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CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program

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TheDemSocialist

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Survivors of CIA torture have sued the contractor psychologists who designed one of the most infamous programs of the post-9/11 era.

In an extraordinary step, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen now face a federal lawsuit for their role in convincing the CIA to subject terror suspects to mock drowning, painful bodily contortions, sleep and dietary deprivation and other methods long rejected by much of the world as torture.
In practice, CIA torture meant disappearances, mock executions, anal penetration performed under cover of “rehydration” and at least one man who froze to death, according to a landmark Senate report last year. Versions of the techniques migrated from the CIA’s undocumented prisons, known as black sites, to US military usage at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
On behalf of torture survivors Suleiman Abdullah Salim and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, as well as a representative of the estate of Gul Rahman – who froze to death in a CIA black site in Afghanistan – the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the suit against Mitchell and Jessen on Tuesday in a federal court in Washington state, where the two currently reside. They seek compensatory damages of at least $75,000.
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Read more @: CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program

And I hope they win :applaud The people that put together this program and carried it out should be ashamed of themselves. We are told that the US stands for justice, liberty, and the respect of human rights, if this is true these people who put together this program and carried it out are the antithesis of all the USA stands for and they by their actions have painted all of us with their brush.
 
:yawn: Useless lawfare lawsuit will go nowhere, is useless lawfare lawsuit.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Read more @: CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program

And I hope they win :applaud The people that put together this program and carried it out should be ashamed of themselves. We are told that the US stands for justice, liberty, and the respect of human rights, if this is true these people who put together this program and carried it out are the antithesis of all the USA stands for and they by their actions have painted all of us with their brush.[/FONT][/COLOR]
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It is just such a pity that the term "torture" is so misused. Suing individuals for mistreatment would and in a very few cases possibly for "torture" might be okay. But to call, what the handbooks allowed "torture" is dishonest or most probably maliciously defamatory.
 
I was struck by this line in the article: "On 6 August, the 130,000-member APA will meet in Toronto for its annual conference."

Why would the APA be meeting in Toronto?
 
The Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen have introduced torture to CIA! They were not consulting the APA ethics when they were doing so thereby cannot generalize to the rest of Psychologists that have to obey the APA ethics in daily lives.

But how does mock drowning works anyway? Drowning is not used to force words out of their mouths in this form of torture for they would not call it "mock drowning" then.
 
DDD said:
The Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen have introduced torture to CIA! They were not consulting the APA ethics when they were doing so thereby cannot generalize to the rest of Psychologists that have to obey the APA ethics in daily lives.

But how does mock drowning works anyway? Drowning is not used to force words out of their mouths in this form of torture for they would not call it "mock drowning" then.
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There are a number of ways that "mock drowning" can be performed. In all cases it is a process of withholding Oxygen using water. The procedure used here was a piece of cloth placed over the face and water poured over it. That stops you from breathing. The CO2 concentration rises and a reflex sets in that is really quite unpleasant. It is part of a training procedure for certain special forces of the American army so that the physical reactions and consequences are well known.
 
joG said:
There are a number of ways that "mock drowning" can be performed. In all cases it is a process of withholding Oxygen using water. The procedure used here was a piece of cloth placed over the face and water poured over it. That stops you from breathing. The CO2 concentration rises and a reflex sets in that is really quite unpleasant. It is part of a training procedure for certain special forces of the American army so that the physical reactions and consequences are well known.
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Uh!

I know that form of torture! It is called waterboarding!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58

Why! I thought people really get drowned with that since water is poured and one really cannot breathe due to water!

Where is the "mock" part here?

I thought that an actor would pretend to be a drowning from CIA terrorist on front of the others. So then out of fear the terrorists would believe the mock drowning and spew out the beans! That there is really drowning, except that it is with a cloth!

It seems the only difference is quantity of water, that is all! Not really a "mock!"
 
joG said:
It is just such a pity that the term "torture" is so misused. Suing individuals for mistreatment would and in a very few cases possibly for "torture" might be okay. But to call, what the handbooks allowed "torture" is dishonest or most probably maliciously defamatory.
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Are you saying these individuals were not tortured?
 
DDD said:
Uh!

I know that form of torture! It is called waterboarding!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58

Why! I thought people really get drowned with that since water is poured and one really cannot breathe due to water!

Where is the "mock" part here?

I thought that an actor would pretend to be a drowning from CIA terrorist on front of the others. So then out of fear the terrorists would believe the mock drowning and spew out the beans! That there is really drowning, except that it is with a cloth!

It seems the only difference is quantity of water, that is all! Not really a "mock!"
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In a way, yes. If the interrogated person believes that he might be killed, that might change the psychology of it.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Are you saying these individuals were not tortured?
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When I looked at what had happened my impression was that there might have been two, maybe three cases of anything you might call torture without blushing. I have not looked at these cases in detail, however. What happened to these persons that justify the word "torture" be used?
 
