Dr. Miles, Welcome to the Lake.

Jeff, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Thank you for having me.
S

Thanks, Bev. Welcome, Steve.

As a beginning question, what is your sense of what needs to be done to guarantee future accountability on the torture issue? What do you feel about independent hearings vs. prosecutions? Who should be on an investigatory panel? What kind of scope or investigative powers should they have?

We must first of all have a truth commission with the power to subpoena officials and records from DoD, CIA, Justice.

Some kind of truth commission seems necessary. Who should run it? Congress? An independent commission? What do you think?

It is interesting the War Crimes Court is legally able to intervene if we do not. Pres O’s position of looking forward will not stand–it triggers the authority of the War Crimes Court under the Treaty of Rome.

The truth commission should be run by an independent prosecutor. Congress and its oversight was complicit with the war crimes that took place.

DR Miles, welcome to FDL this afternoon.

I have not had an opportunity to read your book but would hope it is possible for the identities of these torture doctors to become known. By participating in torture, they have shown themselves to be unfit to be considered doctors

Hi Jeff.
Welcome to the Lake, Dr. Miles. Thank you so much for your shocking yet necessary book.

Do you believe you’ve had open access promoting your book, or do you feel you are being marginalized or stifled due to the white hot topic?

I agree and we are gradually naming these doctors. The Center for Constitutional Rights is building a website to name them. We are filing complaints with med boards which DoD is fighting. AMA is utterly passive on the issue of accountability. Amer psychological assn has been literally operating as a DoD subsidiary in all this.

As a technical note, there is a “Reply” button in the lower right hand of each comment. If you are replying to a specific comment, clicking the “Reply” button will pre-fill the commenter name and comment number.

Makes it easier to follow the conversation.

I hope you are correct.

Frankly, my friends in other countries are at grave risk of being tortured or disappeared for similar work.
My talks have been monitored by DoD, FBI etc but they have not impeded my work. The first book review, a day before release came out from the Assn of Retired Intelligence Personnel.

I will hit reply

The American Psych Assn has come out with a new “open letter” explaining their latest position on psychologist participation in the torture program. Do you have any thoughts about this letter? Does it represent a change on their part? According to my quick read, they are admitting now, for the first time, I believe, that psychologists were involved in torture.

Welcome Dr. Miles, can you provide more details of this and how it will lead to prosecutions via the War Crimes Court.

Thanks for hosting this, Jeff.

This is a new acknowledgement but it is not a change of policy. They have not revoked the policy (PENS) of agreeing with learned helplessnesss based coercive interrogations, they have not said what they are doing with the pending complaints against named persons.

Welcome Dr. Miles and thank you very very much for your work. I can’t tell you how appalled I was when I found out about the torture programs, although subsequent reading has taught me that the CIA has often tortured prisoners over the years. See for example Nosenko.

I am also appalled at the public’s indifference to this U.S. policy, and Obama’s calling it a “policy difference” that he doesn’t want to “criminalize”.

As a result of this failure to document, the number of prisoners murdered by torture must be far higher than we know.

How many prisoners have been murdered by torture who we know about, and do you have any suspicians as to the actual number?

War Crimes have been committed. Europe is unhappy because what our actions have done is destroy international law, essentiallly saying what Geneva and the Convention Against Torture forbid, that an appeal to national emergency and an executive order may legalize torture. The real issue before us to to destroy that position which gives great comfort to thugs like Mugabe. The Treaty of Rome is the only way to restore international law now that Geneva is gone.

Welcome Dr. Miles,

Thank you for standing up and doing the right thing.

As the widow of a torture survivor, I think the doctors involved in US torture need to have their licenses revoked. How do you think civilians, as it were, can best help that to happen?

With gratitude,
Standing for justice and accountability,
For Dan,
Heather

I was just going to ask you where the AMA stood on this. What do you think they should be doing?

What would you like to see the APA do?

BTW welcome, and thanks for all you do. Thanks to Jeff too for hosting.

A great question, Heather. Steven, what can the average person do?

The number of murdered prisoners is probably about 150. The real problem is that we have no accounting from the black sites and furthermore the US shut down all death reporting from Iraq in 2008. Afghan death reporting was shut down in about 2004. There is no transparency on deaths of prisoners, even now.

Do you have a link to that letter? There’s nothing immediately obvious at the APA’s website about it. Their FAQ on the topic is from October 2008.

Dr. Miles may be too modest to note it, but I just found a copy of his own letter to the APA Board of Directors, re what the APA can do, posted on line over at Stephen Soldz’s website: LINK

At this time the state med boards are not revoking licenses and the health professional societies (RN, MD, psychologits) are not censuring. I have found that 80 mds have been sanctioned by other countries for torture, mainly in South America. These national histories show that human rights groups take the lead–govs protect torturing mds to the end.

