in torture policies

By David R. Irvine

An overheard conversation among several women at a local deli: “I can’t believe this country elected Obama as president; it must be a sign of the end times when the Constitution will hang by a thread.” The irony of this uniquely Utah political thread about church elders saving the Constitution might have shocked the lunch bunch had they read The Dark Side by Jane Mayer (Doubleday, 2008).

Reading Mayer’s disturbing book is likely to lead to the conclusion that the Constitution is more imperiled than ever; but it also reveals the troubling fingerprints of several of my fellow Mormons whose handiwork, not the Obama election, did so much to create the present crisis.

Although the decisions which put us in the grim business of torture, body-snatching, extraordinary renditions, making people disappear, indefinite confinement without charges and warrantless wiretapping were made by the president and vice president, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints served as helpful enablers. Not only did they provide the legal architecture, they provided the “scientific” patina for the plunge into the barbaric business of torture.

Take Timothy E. Flanigan, deputy White House counsel and LDS father of 14 children, who, along with David Addington, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Jim Haynes comprised the secretive “War Council” of lawyers — a self-appointed group Mayer describes as having virtually no experience in law enforcement, military service, counterterrorism or the Muslim world.

Together, they were the brain trust that devised the legal cover that Vice President Dick Cheney needed to work his will. They secretly crafted the warrantless surveillance program which allowed the National Security Agency to intercept telephone calls and e-mails to and from American citizens within the United States. They secretly devised the Bush military commissions, which were essentially kangaroo courts and legally insufficient to satisfy the minimal adjudicatory standards required under the Geneva Conventions, which, as provided by the Constitution and Congress, constitute the supreme law of the land. They secretly conspired to ignore the law and frame interrogation techniques around the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, the Soviet KGB and Chairman Mao.

Flanigan once told his LDS ward congregation that it was gratifying “to work in a White House where every day was begun with prayer.” In 2005, prior to his rejection by the Senate to be Gonzales’ deputy attorney general, Flanigan was asked whether waterboarding, mock executions, physical beatings and painful stress positions were off-limits. “[It] depends on the facts and circumstances… .” He went on: “‘Inhumane’ can’t be coherently defined.”

BYU law school graduate Jay S. Bybee was the assistant attorney general directing the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. At the instigation of Addington and Yoo, Bybee issued official legal opinions that redefined the crime of torture to make it all but impossible to commit. Barbarity was not torture unless it created pain equal to death or organ failure. A newly-declassified Bybee memorandum lists 10 previously top-secret interrogation techniques approved for use by the CIA, including waterboarding.

Incredibly, Bybee seems to have been unaware that the United States had prosecuted waterboarding as a war crime after World War II. In 2003, before his role in authorizing U.S. torture was known, Bybee was given a lifetime judicial appointment on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Had his role in torture been known, it is unlikely he would have been confirmed.

Two devout Mormons also engineered the more grisly wet work. Because the CIA lacked personnel in 2001 with interrogation expertise, the agency turned to two psychologists, James E. Mitchell and John B. Jessen, who had worked with the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape programs. Neither had an intelligence or interrogation background or had experience with Muslim terrorists, but, according to the FBI, they had experience in designing, testing, implementing and monitoring torture techniques that were illegal in the United States and elsewhere in the civilized world.

These two were responsible for “reverse-engineering” the SERE program — which was intended to toughen American pilots against torture (and the false confessions it had produced in the Korean War) — and they built the CIA’s surreal secret interrogation program around the same brutal coercion that had successfully forced American POWs to lie to their North Korean and Chinese captors. In other words, they assumed that the very brutality which had forced American soldiers to lie would magically force a Muslim terrorist to tell the truth, even if he had to be waterboarded 183 times.

Mitchell advised that suspects must be treated like dogs in a cage. “It’s like an experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he’s so diminished, he can’t resist.” The Mitchell/Jessen methodology became the basis for prisoner treatment at Guantanamo, Bagram, CIA secret prisons and Abu Ghraib. It involved isolation, sensory deprivation, disorientation, nudity, sexual humiliation, waterboarding, painful stress positions, withholding food and medical treatment, extended sleep deprivation and subjection to temperature extremes. These were used singly and, more commonly, in combination with one another.

Retired Air Force Col. Steve Kleinman, a former SERE instructor and interrogator, says of Mitchell and Jessen: “I think they have caused more harm to American national security than they’ll ever understand.”

***********

David R. Irvine is a Salt Lake attorney and former Utah legislator residing in Bountiful. He was commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve as a strategic intelligence officer in 1967 and retired as a brigadier general. He taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years for the Sixth United States Army Intelligence School.

3 comments April 30th, 2009