Degradation and manhandling: Document reveals US interrogation techniques

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Raw Story

After conducting a 10-month investigation that consisted of more than 70 interviews, as well as a detailed review of public and classified documents, Vanity Fair writer Katherine Eban delivers the fullest portrait yet of James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the C.I.A.-contracted psychologists who were put in charge of designing the aggressive interrogation methods known as 'SERE school' techniques (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) that came to be used during the Iraq war," states a press release sent to RAW STORY. "Eban also reveals a never-before-seen memo that details how the U.S. military sought to treat detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

Eban writes of the memo, "In a bizarre mixture of solicitude and sadism, the memo details how to calibrate the infliction of harm. It dictates that the ' slap will be initiated no more than 12–14 inches (or one shoulder width) from the detainee's face … to preclude any tendency to wind up or uppercut.' And interrogators are advised that, when stripping off a prisoner's clothes, 'tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.' In short, the sere-inspired interrogations would be violent. And therefore, psychologists were needed to help make these more dangerous interrogations safer."

The press release continues:

According to colleagues, Mitchell and Jessen, who were placed in charge of interrogations on the C.I.A.’s network of “black sites,” had no real-world experience in questioning prisoners. Their expertise was in training U.S. soldiers to endure Communist-style torture techniques—the same tactics they are accused of reverse-engineering for use on detainees.

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Despite their questionable credentials, Eban reports that the principals at Mitchell, Jessen & Associates are raking in money. According to people familiar with their compensation, they get paid more than $1,000 per day plus expenses, tax-free, for their overseas work. “Taxpayers are paying at least half a million dollars a year for these two knuckleheads to do voodoo,” says one of the people familiar with their pay arrangements



Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Degradation_and_manhanding_Document_reveals_US_0717.html

[Barrett808]

1. rec for freedom n/t

[Bragi]

2. Hate to say it, but....

I fear I am almost immune to these stories now. I scan them and think "yes, of course." I remain thoroughly outraged by shit like this going on, but I can't read the details anymore.

- B