Torture Is Now Part of the American Soul

[Judi Lynn]

Torture Is Now Part of the American Soul
By George Monbiot, The Guardian. Posted December 18, 2006.

You might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators have found a new way of destroying a human being.

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

In early December, defense lawyers acting for Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant," released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk -- taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture." The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for over three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he "does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation." Jose Padilla appears to have been lobotomised: not medically, but socially.
(snip/...)

http://www.alternet.org/rights/45613/

[sweetheart]

1. torture is the abrahamic inheritance

from our father's father's fathers, who all whipped the fear of god in to their kids using similar torture,
its systemic and deep, an ango-torture thing, mixed in with the racism and ethnocentric elitism, as is the
usual burger when served.

[ToolTex]

2. WE MUST STOP THESE CRIMINALS!

They have not only stolen our country's honor they have stolen our humanity.

[elocs]

5. Our honor and humanity were not stolen--they were allowed to be taken.

Not by you or me, but millions of others were perfectly happy to watch the frog being put into the water as the heat raises the temperature to a boil. As Pogo was reported to have said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

[Briar]

3. I don't know about "now"

This is a great article, but there are plenty of examples of similar practices from earlier times. One only needs to look at the punitive brutality of the US penal system (not a new phenomenon) and the enthusiasm for capital punishment to get a sense of a culture which self righteously dehumanises "the enemies of society" and glories in retribution.

[cassiepriam]

4. Repugs are best at psych torture.....We have all been victims of it

in some way.

The US troops placed in horrific circumstances for years.
The American voter brain washed for many years.
The Democrats demonized and victims of character assassination.

The people of Iraq tortured, raped, murdered.

This is what happens when very mentally ill people like Rove,
Cheney, Bush rule the world....