"Abu Ghraib photo showed abuse wasn't the work of 'recycled hillbillies' "

[Clara T]

Author explores CIA connections to torture tactics
January 9, 2006

by Barbara Wolff


A professor of history at UW-Madison has authored a book available this month that explores evidence of a 50-year legacy of U.S. government-sponsored forms of psychological torture.
In his new book, "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" (Henry Holt/Metropolitan, January 2006), historian Alfred McCoy decodes the secret language of psychological torture, signature actions that bespeak training by the Central Intelligence Agency.

When broadcast news reports first aired the photos from Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq last year, McCoy says that he was stunned to see the signposts of CIA Cold War torture techniques. "I put everything aside for an intense round of research that led to this book," McCoy says.

<snip>

"The origins of the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Guantanamo controversy can be traced very directly to the 1950s, when the Central Intelligence Agency launched a massive mind-control project that discovered psychological torture. This proved an unheralded scientific breakthrough, indeed, the first real revolution in five centuries in the cruel science of pain," McCoy says.

<snip>

"That photo indicated that this abuse was not the work of 'recycled hillbillies' on the 'night shift' at Abu Ghraib. It was instead the product of a half-century of history that reached back to the darkest recesses of the Cold War and decisions that extended all the way to the highest levels in Washington," he says.

http://www.news.wisc.edu/11995.html

[SPKrazy]

1. I've never had a question that it wasn't, and I doubt any thinking

person has either.

It went all the way to the top

CIA all the way.

[stepnw1f]

2. Now That is Frightening

[bobthedrummer]

3. The KUBARK Interrogation Manual

The CIA's Secret Manual on Coercive Questioning was obtained by a Baltimore Sun FOIA lawsuit in 1997.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011031152042/www.parascope.com/articles/0397/kubarkin.htm

edited for spelling

[Clara T]

4. Bookmarked

http://www.themodernword.com/gr/main_index.htm

[cap]

5. I know this wasnt recycled Hillbilies...

I grew up in Cumberland MD, home of the MP unit at Abu Ghraib. My first job was at the AF Recruiter signing up our young men and women. There's a basic level of decency and true moral values that our young men and women grew up with. Soldiers from Cumberland are no stranger to Muslims. During the Bosnian War, we took in a number of folks from that war-torn region to be fitted with prosthetics at our hospital. Our troops were deployed to Bosnia at a town that was the focal point of ethnic cleansing; they know what horrible and perverted sexual torments the two sides inflicted on each other. Their job was to stop it. The MP unit's particular job in Bosnia was manning checkpoints and searching people as they crossed. They managed to do this without offending men or women. In fact, if you look in one of the military magazines that covered the unit, there are quotes stating how important showing respect to the civilians was.

The largest employer in Cumberland is the state prison. Many of the MPs worked at the state prison. They knew how to run a jail decently.

There is no excuse for what happened. What I think happened is this: Someone told them to treat the prisoners harshly because it would "Save American Lives". So some of the troops believed what they were told. This administration preyed on the patriotism of our young people and made them forget who they were and what they stood for.

Although it can not compare with the pain and suffering of the Iraqis who were tortured and their families, what happened at Abu Ghraib impacts my home town. These boys and girls are coming home some day and will be someone's son/daughter, mother/father, husband/wife. What kind of people do you think they have turned into? Can you really go from doing all these horrible things and then be a normal member of society? I dont think so. The rates of mental illness, family breakdown, abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction will go up. Unfortunately, it is not just the ex-soldiers who will suffer, but their families, friends, coworkers and employers. The problems of the nearest and dearest of these soldiers will spill onto other innocents as well.

This cycle of evil will spiral and will touch more and more people as the evil of Abu Ghraib spreads through my home town.

By the way, hillbillies dont live in MD; they live in WV, Southern Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Northern Georgia. Another example of this administration using name calling to hide their own sins.