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Condiv posted:i wonder how much longer till police are waterboarding suspects? they already use "pseudotorture" techniques like sleep deprivation and starvation The police are the ones that started it in this country back at the turn of the last century. wikipedia posted:The use of "third degree interrogation" techniques to compel confession, ranging from "psychological duress such as prolonged confinement to extreme violence and torture", was widespread in early American policing. Lassiter classified the water cure as "orchestrated physical abuse",[111] and described the police technique as a "modern day variation of the method of water torture that was popular during the Middle Ages". The technique employed by the police involved either holding the head in water until almost drowning, or laying on the back and forcing water into the mouth or nostrils.[111] Such techniques were classified as "'covert' third degree torture" since they left no signs of physical abuse, and became popular after 1910 when the direct application of physical violence to force a confession became a media issue and some courts began to deny obviously compelled confessions.[112] The publication of this information in 1931 as part of the Wickersham Commission's "Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" led to a decline in the use of third degree police interrogation techniques in the 1930s and 1940s.[112]
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Dec 12, 2014 15:43
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quote:Such techniques were classified as "'covert' third degree torture" since they left no signs of physical abuse, and became popular after 1910 when the direct application of physical violence to force a confession became a media issue and some courts began to deny obviously compelled confessions.
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Dec 12, 2014 15:48
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Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? Edit: I'm not entirely sure what the criteria should be for ranking past and present torture programs but it'd be interesting to see where this sits in the rankings. TACD fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 16:12
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TACD posted:Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? Yes, but mostly because of solitary confinement in us prisons.
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Dec 12, 2014 16:14
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TACD posted:Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? No. As horrific as it is we "only" tortured about a hundred people. Ancient Romans would think we were cute. I mean look at this poo poo: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/the-worst-ways-to-die-torture-practices-of-the-ancient-world-a-625172.html hobbesmaster fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 16:15
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TACD posted:Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? Well-funded? Probably. Expansive? Depends how you mean. By the numbers other regimes have tortured a great deal more than 130 people.
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Dec 12, 2014 16:15
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TACD posted:Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? Well-funded, yes. Expansive, no. Stalin and Mao really rewrote the paradigm there and showed the world how to do more with less, and America's still struggling to catch up with their levels of efficiency in human rights abuses. But hey - our law enforcement and corrections systems are getting us there fast!
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Dec 12, 2014 16:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I wonder where, exactly, future historians will say "here, this point, is where Americans abandoned the rule of law." This is certainly not the first time people were tortured for information, it may be the first time that they tried to provide a legal justification for it. The fact that it was being done outside the US by "Contractors", smacks of someone trying to skirt the law. The amateurish way this was conducted is actually somewhat comforting. It indicates that the CIA was not prepared to torture people for information. (probably because it doesn't work) I would be more concerned if the highly trained "torture team" was rolled out to find out which cave the dirty bomb was hidden in. Instead we get the SERE manual, butt smoothie crew.
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Dec 12, 2014 16:23
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Terrible as the western business is, we have a long way to go before we beat S-21 or anything. We might be best funded, but that's largely because we gave so much money to self-proclaimed experts and did it all fancy with black sites all over the globe.
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Dec 12, 2014 16:26
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TACD posted:Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? There's this small business called the Catholic Church, they did some dabbling in this sector over the past thousand years or so.
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Dec 12, 2014 16:52
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hobbesmaster posted:No. As horrific as it is we "only" tortured about a hundred people. Ancient Romans would think we were cute.  Jesus loving butt smoothies Christ. I'd heard of some brutalized ancient punishments but that poo poo is downright staggering. My B hole clenched right up and I tasted bile.
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Dec 12, 2014 16:59
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Rygar201 posted:
It actually omits parts about the bronze bull that always stood out to me. It was carefully crafted with all kinds of piping so that once a fire was kindled underneath it and the person locked inside started boiling alive, the screams this person would produce would sound like a bull, to entertain everyone around.
