Unfortunately it is a little late to think that the U.S. couldn’t/shouldn’t have anything to do with torture.  But it is not too late to do something about it.

If you are an American voter and you are not personally willing to electrocute someone or beat the crap out of a restrained prisoner then you have a duty to be in favour of investigations and punishment of all involved. 

It’s just one of those responsibilities that comes with a democracy.

Have we lost our minds?
America should have anything to do with torture.

Good post Rabid,

I have been waiting for someone to respond sensibly to the “torture works” comments in here.  If it works so well, why were Bush and Blair so confident about connections between Saddam and Al Qaida?  Why so sure the WMD in Iraq despite all the on-the-record material refuting this?  I’d say because Cheney and his ilk got some torture victims to tell them so.  Now they have nothing reasonable to justify their positions (as they can’t admit the torture) so they both look like buffoons.

Torture seems to work at terrorising populations (albeit at the cost of establishing deep seated hostility and hatred of the torturers and all they stand for) but it doesn’t work at getting intelligence.

So, all the “24” / ticking-bomb justifications are BS and no-one with any decency could want anything other than full investigation and punishment of torturers and those who give the orders.  Granted this didn’t start with the 43rd president so take it right back as far as the path leads.  They can all go down.

For Information on Gog and Magog, read Genesis. For literalists, everything is interpreted as having something to do with end times, when two glorious things will happen. 1) God’s people will be taken to paradise, heaven, what-have-you and the rest of us heathens will be punished for all eternity. (“Heathens,” by the way, includes anyone who does not believe as the crusading crackpots do, including mainstream Christians.)

The Crusading crackpots of all organized religions won’t be happy with paradise or heaven alone. They will only be happy when everyone else is suffering the fate of the damned.

It is the belief system of children who want to see their classmates or siblings punished more or every bit as much as they want a fudge Sundae for themselves.

Yes, torture works. It will get anyone to say what they think the torturer wants to hear. It’s a sure fire way to get the Intelligence one wants, not necessarily good Intel., especially when the interrogator asks leading questions.

I think Chirac was trying to assess just how religiously insane Junior was at the time. We all know now that Junior’s religion was used against him by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney, but we also cannot forget Junior’s stated belief that a war president could accomplish much more domestically than a peace-time president, a belief no doubt shared by Karl Rove and others.

Even though I have lived through the last 8 years, paying attention from day one, not to mention the last 45 years, it is still hard for me to comprehend how badly things have gone for our country and the horrors committed in our name and with our blood and treasure.

Ignorance must be bliss.

one thing i’ve haven’t read on this posting is how the american police uses torture to bring about the civilians compliance with their wishes.  you can see tasers misused every day.  if that isn’t torture, what is?

http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/07/praetorian-presumptions.html

“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face
with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” —J. Edgar Hoover

“No, Hippie4, Americans do NOT like conspiraciy theories that conflict with the American worldview.”—Folktruther

And yet after your thesis you proceed to note a conspiracy theory that does just that. The CTs I know about are invariably anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian. The World Trade Demolition, the Warren Report (who killed JFK), the GOP conspiracy to get the Clintons, UFOs are in New Mexico…all these refute the American world view that this is a democratic republic under a federalist model. They suggest another, shadow government, or cliques within (Skull and Bones, “C” Street) that undermine the will of the People.

Am I missing something, Folktruther? I do feel a bit woozy from last night; too much of a good thing if you catch my drift. Maybe I misunderstand “American worldview”?

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” - Voltaire

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” - Voltaire

Chirac reportedly said he was calling because he was distressed that President George Bush had twice telephoned him to inform France’s president that this war was beginning, and urging France to join the United States in fulfilling the divine prophesy.

All you can do upon reading some lethal absurdity like this is shake your head and flash a sick grin. Others may feel like going back to bed and sleeping indefinitely.  If you want to know why the United States will gradually die as a nation, this little anecdote tells it all.

No, Hippie4, Americans do NOT like conspiraciy theories that conflict with the American worldview.  The Bushites not only used the 9/11-antrax public relations mass murder to impose the War on Terrorism, but was probably complicit in orchestrating it.  As has been documented by the evidence of 9/11 truthers.  but only a fraction of the American people believe it, and a lesser fraction of the Educated classes.

The US mainstrream Big Truth is that there are no conspuracies involving the powerful against the people.  Most of the Educated believe it to varying extents.  Europeans accept that Americans are very naive in this regard and tend to treat them like retarded children.  The Warren Commission was probably the biggest public relations fraud in history, but I accepted for nearly a decade until I read RUSH TO JEDGEMENT.

