FBI memos reveal Gitmo interrogation techniques: Israeli flags, gay porno

[BurtWorm]

:wtf:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13945827.htm

FBI memos reveal allegations of abusive interrogation techniques
By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.

FBI agents working at the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques in e-mails to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union showed. The agents tried to get the military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions of terrorists because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of the prison at the time, overrode the FBI agents' protests, according to the documents.

The memos offer some of the clearest proof yet that the abuses and torture of prisoners in U.S. military custody weren't the isolated actions of low-ranking soldiers but a result of policies approved by senior officials, the ACLU said.

[Mythsaje]

1. Israeli flags and gay porno?

that's just mind-boggling.

What a world we live in.

[Canuckistanian]

2. So that's what Jeff Gannon is up to these days

And who procures these "videos"? Can you get them from the Quartermaster?

[BurtWorm]

3. I wonder what the requisition forms at Gitmo look like.

That would be something to see on The Smoking Gun!

:wow:

[htuttle]

5. Probably something like this:

"Let me have one of those porno magazines... large box of condoms... a bottle of Old Harper... a couple of those panty shields... and some illegal fireworks, and one of those disposable enemas.

Eh, make it two."

[Canuckistanian]

7. LOL

You need to relax after a day at that job!

[specimenfred1984]

8. More Like What Their Home Purchases Look Like

when they are on leave from torture camp.

[bryant69]

4. Lord almighty

OK - that's just terrible on so many levels i don't where to start

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[cali]

6. This is the essence of depravity.

I don't know who thinks this sick stuff up, but I hate them ferociously. Really, really hate them. I wish for nothing but terrible things to happen to the architects of these outrages.

[BurtWorm]

9. I'm trying to get my mind around the Israeli flag thing.

Some twisted piece of slime at the DOD--maybe Rumsfeld himself, for all we know--gets the brilliant idea that Muslims would react to the Israeli flag the way a Hasid in an early silent movie "comedy" I once saw reacted to having ham in his face--with sheer revulsion and terror. Maybe they'd react that way to an American flag, Donald? Or would it violate a hypothetical Flag Desecration Amendment to wrap an enemy combatant in the American flag? Even if the global war at terror is at stake? I mean, if it's okay to desecrate an Israeli flag that way for the sake of the war--if it's okay to throw out the Geneva conventions, for that matter--because of the changed circumstances after 9/11, maybe it would be okay to descrate an American flag for the sake of National Security?

:wtf:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Anothre indication of "the banality of evil".

These are the same kind of people that find it amusing and manly to set cats on fire or blow up frogs with firecrackers.

Or, in earlier times, to force Jews to clean the streets with toothbrushes.

[seafan]

11. Read this.

This was posted here yesterday. You will understand everything when you finish reading this piece.

Wonder what the American people would think about this, if this became widely known. Media? Here's one for you to work on.



The CIA's Pain Project

By , Democracy Now!
Posted on February 24, 2006, Printed on February 25, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32638/



Amy Goodman: A new expose gives an account of the C.I.A.'s secret efforts to develop new forms of torture, spanning half a century. It reveals how the C.I.A. perfected its methods, distributing them across the world, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, uncovering the roots of the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo torture scandals.

The book is called "A Question of Torture: C.I.A. Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror," and we're joined by its author, Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We welcome you to Democracy Now! I first learned of you with your first book "The Politics of Heroin: C.I.A. Complicity in the Global Drug Trade," for which you almost died. What happened then?

Alfred McCoy: When I was researching that book in the mountains of Laos,...

snip

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/32638




From deep into the article:

snip

The initial research basically developed techniques for attacking universal human sensory receptors: sight, sound, heat, cold, sense of time. That's why all of the detainees describe being put in dark rooms, being subjected to strobe lights, loud music. That's sensory deprivation or sensory assault. That was the phase one of the C.I.A. research. But the paradigm has proved to be quite adaptable.

Right at the start of the war of terror, in late 2002, Donald Rumsfeld appointed Gen. Geoffrey Miller to be chief at Guantánamo because the previous commanders at Guantánamo were too soft on the detainees. Gen. Miller turned Guantánamo into a de facto behavioral research laboratory, a kind of torture research laboratory. And under Gen. Miller at Guantánamo, they perfected the C.I.A. torture paradigm. They added two key techniques. They went beyond the universal sensory receptors of the original research. They added to it an attack on cultural sensitivity, particularly Arab male sensitivity to issues of gender and sexual identity.

And then they went further still. Under Gen. Miller, they created these things called "Biscuit" teams, behavioral science consultation teams, and they actually had qualified military psychologists participating in the ongoing interrogation, and these psychologists would identify individual phobias, like fear of dark or attachment to mother. And by the time we're done, by 2003, under Gen. Miller, Guantánamo had perfected the C.I.A. paradigm, and it had a three-fold total assault on the human psyche: sensory receptors, self-inflicted pain, cultural sensitivity, and individual fears and phobia.

AG: And then they sent Gen. Miller to, quote, "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib.

snip

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/32638

[tanyev]

12. Trying to decide if Dobson and Falwell would say

this was an acceptable use of gay porn.

[BurtWorm]

13. Or the Israeli flag, for that matter...

;)

[BurtWorm]

14. kick

[BurtWorm]

15. kick