The Banality Of Dick Cheney's Evil

[ProSense]

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/banality-of-dick-cheneys-evil-by-digby.html">The Banality Of Dick Cheney's Evil

by digby

Read this amazing piece by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker. But gird yourself. It's one of the worst things you'll ever read about your government, and that's saying something:

"The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. 'It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,' an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. 'At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.'"

-more-

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Years ago I wrote a post in which a prisoner discussed very similar torture techniques. That prisoner wasn't some alleged Muslim fanatic:

Those illustrations and some of the comments are by former POW Mike Mcgrath about his time in the Hanoi Hilton. Other comments are from the transcript of , a documentary about the POW's during the Vietnam War. How silly of me to compare the US torture scheme with North Vietnam's.

It's very interesting that all these guys survived, in their estimation, mostly because of their own code of honor requiring them to say as little as possible, fight back as they could and cling to the idea that they were not helping this heartless enemy any more than they had to.

As I read the vivid descriptions of these interrogation techniques of sleep deprivation, sensory manipulation, isolation, stress positions and dietary manipulation I had to wonder whether they would be any more likely to work on committed Islamic jihadists than they were on committed American patriots.

The American POWs admitted that they broke under torture and told the interrogators what they knew. And they told a lot of them what they didn't know. And over time, they told them things they couldn't possibly know. The torture continued. Many of them, just like the reports from Gitmo, attempted suicide. They remained imprisoned never knowing when or if they would ever be set free.

That was one of the reasons I was so aghast that John McCain helped create that grotesque military commissions bill. He knew about this scheme if I did. I assume he knew much more. It's true that this is a CIA rather than a pentagon program, but really, what's the difference.? these programs were all hatched and supervised by the same insane man named Dick Cheney.

Tonight I heard David Shuster take Joe Biden to task for suggesting in the debate tonight that the Republicans have "ruined" this country, claiming that "ruin" suggests irreparable harm and "that's a stretch." It is not a stretch. The systematic nature of this thing, with doctors and psychiatrists as willing accomplices, is exactly the banality of evil that Hannah Arendt described. Ruin is the perfect word to describe what they have done.

Jane Mayer's indispensable story on the CIA black sites and the unlawful torture...

[SpiralHawk]

1. McCain = The chain of abuse

The abused become the abusers...

[Mrs. Overall]

2. Do you ever completely misread a headline?

I immediately clicked on this because I swear it said, "The Banana Dick of Cheney's Evil." Not sure what I was expecting....

Interesting article, nevertheless.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. Gotta do it:

[rodeodance]

3. I read her story, It was chilling

[Hydra]

4. K&R for later reading

The excerpts don't surprise me. I've done some study of MK Ultra and some of the other programs we supposedly aren't still doing(ya, I buy that), and you are often struck with that same impression: that they wanted a completely refined and repeatable system for destroying a person, usually with some kind of technological device.

There's really only one conclusion to be drawn, of course. They always claim that they developed these programs by reverse engineering someone else's torture system, but I don't buy it. There's a trail of bodies going back for more than 50 years, so this has been business as usual for a VERY long time.

"Ruined" is an exceptionally good word to use...but apparently that was already the case. * simply decided not to do these things under the cover of impenatrable secrecy anymore. The polite fiction has been dropped.

[pretzel4gore]

5. When i read this, it reminded me of the Crookery on Pennsylvania Avenue

"Everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvellous...It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue, and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honour, blashemy into wisdon, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character"

from 'Catch 22' via Peter Maass book 'Love thy Neighbor, a story of war' referring to when Slobodan Milosovic suddenly realised he could play on the Serbian people's fear and hopes to further his career...and remember, Milosovic died in jail!

[Peregrine Took]

6. "My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty...."

[ProSense]

7. Kick! n/t

Bush On Torture Report: ‘Haven’t Seen It, We Don’t Torture’