And all Obama is doing is moving it all from Gitmo, which has a tiny bit of transparency, to Bagram and other sites with no transparency. Don’t think Obama’s stopping torture at all, just hiding it better.

I should have added that to my comment above. Soldz also posted the APA’s letter from their Board of Directors: LINK

I am not modest, according to my wife but i am not a great typist

Obama is trying to slow the abuses but not to open transparency. However the Levin Committee in the Senate is gradually releasing documents and the ACLU has about 100,000 pages on their website.

Thanks, Jane, and to others at FDL who make this forum possible. Great work by all!

I have a concern about doing a Truth Commission:
Truth and Recnciliation Commissions are used when the victims and perpetrators are citizens of the same country. They are designed to knit the communities back together. Thereforem they generally give immunity from prosecution in return for truthful testimony. This would leave the victims of torture under the Bush administration were/are not American citizens. This would deny them justice.

Your thoughts ?

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

I should note that every torturing regime needs docs, to devise methods to not scar, to keep alive those it wants to live through torture, and to falsify certificates and medical records of those who die. Our doctors did exacty these three tasks.

Thank you, my friend :)

Standing with you, as always,
For Dan,
Heather

Dr. Miles, I’m wondering about the meeting called by Joseph Matarazzo in the Summer of 2001, of SERE psychologists to discuss ways they could “help their country” with their “skills”. How deep does the involvement of the medical and psychological professionals go, and when does it seem to have started?

Also, by the Treaty of Rome do you mean the Rome Statute for the ICC?

Under the convention against torture, the torture country owes “as full a rehabilitation as possible.” This is important because about 85% of the Abu G prisoners were innocent or ignorant of insurgency or Al Quaeda and 80% of Gitmo prisoners.

Should the public, then, put pressure on the med boards? (Letter to the board, to newspapers?) Also, I think that individuals can support the human rights agencies working so hard on this, and there are a number of them: ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights First, etc.

Dr. Miles,

Have you been able to confirm Murat Kurnaz’ account of the Moroccan doctor who gave consent to have one of his baby fingers amputated, because it became frostbitten, and woke up with all of his fingers, except his thumbs amputated?

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

Thank you so much for your work, Dr. Miles. How did these torturers determine phobias?

Revocation of licenses isn’t enough, imo. These were criminal actions.

(Thanks, Jeff)

The engagement of medical professionals with torture goes back to 2001 when it was proposed as a way to supervise arduous interrogation at GITMO. That memo was a Gitmo memo. Rumsfeld sketched out a policy in 2003 and it was promptly implemented. Rumsfelds policy for medical engagement to “exploit the physical and emotional vulnerabilites of the interrogatees was in line with Cheny/Addington/Rice’s overall vision.

Torture is treason and evil unleashed.

Doctor what do we owe the innocents now in medical services , who were sweep up and inhumanly treated, knowing we can never make them whole? And how soon?

no

I’ve learned, from scratch, about a lot of subjects since I retired 10 years ago. Torture was pretty easy to learn about. It’s mainly done to extract false confessions, and even if the torturee tells the truth, the torturer has no way of knowing. The ticking time bomb arguement is completely bogus because all the incentive is for the torturee to lie and send everyone off on a wild goose chase until the bomb explodes.

So why did the U.S. do it? I think Cheney had false confessions in mind. The operatives probably had revenge or sadism as their motive (psychologists for the latter imo). What do you think the MDs motives were?

According to gov policy, still in effect at GITMO, the interrogation teams have full access to the medical records for national security purposes. They also did highly structured and psychologically monitored interrogations which were done under an evolving interrogaiton plan which included ways to exploit cultural and psychological beliefs. The gov policy posted at my website requires psychologists to know how to use Learned Helplessness to break prisoners down. See Phys for Human Rights

Dr. Miles

Thanks so much for the book–it was incredibly readable and useful.

I would add to Dr. Miles’s reply, that some of this I covered in a posting you might have missed here not far back. The SERE psychologists were certainly recruited to help out with special operations forces, and it’s my belief that some smaller version of the EIT began informally there, in the months and years before 9/11. It wasn’t interrogations exactly, but what Spec Ops called “debriefings of targets of opportunity.”

Matarazzo’s showing up on the governing body of Mitchell, Jessen & Associates certainly points to a likely operational role for this former president of APA in that operation, most likely as liaison back to CIA, since Matarazzo was working for CIA then. Without evidence of Matarazzo’s exact behaviors before that, we can only speculate, I believe.

