Letters to the Editor
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they have great careers ahead of them
When the turncoat shrinks are finished breaking down the prisoners, they can go to work for the VA disability ratings board denying vet's claims of PTSD. It all pays the same.
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While I Deplore Torture...
...on moral grounds and because it is essentially ineffective anyway (and therefore even more barbaric than its basically violent nature), the complicity of psychologists, the CIA and the Bush administration altogether sets the bar for moral depravity directly on the ground. This revelation not only turns the stomach and causes the decent brain to reel, but most significantly indicts the profession of psychology, the Central Intelligence Agency, this utterly corrupt and morally bankrupt administration and, worst of all, us, the people, who continue to allow un-American abominations to pile up while we merely piss and moan and, in the worst cases, actually applaud in all our stupifying bestiality. Yes, the best of us are pitiful and the worst are monstrous. The whole world has seen our ass and it isn't even human.
I would call for an immediate dismantling of our present executive branch but no one even takes that shit seriously. It's much more gratifying to just wail, gnash teeth and get the kids to soccer practice.
I even disgust myself, at this point, for staying here and watching us descend into a moral abyss from which it will likely take decades to escape, once someone, anyone, develops the courage to do what needs to be done to stop the carnage, both literal and psychological.
This article is a call to arms, or ought to be. If Bush is the face of evil then the rest of us are, by our disconnection and inability to act resolutely, by default the body wearing that face.
How does that make you feel?
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What was Ward Churchill's term?
Oh yeah, "mini-Eichmanns."
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No surprise here.
We should all be disgusted, but not surprised, that CIA psychologists have been involved in implementing the War on Terror. As in any profession, there are good eggs and bad eggs.
For an historical perspective on this topic, just do a web search on MKULTRA. If you're not already familiar with this aspect of U.S. history, it will turn your stomach.
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This is a struggle for the soul of our profession.
The APA has been undergoing a very vocal crisis of conscience on this issue for the past few years. The psychologists who have been speaking out against the APA's handling of it are, to me, professional and patriotic heroes. At the APA convention in San Fransisco this August I expect to see the spirit of social justice activism alive and well among many of my colleagues. To me, this is a struggle for the soul of our profession. Are we to be caretakers, committed to bringing healing to real people, or are we to cast ourselves as disinterested social scientists -- consultants, rather than healers, with ethical obligations far more diffuse and more easily compromised for the sake of political and economic advantage?
While I'm sad that there are people in my profession who think that their responsibility to the abstract notion of "all innocent people everywhere" subsumes their ethical obligation to the real human beings in front of them, I'm also at least somewhat heartened by the fact that we are, at the very least, having such a vocal debate about this issue. There's a lot of deathly silence on this topic in this country, and if I have to cringe at the behavior of some of my colleagues, I can also feel proud that many of us are not willing to stay silent about it.
This also just goes to show that our standards for training and licensing are far too focussed on producing good scientists and far less interested in helping young people acquire the personal characteristics required to go out into the world and do no harm. I find myself wishing for far more help learning how to be a better person in order to be a better healer. I fear some of the psychologists involved with SERES and the CIA have terrifically honed intellects and relatively underdeveloped hearts.
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Holy Hell
Mengele was a doctor wasn't he?
While it is laudatory that a protest has risen from the professionals who understand that this vocation ought be particularly constrained by ethical guidelines, surely the signatories are not astonished at the faulty human construct. It cannot be possible that there is no comprehension of the fact that irrational perspectives can be held by their fellows, as well as power brokers and politicians.
We are being held hostage by a government gone mad. If they are torturing detainees to "save" Americans, then it isn't torture. George Tenent just informed us of this daffy perspective in his recent whirlwind book promo.
"Name of interviewer, name of interviewer, name of interviewer, the United States does not engage in torture". (Control issues, with the take command redundancies, do you think?)
Unfortunately, seems the citizenry has gone over the edge enough to let them get away with it, too.
I can't help but think (often) of what happened to the two countries that practiced "pre-emptive" war and torture in the last century.
Doesn't look good for my kids.
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Incomplete Analysis
What is missing from this analysis is the key role played by the Israeli torture "subcontractors" in Iraq who have promoted a culture of "torture is OK".
What a disaster for the US!
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Alec Elixir
W. Churchill was referring to the civilian victims of 911 and when asked by an astonished group to clarify his point, he repeated it.
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We mirror "the terrorists"
At the risk of violating Godwin's Law (I see that has already been done in this comment thread) we can ponder which major military powers in recent history have employed similar torture techniques, and can mentally add the United States to that list. SERE is based on techniques used by the former Soviet Union, which metasticized into the KGB and the notorious gulags that Alexander Solzenhitzen spoke so eloquently against. A political prisoner, Solzenhitzen once wrote, "The line between good and evil runs through every human heart."
Each citizen in this country now has a moral responsibility to do whatever they can to end this horror. As a people, we were once better than this.