knowbuddhau2 said:

“Appeals to mythological symbols, which function as keys in the locks on our behavior, subvert the thin veneer of modernity and go directly to our base instincts. […] Rabble-rousing, fear-mongering, race-baiting--these are all ways to turn us back into beasts. That's what I believe the APA and our gov't have been up to in our black sites.”

##############

April 16, 2002- “Dr. Bruce Jessen, the senior SERE psychologist at JPRA, circulated a draft exploitation plan to JPRA Commander Colonel Randy Moulton and other senior officials at the agency. The contents of that plan remain classified but Dr. Jessen’s initiative is indicative of the interest of JPRA’s senior leadership in expanding the agency’s role.” (DD) According to Jane Mayer, Jessen and colleague James Mitchell “reverse engineered” SERE training techniques. They also used the “learned helplessness” theory of Martin Seligman from his 1960’s experiments on dogs. Seligman spoke about his theories to a high-level group, organized by CIA officials, at the Navy’s SERE school in San Diego during the spring of 2002. [55]

Mid May 2002-“Small group of legislators” see the Abu Ghraib photos. "The [Abu Ghraib] photos clearly demonstrate to me the level of prisoner abuse and mistreatment went far beyond what I expected, and certainly involved more than six or seven MPs. It seems to have been planned."- Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former military prosecutor. […] "That's a standard torture. It's called 'the Vietnam.' But it's not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them."- Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. (RR)

Late October, 2002-Major General Geoffrey Miller assumes “command of Guantánamo Bay, and, on the assumption that prisoners like Qahtani had been trained by Al Qaeda to resist questioning, he pushed his superiors hard for more flexibility in interrogations.” (O) ) For more on Qahtani’s treatment, see [9] and December 2002. The Pentagon had reorganized the camp structure and merged the administrative and interrogation task forces into a single unit, “Joint Task Force 160/170. Many former detainees said that conditions changed significantly when General Miller assumed command. Miller made intelligence gathering the organizing principle of the camp and in the process, turned it into what historian Alfred McCoy termed “a veritable behavioral-scientific laboratory.” [92] For instance. In an October 2, 2002 meeting, the participants talk about al-Qahtani [#063], who has been in custody since February 2002, “recalling how he responded to certain types of deprivation and psychological stressors.”[96]

December 2002-“Dr. Michael Gelles, the chief psychologist at the [Naval Criminal Investigative Service], spoke with Alberto J. Mora, the Navy’s general counsel, saying that, in his professional opinion, “abusive techniques” and “coercive psychological procedures” were being used on Qahtani at Guantánamo. Gelles warned of a phenomenon known as “force drift,” in which interrogators encountering resistance begin to lose the ability to restrain themselves.” [9] Several studies demonstrate once detainees are dehumanized, physically and psychologically, abusing them is more inviting to their guards. This phenomenon is known in psychology as “force drift.” Alberto Mora describes it in his July 2004 memo: “the use of force to extract information that continues to escalate into harsher and hasher methods. “If some force is good, [interrogators] come to believe…the application of more force must be better […] if left unchecked, force levels, to include torture, could be reached.” [92]

December 20, 2002- with Gordon England’s [the Secretary of the Navy, who is now the Deputy Secretary of Defense] authorization, Mora went to William Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel. (O) “The same day, interrogation logs of Mohamed al Qahtani note that interrogators, "Began teaching the detainee lessons such as stay, come, and bark to elevate his social status up to that of a dog. Detainee became very agitated." [16]

2002- An interrogators’ training class at Guantanamo is based on the 1957 study by Alber Biderman [an Air Force sociologist] which described how brainwashing had been achieved by depriving prisoners of sleep, exposing them to cold, and forcing them into agonizing “stress positions” for long periods. The methods had once been used to generate Communist propaganda. [17]

March 3, 2004-General Taguba files the AbuGhraib Abuse Investigation Report. (Q) General Taguba presents his secret findings to his commanding officer, the commander of coalition land forces Lt. General David McKiernan. The report notes that "numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees."[16] “[…] the horrific abuses suffered by the detainees at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) were wanton acts of select soldiers in an unsupervised and dangerous setting. There was a complex interplay of many psychological factors and command insufficiencies […] during the period August 2003 to February 2004.” [19]

#############

February 9, 2007

“A man with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I'm afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.”

From: An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare, 2/9/07

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680.html

Sources at:

http://www.webdsi.com/jebbie/tlpage46.html

David Kaib says:

The Obama Admin's (present) position on state secrets is that courts cannot ever order the government to turn over information that is so designated, that the decision is solely up to the executive branch, and that even when the information is already made public, courts still may not consider such information. My reading is that this is radical even in relation to the Reynolds case, which did not exactly call for exacting judicial inquiry on these matters.

That's not justice.

This does seem to be the Obama Administration's position, but I think pow-wow was addressing some of the possibilities presented in this comment:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/07/al_marri/permalink/b364260ed2e1b0607c535e1d2370dab3.html

IANAL- -just trying to think things through.