Dr. Miles, what kind of reaction have you received from others in the medical professions to the book?

Specifically, have you gotten any comments from folks at the Center for Victims of Torture in Minnesota?

This is a good question.
To atone for thsi mess, we owe circles of actions.
First we need to treat the PTSD in our torturers and this means treating it in all our vets. The VA neglects this need.
Second, we need to treat the victims of torture and this could offer research that would help victims everywhere.
Thrid, we need to understand our history so that this is not repeated.
Fourth, we need to rebuild the framework of international law that we have shattered.

Along those lines, Dr. Miles, in Oath Betrayed, you lay out a pretty good case that the interrogation log of al-Qahtani represented the results of a protocol of an experiment in torture interrogations? The Levin SASC report describes Guantanamo as a kind of “battle lab” for the “war on terror.” How big a role did experimentation on torture play in the overall use of program, do you think? Was this anything like MK-ULTRA?

Thanks very much for your response.

So under your interpretation, having the perpetrators, including the highest levels of the Bush administration, held legally accountable would be part of the full rehabilitation, or am I misunderstanding ? That interpretation would ROCK ! :)

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

The reaction has been positive from my colleagues and my university. The AMA offers words not actions, see this weeks mother jones for example.
I am on the Board of the Center for Victims of Torture as a result of this and I speak to many torture groups doing education and fundraisers.

I think that Rumsfeld, Rice, and Cheney should be held accountable but that is not rehabilitation. Rehabilitation refers to the medical and pschological and social rehabilitation of torture survivors.

It is completely necessary that we unearth the entire design of the research in coercive interrogation that was carried out during the WoT. This is war crime in itself, Nuremberg.
The huge tragedy of abandonding these treaties is that we have left our own soldiers and friends of democracy in Iran, Burma etc who are taken prisoner with no appealable standard for protection

I think we are seeing some of the blowback on this when one considers the difficulty the U.S. has in casting a moral stance when it comes to actions by the government of Iran, or recently in the trial and incarceration of two women by North Korea. The loss of moral authority by the U.S. is staggering enough, but you make a great point in noting the human cost to soldiers, friends of democracy, etc.

Is there a technical problem

Just to interject, under CAT, the first step, after a credible allegation of torture, is to take the alleged perpetrators into custody, and inform all other nations that have nationals or territory involved in the allegation. That’s so the victims will feel safe to come forward. Anything else is less than fair to the victims.

Thanks for the reply.

That’s what I was thinking, which is why I was confused by your response to my point. I believe absolutely that the victims deserve all the medical, psychological and social rehabilitation that they need, but I don’t believe that gives them justice. I believe only having those responsible held legally accountable is justice. Just my two cents.

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

I think just a lull. Meanwhile, I was wondering if you could comment on this:

Most people don’t know that the Pentagon Office of Inspector General has initiated an investigation into the use of involuntary drugging of prisoners (”detainees”). What do you know about that investigation,and how serious was the drugging problem?

Absolutely,

Hugs,
For Dan,
Heather

THe genius after wwII was to recognize that civil society itself was wounded. The UN, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoenrs were all efforts to repair that damage.
Geneva and the Convention Against Torture (the latter passed under Reagan) are now destroyed. Ironically, if Obama wants to go forward, the only path may be by endorsing the War Crimes Court which was enacted without US approval.

If the “entire design of the research in coercive interrogation” is a war crime, aren’t we suffering now for the fact that there was no accountability for those who plotted and implemented past torture, e.g. the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, training torturers in Latin America, the MKULTRA program, etc.?

It is very clear that drugging did occur.

It was used for transport during the renditions.
It was used to confuse prisoners during interrogation.
The extent is not clear. Keep in mind that Freedom of Information Requests largely access DoD and FBI and Exec Branch records, they do not access CIA records. Also wholesale records destruction has gone on.

Cannot Congress rescind the “reservations” to CAT, since they weren’t part of the original treaty, and then reaffirm without the caveats that so weakened it? When you say CAT and Geneva are “dead”, does that mean those processes will never be returned to?

150 deaths is unbelievable. Does that include the suicides? And the medical injuries and the profound PTSD inflicted.

I see that “cronyism” bonding of the new administration with the status quo reps and staff in military and in Congress is such a force to minimize and deny and avoid accountability.

I see such a parallel to how the Catholic Church covered up molestation of children for its own CYA cronyism and group think.

I have been wearing a black armband until my country appropriately deals with the horrors it has allowed to be illegally and immorally perpetrated. Where is the outrage of the citizenry that are not compromised by the ripples of awareness as this has been happening? That is an entirely separate fresh hell.

