“..Dr. Mitchell helped persuade C.I.A. officials that Qaeda members were fundamentally different”.. “..people of this ilk”? One of the fundamentally wrong things about this entire business is the wholesale wand-waving, turning people into ‘things’, “fundamentally different”. It’s this sloppy thinking that you can just say “Oh, they aren’t like us – they are different – they don’t think the way we do, act the way we do, care about people and their families the way we do..” this is crap and it is the way people in this country can so easily do harm to other people, whether it is by trashing social programs here (because people who happen to be poor are obviously ‘bad’ – otherwise, they would not be poor)or by invading and disrupting people in other countries.

It not only appears that psychologists were central to the design and theory of this torture program, but yes it also appears as if psychology itself may be “blamed” for all that followed. If that’s the case, it goes too far. As I’ve often told patients: If only I had such powers. I’d either resign my position, cuz I’d scare myself! Or I’d wave my wand and do myself out of a job.

In my view, we have a type of psychological malpractice that occurred on a number of levels:

1. Taking “research” results out of context.

2. Misconstruing the effects of research.

3. Conducting research in the absence of any ethical constraints.

4. Discarding the dictum: First do no harm.

5. Twisting the skills of a clinician to destroy personalities.

6. Betraying the ethics and ideals of a profession and a nation.

7. Be my guest…

I would like to see the reports written by these psychologists, the reasoning behind their conclusions and programs (I mean reasoning in great detail, such as any clinician should be expected to do.) And I would like to see the raw data upon which they based their reports. As well as the alternative options and analyses they considered in making their determinations, not only of programs but of personality assessments.

I am disgusted, on both a personal and professional level, by the “dirty work” of these scoundrels in my profession!

((((lhp))))

This doctor sounds like something from a horror movie. I can’t imagine anyone who should be a healer doing this. Disgusting !

let the powers you know share your desire looseheadprop

now I want to make a point;

to use a technique designed to help innoculate a soldier from torutre and then claim that since these we did it to our own soldiers it’s not torture is depraved

they took volunteers, said they would do torture them a little bit to show them how enemies used torture, then they claimed that since they showed our own soldiers in this controlled volunteer program they can also do it to captives

it simply boggles my mind

They created a framework for a pre-existing program, the “Manchurian Candidate” approach.

One has to wonder if he will be the next guy hanging by the neck in his basement! Suicide? RIGHT!

here’s another thing I wish could be done;

I am convinced the “cia” who participated in cheney’s depravity were “team b”, members recruited through cheney, trained by cheney enlistees and on board his depravity

I do not believe the professionals in the cia participated in these programs

I wish there were some method of finding out when those who participated were recruited and who recruited them

gotta have a clearance fo dat, “need to know”!

rather then amancurian candidate they created a “gardner” and all it would take is “being there”

bush reminds me SO MUCH of peter selers in that film, the similarities are profound

I like to watch

check it out raven, he even looks like bush

as far as “liking to watch”, I would not be even a little bit surprised if cheney took those tapes home and had some personal pleasure “watching”

For one thing:

A call to Mitchell and Jessen’s firm for comment was not returned. The CIA would not comment on Mitchell and Jessen’s work for the agency, though the contractual relationship is not one Mitchell and Jessen entirely concealed. They advertised their CIA credentials as exhibitors at a 2004 conference of the American Psychological Association in Honolulu.

In a statement to Salon, CIA spokesman George Little wrote that the agency’s interrogation program had been “implemented lawfully, with great care and close review, producing a rich volume of intelligence that has helped the United States and other countries disrupt terrorist activities and save innocent lives.”

Until last month, [May, 2007 - UC]the Army had denied any use of SERE training for prisoner interrogations. “We do not teach interrogation techniques,” Carol Darby, chief spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, said last June when Salon asked about a document that appeared to indicate that instructors from the SERE school taught their methods to interrogators at Guantanamo.

But the declassified DoD inspector general’s report described initiatives by high-level military officials to incorporate SERE concepts into interrogations. And it said that psychologists affiliated with SERE training — people like Mitchell and Jessen — played a critical role. According to the inspector general, the Army Special Operations Command’s Psychological Directorate at Fort Bragg first drafted a plan to have the military reverse-engineer SERE training in the summer of 2002. At the same time, the commander of Guantanamo determined that SERE tactics might be used on detainees at the military prison. Then in September 2002, the Army Special Operations Command and other SERE officials hosted a “SERE psychologist conference” at Fort Bragg to brief staff from the military’s prison at Guantanamo on the use of SERE tactics.

So they had a frikking CONFERENCE about how to do it. For the other thing, I’ve lost track of the timeline. Where are the torture memo constructs as of “summer” 2002 when they’re having this “conference” at Ft. Bragg?

A psychologist hand picked by the Bus/Cheney administration no doubt will plead doctor/tortured patient confidentiality.

