EXCLUSIVE: CIA Psychologist's Notes Reveal True Purpose Behind Bush's Torture Program

[dipsydoodle]

It's been nine years since the Bush administration implemented its highly-classified torture program, where government interrogators subjected "war on terror" detainees held at CIA prisons and at Guantanamo to brutal techniques in an effort, the public was told, to thwart pending terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests abroad.

While President Obama and Congressional lawmakers "look forward" and have failed to hold accountable those individuals who violated international and domestic human rights laws, new revelations continue to surface showing the extent of the previous administration's war crimes and the lies upon which they were based.

Indeed, as Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye report in this in-depth investigative report, the handwritten notes, obtained exclusively by Truthout, that were drafted by Dr. John Bruce Jessen, the psychologist who was under contract to the CIA and credited as being one of the architects of the so-called "enhanced interrogation" program, show that torture was used to "exploit" detainees and to get them to "collaborate" with government authorities.

The documents stand as the first pieces of hard evidence to surface that further explain the psychological aspects of Bush's torture program and the rationale for subjecting detainees to so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques." Jessen's notes were provided to Truthout by retired Air Force Capt. Michael Kearns, a decorated veteran who previously held high-ranking positions within the Department of Defense, and is speaking publicly for the first time. Kearns, who worked closely with Jessen in developing a survival training program for military personnel that the torture program was based upon, said Jessen's "duplicitous act is appalling to me and shall haunt me for the rest of my life."

Full article here http://www.truth-out.org/cia-psychologists-notes-reveal-bushs-torture-program68542

[Angry Dragon]

1. Put bush in the cell next to Manning and treat him the same way

[crim son]

2. Ugh. Remove his clothes?

Ah well, if it's for the greater good...

[Angry Dragon]

4. A naked bush ............ no leaves

[crim son]

5. Hah!

Exactly!

[damntexdem]

9. No, release Manning and replace him with Dubya.

And fill nearby cells with other Bushista war criminals.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. So they tortured people just to see how well our soldiers would

hold up under the same treatment? Didn't they figure that out with Vietnam? They all buckled.

[Adsos Letter]

6. Nazi Germany exposed concentration camp prisoners to high altitude

and freezing water experiments/torture to try to develop measures to help their airforce pilots survive high altitude flights, and ditches into cold water; I see no real difference here.

Edit to add: when I say I see no real difference, I mean that both practices were crimes.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. It frightens me to no end realizing that there are people at the top who think

we're nothing but raw meat and that they have the power to slice us up any way they see fit. You would think that we would find a way to identify these psychopaths and remove them from positions of power before they do irreparable damage, because that sort of cruelty has a habit of trickling down.

[Adsos Letter]

8. Absolutely. The tenor of an organization is usually established/allowed by those at the top

[Wilms]

10. kick

[Solly Mack]

11. K&R

[hobbit709]

12. So Dr. Jessen is the 21st Century's Dr. Mengele?

[yardwork]

13. Naomi Klein talked about this in her book The Shock Doctrine.

From the article at the link:

"These complications include: Threats of death, physical pressures including torture which result in psychological disturbances or deterioration, inadequate diet and sanitary facilities with constant debilitation and illness, attacks on the mental health via isolation, reinforcement of anxieties, sleeplessness, stimulus deprivation or flooding, disorientation, loss of control both internal and external locus, direct and indirect attack on the (prisoner of war's) standards of honor, faith in himself, his organization, family, country, religion, or political beliefs ... Few seem to be able to hold themselves completely immune to such rigorous behavior throughout all the vicissitudes of long captivity. Confronted with these conditions, the unprepared prisoner of war experiences unmanageable levels of fear and despair."

[tex-wyo-dem]

14. hmm...one wonders what exactly Dr. Jessen meant by "collaboate"...

"that torture was used to "exploit" detainees and to get them to "collaborate" with government authorities."

My suspicion all along has been that torture was used in part to force detainees to admit things that the government wanted to hear, even though they were blatantly false. These admissions would then be used to back-up bushco war and anti-terror policies.

This article seems to support my suspicions.