Surely the lack of accountability in MKULTRA, Phoenix, and Condor set the stage for a feeling of impunity in the present matters. However, I think that it is important to note that the terror squads set up under Phoenix (VN) and Condor (Chile, Guat, Argentina, Uruguay etc) were proxy operations–we did not make torture a mainstream operation of the US gov. What happpened in this situation is that the admin set up two rump interrogation programs, one DoD and the other CIA and hid them from normal operations and staffed them with people who had no serious intel background or experience.

150 does not include the suicides.

Hi just popped in I’m going to read the comments but first I would like to know if there is any move to get these Doctor’s licenses pulled.

I agree that is an important, crucial difference. What do you make of the Obama administration’s decision to retain renditions, and news that the U.S. is once again out-sourcing certain interrogations to foreign governments, with “assurances” there will be no torture, of course?

Seems like the antithesis of the Hypocratic oath.

Congress could rescind the reservations fo the Conv against Torture and that would help but the problem is that the current precedent in the US law, which has not been upset by a ruling otherwise, is that the president as a part of his role as commander in cheif can ignore conventions.
Indeed in the Gitmo Commissions law, it states,
1. Geneva applies.
2. no prisoner can appeal to Geneva.
3. The pres has full authority to determine what geneva means.

It is amazing.

How many suicides?

Responding to myself, re rendition:

from the New York Times, 2/17/09

Mr. Panetta said the agency is likely to continue to transfer detainees to third countries and would rely on diplomatic assurances of good treatment — the same safeguard the Bush administration used, and that critics say is ineffective.

Mr. Craig noted that while Mr. Obama decided “not to change the status quo immediately,” he created a task force to study “rendition policy and what makes sense consistent with our obligation to protect the country.”

It is very clear that torture is a war against civil society.
No matter what our purposes, the US engaging in torture is sending the message that torture, rendition is legal and thus we support the arguments of countries like China, Syria, Zimbabwe that torture is a prerogative of a sovereign state. American exceptionalism must not prevail on this point. It threatens the entire world order.

About 6 reported as I recall.

The whole Military Commissions Act should be rescinded, in my opinion.

You know, in a matter of weeks, with almost no public process, per his EO last January, Obama’s interrogations commission is to release recommendations re interrogations policy, including whether to make the Army Field Manual the “gold standard” for all U.S. interrogators. Any thoughts about that?

I’m surprised, I would have expected more.

Why do you think there is so little “outrage” expressed by citizens? Is it really there, but media not heeding it? But it doesn’t seem to be there. Our A.D.D., media-videogame-culture? Desensitization? Lack of empathy? Jingoism? Authoritarian following overtrust of our leaders? 9/11 tragedy certainly has been a blank check for perpetual punishment of people, whether they are even guilty does not seem to be a serious consideration, also.

The financial profiteering of these psychologists is another disgusting dimension of this.

The suicides number may be funny who inverstigated these alledged suicides?

The gold standard is the Geneva Convention and the Convention Against torture.
Uniform standards for the Treatment of Detainees defines “cruel inhuman and degrading treatment.)
The Geneva convention bars torture and coercion of any kind.
The Convention against torture defines torture.
The Army Field Manual permits Fear up harsh, Environment Down, Futility Up, Ego Down. These especially in combination are coercive and poor interrogation techniques according to the largest US study of the National Intell University.
Incidentally my compilation of documents is http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/O…..index.html

Thanks for the link.

Since the entire death reporting system from rendition prisons and Afghanistan has been shut down for years and Iraq (where we hold 20,000) prisoners shut its death reporting system down in Jan 2008, you are correct, there are more suicides, homicides, natural deaths, deaths by shelling.
Steve

We’ll see what Dr. Miles has to say, but I imagine the figure he quoted is not inclusive of foreign prisons, CIA black site prisons, and others where observers or reliable reports have been possible.

Dr. Miles, have the procedures (and I mean as practiced, not on paper) regarding filling out death certificates, or doing autopsies changed or improved since the writing of your book? If so, do you think it’s due to your influence, and that of other critics? If things haven’t changed, why do you think that is?

Maybe we need names and pictures of these doctors I am willing to go to kinko’s and post information about any of these Doctors in the Seattle area where I live all over their neighborhood.
A grass roots outing campaign will scare the Right it will generate news stories on the topic which should lead to public pressure for trials.
Plus I want Pat Buchanan on tv defending the rights of torture Doctors to have privacy and then defend all the right wingers who called publicly for that abortion Doctor to be killed.
People will notice that our side puts up fliers and their side kills.
I want people to understand the Difference between Left and Right right now.