It’s the teenager who kills his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s now an orphan.

Maybe we’ve finally reached our “have you no sense of decency” moment when the whistle blowers will come out of the shadows.

And Hal Holbrook’s gravely voice will haunt the parking garages of D.C. — “Follow the Money.”

I like to watch.

ooooopss. someone has already said that. Coke time Raven.

I love edit.

and I love perris.

Nobody would make the movie! *g*

off to home, see all later

I watch it every couple of years. I’m down with Chauncey, and Guy Grand.

my kind of girl

perris,

I think you have a distorted view of a cia “operative” or agent. These folks are pretty “ruthless” and basically zealots in how they view the world out there.

Yes there are/were the hard right guys who were chaffing at the bit to take off the gloves and would gladly join Cheney’s goon squad when he told them they could get in the ring and be protected.

yea, and all the troops are baby killers. . .right?

I will tell you the truth. Last night, due to all this “rape” of my profession by its very members, the only way I could put myself to sleep was to contemplate the thought of how these psychologists would be waking up on Wed. Neighbors would know! Bank tellers would know! Teachers of their kids would know! They would not be able to go anywhere, not even abroad – for fleeing the country would be more dangerous than staying here to face the music. I pictured the shame these folks would face, day after day. The legal bills. I’m sorry. I know it’s compassionate. But boy did I have a deep sleep after that!

I think that there are good and evil shrinks out there, just as there are good and evil doctors and any other segment. No?

No. all the troops are not baby killers.

thank you

That generalization makes no more sense than Perris’s. Maybe less.

EACH and every one who did ,heard ,saw, justified or ordered thats all. No more no less, just the scum off the top of the septic tank.

I’m not sure a confidentiality plea would work. You have to have a “client” whose confidentiality you can’t betray. But even then, a court order compels testimony. If your client is, in effect, We the People, well…. the court will order you to testify.

IANAL, but that’s my view of it as psychologist.

I believe that it is at times healthy to want the very bad to be punished. Compassionately, of course. No torture allowed.

My ex sister in law is an experimental psychologist at the v.a. in l.a. I keep thinking of her for some reason.

“the people are revolting”
Zorro, the Gay Blade!

looseheadprop said:

“Now, if somebody were to give me subpoena power, this Dr. Mitchell guy is someone I would definitely want to talk to under oath. For a long time. With no immunity offer on the table. Why? Because the White House just threw him under the bus and fingered him as the criminal mastermind behind all this evil.”

Now, now children. You should know by now that isn’t how it works.

Any such attempt will be seriously and thoroughly fucked up by Senate and House leadership… and the resultant stallfest and marathon amnesiac testimony will not be an accident this time any more than it was in the previous incidents.

They were the torturers just like drone pilots via a live feed . Ya heard of da internet,no.

Of course. Which is why this is, for me, so agonizing. Ethics, above all, was one of the draws, for me, to being a therapist. I spent 7 years on the Ethics Committee of our State Psychological Association. Plus working with some victims of abuse by professionals. So I know that all sorts of personalities become therapists. Still, it’s very, very painful – more than anything – to see how people trained to “help” – trained to get into someone’s psyche – would twist that to destroy a human personality. That is inconceivable to me.

But the vast majority of therapists of whatever profession are compassionate, responsible, and ethical. A few bad apples, however, will terrify some people away from us. (and I don’t blame them!)

See my comment @13.

Ft. Bragg hosted a conference for a BUNCH of Psych professionals regarding torture. Shouldn’t they all be questioned?

LIE-berman is already saying it was just “psychological,” so looks like these guys are the designees for the blame game. It’s not a far stretch to go from “It was just psychological” to “it’s all the psychologists’ fault….”

They’ll all be resident historical revisionist scholars in the Bush war criminal reputation rehabilitation institute.

I wonder if any of this will cause SMU to reverse its commitment to the Bush lieberry so that it can be located where it belongs — in the New Orleans on the Tigris Green Zone.

Being in the “professions” my sense is that there are more unethical practitioners than one would like to imagine. In fact, I would go so far to say that most people are ethically challenged.

Haven’t seen that one in awhile. Funny movie. “The ships in the field…”

There must be slides and everything! Wow! Imagine a jury “treated” to a description of torture program via slides and all! And all the background info about what really happened. And how they promoted themselves – by assisting the OLC lawyers in constructing a case for torture – so they could go out and earn the big bucks – that now will be spent on legal fees!

As a confirmed pathological liar, Lieberman’s view is, shall we say, suspect?

They’re gonna try that. I can see it happening. But something tells me it’s not gonna work to tar all of us.

Plus, how in the heck did we psychologists all participate in this big conspiracy to control Cheney and his puppet? I just don’t see people buying it. The Manchurian Candidate maybe. But where do I fit in?