William Pfaff is right!

Why has this not been made public?

“Chirac reportedly said he was calling because he was distressed that President George Bush had twice telephoned him to inform France’s president that this war was beginning, and urging France to join the United States in fulfilling the divine prophesy”

“Divine prophesy”? or some kind of Satanic destruction?

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Wouldn’t you think that with the millions of possible techniques available to an educated society, war and torture could be avoided?

I believe we’re all controlled to a certain extent; someone suggested that Presidents may be subjected to mind control and why not? You don’t want someone who can plunge the world into war, falling into a major psychological depression.

Bush really was a mess: a non-drinking alcoholic with a Knights Templar complex, Dubbya could drive a bicycle into a tree or choke on a pretzel stone cold sober.

Americans like conspiracy theories and the idea of political mind control has lots of juice; unfortunately there’s usually a better (if mundane) explanation. Obama sometimes speaks slowly because he is dissembling; Bush ran into the tree because he was unhappy being POTUS and easily distracted; Ford fell down because he drank too much after pardoning Nixon.

And our Presidents knew for years what we have only dared to think about lately: that we torture, overthrow democratically-elected governments, steal, lie, sabotage, manipulate. The exercise of power has always been an ugly business and it isn’t any kinder or gentler as far as I can see.

Several must have been brain washed to have authorized this operation. The first thing I learned about psychology was that most of the theories are bullshit.
This program was a motherload of BS from start to finish when ever that may be.
Please let there be indictments and convictions to follow. Failing that, let the all participants interrogate each other until they confess.

I have heard of such techniques used to make ordinary people agents of a sort. Not brain washed but a personality fractioned off to be activated separate from the main one. Artificially inducing Multiple Personality Disorder but under hypnotic trigger control. Who knows how many people are that way and not know it. Some say that when that horn sounded it was a trigger for Jack Ruby to kill Oswald. Who knows? We know people can be conditioned that way. But how many and for doing what I don’t know and could only speculate on.

the radio personality Long John Nebel’s wife was found to have been done so in that way. She wrote a book about it in the late 1970’s.

The Charles Bronson movie “Telephon” was about just that. A phone call to people who were the deepest of sleeper agents. Once triggered they would do the preprogrammed op and kill any in their way.

Another part of the “dark side” that is still with us.

Gog and Magog concern building a wall to keep them out from fighting as I recall. It is the idea of a world war and massive death toll that should be frightening and disturbing to anyone. Though I must reiterate that Dominionists don’t believe in an Armeggedon (or rapture) but do so in a cleansing war of evangelism for the world. Once the earth is made ready then their Aryan-Nordic God will return to rule over them. So there is no escape in that horror unless they are stripped of power to command armies.

If Israel is paranoid and stupid enough to attack Iran they could be in for a world of hurt. If millions of Iranians start attacking Israel all of the time the Israelis will forget about the occasional harassment attacks of the Palestinians and might be forced to use the Sampson Option which is national suicide. Remember Hitler‘s last order as Germany fell? “Destroy everything!” [Use of any nuclear weapons by Israel will contaminate many more millions wherever the trade winds blow..]

As for the likes of intellectual lightweights like jmr who is of fatuous criticism and no substance. You seem to be the “brainwashed” one here in the echo chamber of your own mind. How about some substance? In the essay test you fail due to lack of content.

William Pfaff and the comments in this echo chamber prove conclusively that brainwashing indeed works.

The effects of torture are inversely proportional to the belief in martyrdom.

Ahh… Fascism. . .

The Denial, And Ignoring, Of Our Growing Fascism Is Deadly Stupid.
Because The “Allowing” Has Not Been “Allowed” to be Stopped -

I Fear That, More Than Them.

Its standard Democrat mythology that torture only began with the Bush administration.  This both deflects from the Clinton era’s abuses, and it also feeds the myth that Obama ended American torture by reversing a couple of Bush’s executive orders.

America has been a supporter of torture for most of its life as a nation.  We tortured slaves that tried to escape, that were suspected of formenting the feared ‘uprising’, or who just looked at a white woman the wrong way.  We tortured the Indians.  We’ve always had police that tortured those they believed to be criminals, and we’ve always had prisons where the guards tortured the inmates.  We tortured in the Phillipines at the start of the century.  WWII was a racist war, especially in the Pacific.  We tortured and killed and sent home body parts as souvenirs to our girlfriends.  We supported ex-Nazis and arrested and tortured the ‘communist’ resistance that fought the Nazis, especially in Greece.  We tortured in Vietnam.  We tortured in Central America.  SOA Watch published the School of the Americas torture manuals in the 1990’s.  That’s the ones we used to teach our ‘friends’ in Honduras and El Salvador and Guatamala and the Nicaraguan National Guard\Contras exactly the best US approved torture methods.