Torture is never done by a guard. It is done by a society.
First, it creates a special group of people undeserving of being treated as humans.
Then it builds special institutions for them.
It suspends ordinary forms of accountability for these people.

A torturing society make a transcendent and omnipresent evil. It responds viciously.
In the US, we had a run up to torture with our countdown digital clock dramas of the Mission Impossible variety. We create “24″ for adults and torture themed Saturday AM cartoons for kids.

We create the view of American exceptionalism–its is true was are a free society–it is not true that that means that we should be free of accountability for our depotism.

Any idea when the World Court might get involved and start prosecutions? I assume they are holding off to give Obama a chance to get the economy in order first.
But how long will they wait?

There is the Luntzian speak of “enhanced interrogation technique” rather than calling it the torture that it is. It disgusts me the number of people who are “good” with the concept of torture. We’re a nation of pants-pissing cowards.

The secrecy of death certificates was partly and temporarily suspended in 2004 and 2005 and now has entirely returned with the exception of GITMO suicides.

eXcellent point.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is now setting up a website to post names of doctors and psychologists.

Also, what ever happened with the Spanish investigations? the Italian prosecutions of the CIA agents? Dr. Miles? Anyone know off-hand?

Thank you so, so much for this. That is what we need to get every American to understand.

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

My guess is that other nations will begin issuing warrants and indictments this year or early 10. It is important to realize that the fact of a warrant is sufficient to discredit this past administration. For example, Pinochet had a warrant but not a conviction, it was the end of the moral credibility of his regime and funds were confiscated and colleagues imprisoned.

That’s amazing. Really… do you think on this issue that anything is really changing under Obama?

Side topic any ideas what kind of art, music etc a torture society produces? American entertainment is a big part of our economy if we torture, listen to phone calls, have big corporations censor the media well that should kill the Free Cultural Mindset that produces our entertainment economy.

Scott Peck in People of the Lie claims EVIL is laziness to the nth degree.

Moral laziness to be incapable of empathy.

I have noticed even on some L&O shows, there is more graphic violence beginning to happen. More sustained physical brutality in front of the camera. Is that to be the horrifying legacy of this horror? More graphic titillation on the screen rather than processing it?

It does feel like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. An assumed moral and ethical society is zombied out — the lack of responsibility. The inability to respond.

And I wonder.. this crime, does Obama administration treat it like the banks… too big to fail. To big to be held accountable and investigated and justice achieved.

The Bush admin prevailed on europe to revoke the warrants against CIA officers involved in renditions but this matter is still very active in the Eur Parliament, Italy, UK, Spain. This is a mess for the CIA because it basically meant that a huge group of our CIA-Arab speaking experts could not travel in Eur. A loss in my view.

The Spanish indictment against Rumsfeld, Addington, and a couple of others is still active but they are trying to sideline Judge Garson who took it under consideration.

Hello, Dr. Miles,
Shouldn’t we discredit any ‘research’ that was done on learned helplessness, just as we don’t refer to any research done by Mengele?

Cool I got this post bookmarked I’ll check in every once in awhile to see if any local Doctors were involved.

So agree, Elliott. Greenwald went after the NYT for refusing to use the word “torture”!

And what is with 62% of Evangelicals, supporting torture as a good idea. Church going enhances blood lust? Certainly, the B/W, I’m okay and you (outside of the church/village) are not!

Re Arts and music and torture.
There was talk about suing the gov for royalties for the loud music they blasted at prisoners to disorient them and keep them awake.
Although we do have a brutal entertainment, the torture story has produced some wonderful art. My favorite was Jenny Holzer projecting gigantic images of the memos authorizing torture on the walls of a NYC library–a juxtaposition of Orwelling language and the sprit of the library

Mentioning “learned helplessness”… Dr. Miles, do you know of any further info regarding the participation of former APA president Martin Seligman in the SERE torture program? He admits speaking at a SERE meeting of some sort in San Diego in 2002, but that is all. You’d think he’d be outraged at how his theories were used (assuming he really were), and I noted that to him in an email once. He wrote back (paraphrasing) “I can’t help how others use my theories. That’s what innovators must endure.” Very cold. Very self-obsessed.

What should we do about the research on interrogational torture and learned helplessness?
We must name the perps
Prosecute those who developed the research protocols
discredit the research
close the entire DoD and CIA departments doing this.

I think learned helplessness might be real but creating that state in a person to get information isn’t effective otherwise Bush should have gotten Osama by now.