DDD said:
It seems the only difference is quantity of water, that is all! Not really a "mock!"
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Right, it's an incomplete drowning or partial drowning. Nothing fake or mock about it. And obviously torture.
 
cpwill said:
:yawn: Useless lawfare lawsuit will go nowhere, is useless lawfare lawsuit.
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Oh, surprise, pesky rights and freedoms don't apply to Muslims, do they ?

Torture is deplorable, the administration is guilty of war crimes along with Pelosi.
 
joG said:
When I looked at what had happened my impression was that there might have been two, maybe three cases of anything you might call torture without blushing. I have not looked at these cases in detail, however. What happened to these persons that justify the word "torture" be used?
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Go wikipedia waterboarding and read about how every single credible source declares that waterboarding is torture by every single sane definition.
 
cpwill said:
Oh hey look! A strawman!
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Your argument is that the lawsuit is useless. That's your claim that their rights are unimportant.

Or do you not know what a strawman is ? It is not a literal man made of straw.
 
Absentglare said:
Your argument is that the lawsuit is useless. That's your claim that their rights are unimportant.
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No, I responded to the lawsuit by pointing out that it was useless lawfare. You are pretending it was about rights because you would prefer to talk about rights, and so you inserted that strawman to try to provoke a response. :)
 
Absentglare said:
Go wikipedia waterboarding and read about how every single credible source declares that waterboarding is torture by every single sane definition.
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It might be that waterboarding can be called torture, if performed enough robustly. As it was allowed it did not feel good. It was quite unpleasant, as a matter of fact. But to call that "torture" is to trivialize, what torture really is.

Ps: Maybe you would profit from looking at the material smuggled out of Syria by Caesar that the Holocaust museum exhibited. There is an article in The Guardian with commented pictures explaining how the damage had been wrought. You should read all the accompanying links. That may help you understand the meaning of the word.
 
joG said:
It might be that waterboarding can be called torture, if performed enough robustly. As it was allowed it did not feel good. It was quite unpleasant, as a matter of fact. But to call that "torture" is to trivialize, what torture really is.

Ps: Maybe you would profit from looking at the material smuggled out of Syria by Caesar that the Holocaust museum exhibited. There is an article in The Guardian with commented pictures explaining how the damage had been wrought. You should read all the accompanying links. That may help you understand the meaning of the word.
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"did not feel good" "quite unpleasant"

I won't pretend that there are no times when torture might be justified, and it's a useful conversation that really should take place at the highest levels. It is acceptable, and does it even work?

But for the public, we have to do through this nonsense of denying that induced hypothermia, water boarding, prolonged stress positions, and all the rest are torture. It's bs, it's torture, and our only decision is whether we should or shouldn't engage in it if the stakes are high enough, and if the stakes are high, come to an informed decision about whether torture even WORKS, much less meets any kind of ethical guideline.

Frankly I think it's moral cowardice to deny what we did was torture. If you want to defend it, and many have, then at least have the intellectual honesty to defend torture in certain circumstances, instead of hiding behind euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation" that merely was "quite unpleasant."
 
Setting aside the water board torture what about the guy who we froze to death? Think his family has a case? As a reasonable person I do.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
Read more @: CIA torture survivors sue psychologists who designed infamous program

And I hope they win :applaud The people that put together this program and carried it out should be ashamed of themselves. We are told that the US stands for justice, liberty, and the respect of human rights, if this is true these people who put together this program and carried it out are the antithesis of all the USA stands for and they by their actions have painted all of us with their brush.[/FONT][/COLOR]
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All the fat people should sue the inventor of forks.
 
cpwill said:
No, I responded to the lawsuit by pointing out that it was useless lawfare. You are pretending it was about rights because you would prefer to talk about rights
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And what do you believe that torture violates?
 
joG said:
It might be that waterboarding can be called torture, if performed enough robustly. As it was allowed it did not feel good. It was quite unpleasant, as a matter of fact. But to call that "torture" is to trivialize, what torture really is.

Ps: Maybe you would profit from looking at the material smuggled out of Syria by Caesar that the Holocaust museum exhibited. There is an article in The Guardian with commented pictures explaining how the damage had been wrought. You should read all the accompanying links. That may help you understand the meaning of the word.
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I'd like to read that, could you please provide a link or point to it?
 
prometeus said:
And what do you believe that torture violates?
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:shrug: according to the Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions, those who conduct combat operations while using civilians as cover either directly by hiding in them or indirectly by dressing as them, do not have legal rights. They fall under "spies and saboteurs", and can be, as we did in WWII, summarily taken out back and executed.
 
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