We still torture today.  We as a nation still believes in torture.  We love TV shows like 24 where the ‘good guys’ torture people.  We love cops shows where cops go around those criminal-loving lawyers and beat a confession out of the bad guy.

None of this has changed because Obama reversed a few of Bush’s executive orders.  At best we’ve gone back to the days when the CIA agent doesn’t ask the questions nor throws the switch on the electricity. Instead they stand back and watch our ‘allies’ that they’ve trained in torture do the dirty work.  But that doesn’t mean the CIA agent didn’t pick the victim and command the torture.

And if you really want to know that nothing at all has changed, then watch Obama’s lawyers work their little rears off trying to make sure that not one Bush era official or soldier is ever charged and prosecuted for those crimes.

The comment above referenced Naomi Klein.  An excellent reference.  These same torture techniques have been showing up in all US allies ever since the 1960’s.  What a coincidence.

Remember, the Democrats want you to believe Bush invented torture so you’ll believe the related myth that saint Obama ended American torture.  When he’s really done no such thing.

I have to agree with ITW that there are two articles here only loosely related.

On the first part, regarding Mitchell & Jesson reverse engineering SERE techniques to make millions as war profiteers ... it is well documented and well known.  They and their families will have to live with the knowledge of how they made their millions.  I hope their grandchildren are reminded of the facts in primary school.  Evil.

The point made that “brain-washing” didn’t really happen in the Korean War and that the torture techniques were made up entirely in the U.S. after the fact doesn’t quite hold up so well.  I can accept that “brainwashing” didn’t happen and that the confessions were delivered out of fear of abuse rather than actually having had their minds changed.  However the logic that this means that the torture techniques were invented in the U.S. just doesn’t follow.  30 years ago I read an account of a POW from the Korean War who described water-boarding quite specifically.  We have only to look at the “Gulag Archipeligo” to find accounts of sleep deprivation, stress positions etc.  Sensory deprivation identified as a source of great distress through an academic study (the McGill University academic later suicided; possibly when he realised his work was applied to torture).  Sensory deprivation was used (at least) by the British against IRA captives.

The U.S. military are no doubt guilty of many things but not inventing all these torture techniques. 

The second point in the article about Bush actually contacting a foreign leader and suggesting that he join in this End Time lunacy is frightening beyond belief.  How indeed the world survived the last 8 years is a mystery.

Obama’s inability to work against his corporate masters’ interests is a wholly different matter!  Ok, maybe “masters” is an overstatement ... perhaps “funders”.

That Gog and Magog thing IS scary.  It occurs to me that I keep emphasizing how delusional the American people are without focusing on the people in power. 

Inherit’s point that they are incompetant because they are loony strikes paydirt.  Rumsfield did not have an adequate operational plan in place for the occupation of Iran because of his loony expectations.  And posisbly Bush’s incompetance over New Orleans was based on some similar delusion.

When power systems end their life cycle loonyness and fraudulence predominate.  To get rid of the Rasputin, the Czar and Czarina’s Friend, they had to assassinate him.  The Reagans relied on astrologers for their policy ideas.

But when you are on cruise control, like Obama, no superstitions apparently are necessary.  Just keep doing what Bush did.  We’ll all go to hell together, Hippie4.

Whoa!

Apocalypse beliefs can be self-fulfilling prophesies.

Inherit, I think it refers to the belief held by Bush and his coven regarding The Rapture. One theory about GW is he wanted to bring about WWIII in order to create this ultimate sorting out of humanity. In his view, the neocons would oversee our destruction before ascending into heaven. Naturally people like me go to hell, but at least I won’t be cold, or with GW Bush and friends. Oh yes, heathen infidels a.k.a. Muslims would also join me & others for coffee & backgammon.

Scary that a fringe religious fanatic held the power to blow up the world for eight long years. We’re lucky to still be here, all things considered.

Yet another case of the Bush administration doing something obscenely immoral, yet doing it incompetently.

Nor is it a surprise that the USAF, getting more and more filled with religious nuts, would have cooked up something now know to be a total fantasy: Brainwashing.

But what do Gog and Magog have to do with the article????