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker is following him better than I.
Everyone should understand that my method is extremely conservative: I only cite facts that I have a confirmatory gov doc for. I do not do interviews. The released documents are biased in selection as noted earlier. However, mistake destroy the credibility of protest and can, like the Koran down the toilet story of several years ago, cause death.

thanks jeff and Dr. Miles.

A couple questions.

(1) what was your view on Yoo’s definition of torture as “Physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” A doctor wrote that this was strange definition because

“Specific symptoms are associated with the failure of individual organs such as heart, kidney, or lung. But pain is not prominent among any of them.”

(don’t know how to hyperlink at FDL, but here is link to articlehttp://www.newsobserver.com/1573/story/1566898.html)

(2) One torture memo was so specific about the volume of water poured for water torture:

“a cup or small watering can” such that “air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds.” After “three or four breaths,” the practice could be repeated for “up to 20 minutes.”

This same doctor (as in question #1) said that these numbers “These numbers suggest hard scientific data, reminiscent of what we learn in a clinical trial — a study that evaluates how well a drug works by comparing it to another drug or placebo.”

So, where did this data come from? and, was this part of the experimentation?

(3) A blogger noted how the prisoners have been tortured by starvation:

“Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation” is a report I’ve compiled for Cageprisoners analyzing the weight records for prisoners at Guantánamo (released by the Pentagon in March 2007), which demonstrate that, from January 2002, when the prison opened, until February 2007, when these particular records came to an end, one in ten of the total population — 80 prisoners in total — weighed, at some point, less than 112 pounds (eight stone, or 50 kg), and 20 of these prisoners weighed less than 98 pounds (seven stone, or 44 kg).

link: http://www.andyworthington.co……tarvation/

Has the medical profession analyzed this issue of starvation as another means of torture cause i have not seen reports on the net.

thank you both.

So far we are producing great art but what if Bush had won and taken away our freedom’s Stalin’s tractor art and Hitler’s Nazi’s art from what little I’ve seen are similar.

Hi,

What do we know about nurses? You’ve pointed out that they were bystanders, at a minimum. But what is the ANA policy? Someone I know has repeatedly sked them and gotten no response.

I must put in my plug for the 1960s movie, The Ipcress File. It was the first of the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer movies, and a big hit when it came out. It’s been unavailable on DVD (in the U.S., not Europe) since the beginning of the Bush years. I believe this is because it pictures the use of government-sponsored torture experimentation, including use of isolation, sensory overload and deprivation, drugging of prisoners, starvation, etc.

How does Caine keep his sanity in the film? He finds a nail and uses it to dig into the palm of his hand (Harry Palmer!), to distract himself and use the physical pain to counter the psychological pain. It’s all Hollywood stuff, and may have nothing to do with how to counter this kind of torture, but if you get a chance, see the film. (I think it very rarely will show up on cable, like Turner Classic Movies.)

Learned helplessness has been studied for 50 years. It does not produce good intelligence.
It radicalizes opponents and their societies.
It makes it impossible to recruit human intelligence workers.
It leads to false information that drives bad policies (e.g. the idea the Al Quaeda and Saddam were collaborating on bioweapons came from a rendition torture in Cairo)
It destroys our soldiers who do it.
It puts our own soldiers at risk as POWs.

Dr. Miles, I read in the Bush Tragedy how Bush while an officer in a Yale fraternity pushed to “brand” the pledges with a branding iron. Yale Daily News got wind of it and caused him trouble, so W. Bush had to resort to hot coat hangers and lit cigarettes to “brand” the pledges, not real branding irons. W. felt an ego-rush from this experience and it was a satisfying self image for him I would bet. Seems like this history, this male bonding, secret society, sadistic group-bonding as ritualization, helped enhance his inclination for this, though torture has been around, but it certainly added to Bush’s taste for it. What do you think?

Oh yes, Jenny Holzer, very effective

We know that nurses saw torture, eg Helga Adolphe Morales.
We know that ANA has its head in the sand.

Dr, excellent. Thank you for your reply.

Yoo was an architect of torture. Doctor should be held accountable. So should the lawyers who traduced law on the direction of the President. The ABA is not doing this. They should. Some groups of lawyers are presssing them to do so.

Russians had some great composers under Stalin. Don’t think there’s much of a link. Even when the Soviets dictated a lot about art, Shostakovich wrote some incredible music under the constraints.

I have no time to analyze Bush’s frat house background.
History has judged him but he is too dim to read the ruling.

Re: Russians had some great composers under Stalin. Don’t think there’s much of a link. Even when the Soviets dictated a lot about art, Shostakovich wrote some incredible music under the constraints.

As Leonard Cohen wrote: There is a crack in everything, thats how the light gets in.