The lawyers (my profession), the doctors and the psychologists have so much to answer for – the systemic abuse of psychiatry in the CIA torture program is as repellent as the psikushkas of Soviet times.

But, but, someone here, a big name, said we are raising a generation of serial killers. And, he wasn’t snarking either.
FDL pups might do well to think before they push submit.
Me included.

But something tells me it’s not gonna work to tar all of us.

You’re obviously not a lawyer.

On edit: /s

That would make an interesting research question. And there are many levels of moral development. There must be a lot of info out there on that actually. It’s been many years since I read that literature. (30!)

Thanks for responding. I appreciate it. I post so rarely it’s difficult to be acknowledged here.

But I thought that noting their damn CONFERENCE was important. I still do not have the timeline all together. Off the top of the mind, does anybody know when the torture memos precede AFTER the Summer ‘02 conference? You see where I’m going….

How astute of you!

When I say it’s not gonna tar all of us, I’m suggesting I think the tide is turning – in terms of the repubs controlling the propaganda machine and even more importantly the ability to shove it down people’s throats.

I could be wrong. But it’s my “sense.”

Maybe someone kept the handouts?

I post here rarely myself. I generally comment when I have something “to say” that’s vital to me. This is!

I’d suggest you put that info about the conference everywhere you can. Seed the thought that this needs to be looked into. I have a suspicion there’s a lot of attention to the blogs right now. “taking the temperature of public outrage and all” And you may be able to push that meme up to somebody who thinks: BINGO! Someone has the info about when and where. Military? Just put your thinking cap on and google. Or send emails requesting that info.

What I read was that these guys started “pushing” their torture program a couple of weeks after the capture of Abu Zubaida. So they must have had this “ready” for a rainy day….

[grin] No! It’s that CIA via Mitchell and Jensen invited a whole lotta PhD company to go down the “torture under these guidelines is ok” road with them. Spread the blame around so it’s not so isolated.

It’s how bureaucrats work.

in the New Orleans on the Tigris Green Zone.

what, we haven’t caused the iraqis enough misery? what did they ever do to us?

Agreed …. It would be a small measure of justice to see every PNAC shill and Cheney administration official locked inside the Green Zone for life.

I can think of no better place from which to broadcast Radio Free Bush.

Thanks, and that’s what I’m actually doing here. I rarely have something different or additional to add to what FDL people are already doing, so I’m usually just a consumer, vs. a producer.

Further, I think that since the FBI, who had the actual and Constitutional expertise doing interrogation, pulls away, but CIA gets it for this damn “mission” of the WMD and Iraq connection, makes sense out of this whole thing.

Being perfect bureaucrats, CIA goes and gets a bunch of PhDs to legitimate what they want to do, and have been asked to do by a thuggish administration. Leave the FBI in the dust, and they get a double whammy; FBI are pussies (sorry for the epithet, but that’s how they win the turf war amongst the agencies and get Cheny’s aegis) and We the CIA are STRONG, With New and Improved EVIDENCE!

I knew someone in the CIA(deceased recently) who told me many “Stories” but never was there any mention of enhanced interrogation but quite the contrary they used rather humane methods. So I guess I would concur that Darth recruited like minded scum to do his dirty work. I wonder if Darth liked to watch the films that were taken of the torture. I bet he just loved them and served popcorn for “his” guests to watch.

The baby killers are few and far between. Most soldiers are good people and would logve to have a beer with ya!

Isn’t it disgusting that torture became a “free enterprise” – where torture consultants could ply their wares in booths? Sick irony!

Sounds like the same turf warfare that 4th Branch Cheney exploited to feed his raison e’tate prime directive – restoring Nixon’s subversion of the Constitution.

And while they were implementing The Plan behind closed doors, 9/11 fell into their laps like an Orwellian gift that keeps on giving, endlessly.

Amy had a great interview on this subject yesterday.

Bybee and Mitchell and Jesson have a connection. And even in 2002, their colleagues was calling their actions criminal.

Anarchist!

Did they have a working display? Maybe a video of their techniques in practice?

Traditional family values all the way down.

Just a coincidence. You do believe in coincidences don’t you?

Not only that, it appears they formed a business basically to sell using torture, so they could get the contract teaching the techniques.

Spencer has an excellent post up on this.

But is it too cynical to suggest that Mitchell also had an interest in saying that Soufan and the FBI’s (and apparently, in part, CIA’s) non-brutal techniques failed? From page 24 of the Senate Armed Services Committee report:

Subsequent from his retirement from DoD [the Department of Defense], Dr. Jessen joined Dr. Mitchell and other former JPRA [Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which oversees SERE] officials to form a company called Mitchell Jessen & Associates. Mitchell Jessen & Associates is co-owned by seven individuals, six of whom either worked for JPRA or one of the service SERE schools as employees and/or contractors. As of July 2007, the company had between 55 and 60 employees, several of whom were former JPRA employees.