The Ipcress File

I was not arguing that learned helplessness is good I was wondering if it was real. I was arguing that it does not produce good intelligence because if it did Bush would have got Ossama bin Forgotten by now.
Its been a great talk please come back any time and please keep us up on what the World Court does.

Sometimes the crack is between the lower two cheeks, where the sun don’t shine. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

oho! brilliant.

What about deprivation techniques like extreme isolation and sleep deprivation or noise/lights? It seems like they always take a back seat to allegations of physical brutality, but peoples’ brains begin to come undone with multiple month isolation and deprivation.

Here are concrete things to do.

Keep pushing on your reps, senators for a full independent investigation with subpoena power.

Push on your professional assn: psychologists, MDs, lawyers, nursing for accountability.
Support the Cent Const Rights, ACLU, Physcians for Human Rights and other groups which have poured enormous resources into this. Remember that the Maddoff collapse killed two foundations that were heavily supporting these groups.

Hi PD!

Re starvation, some time back I found a discussion at a 1956 Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry meeting back in the 1950s on interrogation that included input on the starvation issue. From an article I wrote about it back in March 2007:

Some of the material in the GAP symposia, necessarily borders on the macabre. Dr. Josef Brozek, of “the famous Minnesota Starvation Study” (see here for alternate link), gives a contribution on the effects of semi-starvation that sounds like Dr. Stangelove at his strangest:

A situation in which food would be offered on certain occasions and would be withdrawn on other occasions would constitute a more intensive psychological stress than food restriction alone. It would result in severe frustration, and would more readily break a man’s moral fiber. By combining such a treatment with other forms of deprivation and insult, one could expect eventually to induce a “breakdown” in the the majority of human beings. [My emphasis]

See, I don’t think any of this is new. Just the contemporary nature of the actors, and the fact they let the genie back out of the bottle.

Tragedy from oppression can produce great art good point but is the sign of a truly successful dictatorship bad art? There is no hope there are no outlets even secret ones to express discontent?

Ditto.

Re: What about deprivation techniques like extreme isolation and sleep deprivation or noise/lights? It seems like they always take a back seat to allegations of physical brutality, but peoples’ brains begin to come undone with multiple month isolation and deprivation.

This is true and there are brilliant studies of this by Metin Bosoglu among others. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is soul destroying disability that lasts long after the torture.

I’m interested in that too. I think that’s more permaently destructive than most physical torture. I’d like to know why sleep and sensory depravation are not defined as torture per se.

but peoples’ brains begin to come undone with multiple month isolation and deprivation.

agreed isn’t that what they did to Jose Padillia is whats been done to him considered torture?

Oh, no, Shostakovich’s ode to the state is glorious. (I’ll see if I can find a link, but first I have to get the accurate name of the composition I’m thinking of.)

Was Jose tortured that way because he was on American soil whats his mental state now is he getting treatment?

Sleep and sensory deprivation are explicity defined as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the UN Principles for the Treatment of Detainees.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is soul destroying disability that lasts long after the torture.

Yes, and anyone who has treated PTSD, or who treats torture survivors knows how horrific the damage is. While we like to talk more about the survivors who make it, the truth is all treating professionals know of plenty of cases where lives were totally destroyed, either through suicide, drug overdose, or never really made it back to any way to function, hold down relationships, etc.

I always wince inside when I read about things like “prolonged” damage: the damage is always prolonged.

I do not know anything about Jose Padilla at this time

Re Bush and HIS ILK …. I think secret-society, male-bonding secrecy and physical titillating “testing and challenging” group think is a societal factor in all of this. Power and control issues, which are encouraged in the masculine societies such as military. Anti-feelings values. Over-compensation to be masculine. Anti-feeling.

Dr. Miles, What is the next major report we should watch for? What government reports, civilian investigations?

Ok Soviet art some of it at least is great but I’m thinking of a Dictatorship that Darth dreams of one where even art is 100% subservient to the state. Where there is no hope and everyone obeys their Corporate masters.
Also just how much damage can anti freedom measures like torture and censorship do to our culture before it does effect our art in a bad way and thus our economy?
Free market Stock guys who love Bush never mention this danger to our economy.

A judge just allowed a lawsuit by Padilla against John Yoo to go forward, rejecting procedural objections. The Justice Department is reviewing its options. Padilla and his mother are asking for $1 in damages for his torture (and no, I didn’t forget to put in another figure after the number 1).

Look at the ANTI-EMPATHY drumbeat of the right against the “empathy” factor in the Sotomayer case.

Shostovich Forest Song, an ode to the glory of the Soviet state. My CD cover even has a picture of Stalin on it.

I would follow the ACLU website at least once every two weeks. We can expect more documents from the Levin Committee. The really interesting missing report is the rest of the Admiral Church’s report which is coming out in bits.
Personally, I do not understand why no one cares that death reporting has stopped from Afghan and Iraq. These deaths are the canaries in the coal mine. The gov hid its torture program by hiding the deaths. It all continues.

My husband, Dan, was a Vietnam vet who was tortured, and he suffered from his psychological injuries for over thirty years, until his fatal heart attack four years ago. He was still waking up screaming the week before he died.

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

Warning everybody! I think we have only ten minutes left before we must cede control of this blog to the next posting. So wrap up with your final questions, so Dr. Miles can have time to respond.

What is the legal difference (if any) between torture vs. cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment?

This has been an interesting sub-thread. For me, Shostokovich’s string quartets are among the great works of 20th century art. But I don’t believe we get greater or lesser art from a totalitarian or torturing regime. Every society seems to find a way to destroy many fine artists. At its worst, I don’t think a gulag or concentration camp is a better breeding ground for art than a decent school or college, even if the latter can be a little conformist or soul-killing once in a while.

As we come to the end of this important Book Salon,

Dr. Miles, Thank you very much for this book, and for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your book and all aspects of torture.

Jeff, Thank you for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought this book yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

I have a copy of the Pike Report, and am working on getting it up on a website. If you are interested, I would be happy to let you know when it is up.

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

And the prolongation of the torture is carried over to the loving families and friends, and even carried on down through the generations. There’s a damn good reason these are crimes against humanity, crimes without redemption.

Re death reporting – i thought it was no more than the Viet Nam body count, and the sign of quagmire. Am i looking at the wrong count?

Right. I was just making the point that great art can happen in repressive regimes that torture. (Greater music in Stalin’s USSR than in today’s USA, imo.)

Overly male yes, some warped homosexual stuff going on caring/empathy is seen as Womanly so of course they must disrespect it. But that is not the prime focus I think its putting Power before Sex I think its putting morals everything before Power you join groups like Skull and Bones to get ahead and increase your power by uniting with like minded moral cretins.
Rather than invent stuff, make stuff etc to get wealth you seek to use your connections to manipulate the system Corporate Welfare or Cronyism.
Things like torture are just a means to an end well given their culture a fun means to an end.
SchadenFreude enjoying anothers pain
BushSchadenFreude enjoying making money off of someone else’s pain.
Power is Money, Power replaces Sex, Empathy is for the weak, The strong delight in causing others pain as symbol of their power.

There is no difference between Torture and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatement in terms of effect on a prisoner. That is the genius finding of Bosoglu.
The Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment is an expansive term to prevent somebody from creating a torture lite that is legal. That is why the treaties forbid both.
I refer you to the treaties.

Nobody ever really knows. It’s b.s. people try to use to defend their position.

Good by all.
Thank you FDL and Jeff and all of you

Thank you, Bev. And a huge thank you to Dr. Miles, for his time today, and for his work over the years. It has been a great honor and privilege to help out with today’s Book Salon. There were many wonderful and interesting questions, as well as insightful comments. I thank all for participating.

If you haven’t purchased or read Oath Betrayed yet, please do. It is on my essentials book shelf.

$1 they are not in it for the money. That takes away a GOP talking point This is great News I hope Yoo goes to trial and we get the live blog of the trial!

Thanks. Very clear answer.

Thanks, Steven.

Going to listen now bye!

I thought so, i hate when i see it.

Absolutely, my friend !

So many families are being destroyed but what has been/is being done. That there is even a discussion is beyond words.

Standing, as always, with you,
for justice and accountability,
For Dan,
Heather

Spencer Ackerman is upstairs-
David Rohde

Thank you, Dr. Miles – you were very generous with your time.

Ahhh, the power and sweet promise of Truth. Thank you

(((((((((((((((((((((((Jeff)))))))))))))))))))))))))

Thank you so much for doing this.

Hugs,
For Dan,
Heather

Thanks, TCU. Profoundly said.

Thank you very much, Dr. Miles,

For your time, your patience, and your steadfastness in standing up for the truth.

With gratitude,
For Dan,
Heather

Thank you both so much.
and thanks, Bev.

Nice tune eCAHN

Unfortunately Prokofiev wrote tripe to appease Stalin, in order to live in Russia. If he had kept going where his 6th, 7th and 8th Piano Concerti had pointed, rather than to the direction of the Seventh Symphony, he might have been the 20th Century’s greatest composer. That goes ironically to either Stravinsky or to Schostokovic. IMOO

Perhaps you are thinking of this? Shostakovich String Quartet in c, Op.110