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Dec 12, 2014 17:03
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Looks like some folks haven't read Mannix's The History of Torture 
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Dec 12, 2014 17:11
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Orange Devil posted:It actually omits parts about the bronze bull that always stood out to me. It was carefully crafted with all kinds of piping so that once a fire was kindled underneath it and the person locked inside started boiling alive, the screams this person would produce would sound like a bull, to entertain everyone around. Oh I know all about the Braising Bull. I was referring to the Assyrian practice of hammering a big stake up a lubed butthole and hoping it just rearranged the victims innards, so they died super slowly. That's some next level poo poo
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Dec 12, 2014 17:13
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I might be the only ill informed person in this thread, but the wikipedia list of Guantanamo detainees horrified me with how wide spread the complete incompetence was of all those involved with this operation. I'd like to share this with you all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees Some choice quotes: Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif: Arrested in 2002 while travelling from Yemen to Afghanistan to find medical care for ongoing neurologic issues resulting from a 1994 car crash because he was too poor to pay for it, cleared for release in 2006, 2008 and 2009 but held until 2012. During the three years in which {he} had been held in total isolation, {he} had been subjected repeatedly to stress positions, sleep deprivation, blaring music, and extremes of heat and cold during interrogations. Surely, these "temporary inconveniences" delivered to a man cleared for release did not do any permanent harm? Falkoff recalled, “he was the guy that we tried unsuccessfully to get medical records for, and a blanket and mattress, after we found him lying on the floor of our interview cell, weak and emaciated."Latif "would smear his excrement on himself, throw blood at his lawyers, and on at least one occasion was brought to meet his lawyer clad only in a padded green garment called a 'suicide smock' held together by Velcro." On September 10, 2012, Latif escaped Guantanamo by successfully committing suicide, after many previous unsuccessful attempts, including one attempt to bleed out after cutting a vein in is arm and hiding the pooling blood under the table of an interview room. As an alleged Muslim extremist cleared for release, what visions of the afterlife drove him to forsake US hospitality? The Prophet said, " -- whoever kills himself with an iron weapon, will be carrying that weapon in his hand and stabbing his abdomen with it in the (Hell) Fire wherein he will abide eternally forever." — Sahih al-Bukhari, 7:71:670 Shaker Aamer UK resident formerly living in London, former translator for the US army, in his spare time Aamer helped refugees find accommodation. Travelled to Afghanistan in 2001 to work in charity. Arrested in 2001 based on fabricated allegations made by another tortured CIA prisoner. Tortured by the US and MI5 and won a settlement for this in the UK. In 2007 the Bush administration acknowledges that they have no evidence against him. As of this writing, still in solitary isolation for 22 hours per day and slowly going mad. Has not seen his family in all these years, his youngest son (13 years old) has never seen his father. Muhammad Ismail Agha He was 12-13 years old in 2002 when he was sold to the US for $10 and sent to Guantanamo to be subjected to sleep deprivation and stress positions. Released in 2004 without charges. In the 10 months following his arrest, his parents were unaware he was still alive. Ali Abdullah Ahmed along with three other committed suicide after 4 years of captivity and force feeding. "I am informing you that I gave away the precious thing that I have in which it became very cheap, which is my own self, to lift up the oppression that is upon us through the American Government. I did not like the tube in my mouth, now go ahead and accept the rope in my neck." Ruhal Ahmed UK citizen. With his friends Ahmed in October 2001 travelled to Pakistan for a friend's wedding. While there, they went into Afghanistan and got caught when war broke out with US. Held in Guantanamo for two years, released without charges. There is no hope in Guantanamo. The only thing that goes through your mind day after day is how to get justice or how to kill yourself. It is the despair - not the thought of martyrdom - that consumes you there.” He went on, "A Saudi detainee in the cell in front of us had had enough. We could hear him rip up his sheets and tie it to the wire mesh roof of the cell. He jumped off his sink and tried to hang himself. We shouted to the military police and they came and saved him. Jamil el Banna British resident, arrested in Gambia in 2002 trying to set up an edible oil factory. Jamil el-Banna said that he was offered $10 million, and a US passport by US agents, if he would testify against Abu Qatada. According to The Times, he said: "When he refused, an interrogator told him: 'I am going to London . . . I am going to gently caress your wife. Your wife is going to be my bitch. Maybe you’ll never see your children again.'" Released in 2007, charges for a possible connections to the Madrid bombings based on confessions were dropped by the Spanish courts based on the claim that the confessions were false and were the result of abusive interrogation techniques. Juma al-Dossary Held for five years, released without charges. Made a mistake of impersonating a female officer, which, according to his fellow prisoners resulted in: When Jumah saw them coming he realized something was wrong and was lying on the floor with his head in his hands. If you’re on the floor with your hands on your head, then you would hope that all they would do would be to come in and put the chains on you. That is what they’re supposed to do. The first man is meant to go in with a shield. On this occasion the man with the shield threw the shield away, took his helmet off, when the door was unlocked ran in and did a knee drop onto Jumah's back just between his shoulder blades with his full weight. He must have been about 240 pounds in weight. His name was Smith. He was a sergeant E5. Once he had done that the others came in and were punching and kicking Jumah… Jumah had had an operation and had metal rods in his stomach clamped together in the operation… [Smith] grabbed his head with one hand and with the other hand punched him repeatedly in the face. His nose was broken. He pushed his face and he smashed it into the concrete floor. All of this should be on video. There was blood everywhere. When they took him out they hosed the cell down and the water ran red with blood. We all saw it There are so many more clearly ridiculous cases that it staggers belief. As a more light-hearted example, the main or partial evidence for the detention and abuse for 5 of the detainees listed is their choice of watch: the Casio F91W. Wearing this piece of traditional Muslim extremist garment, comparable to the hachimaki worn by kamikaze pilots, is deemed damming evidence of bomb-maker aspirations. In over 50 detainee reports the watch is put forth as evidence. Completely unrelated, it is also one of the most popular watches world wide, my sister owned one. Two of my colleagues own one and 5 chaplains in Guantanamo also own one. The I in CIA stands for intelligence.
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Dec 12, 2014 17:14
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Dahn posted:CIA was not prepared to torture people for information. (probably because it doesn't work) Yeah this makes me wonder. I was led to understand that during the cold war we had combinations of psychological preparation and drugs that would get anything we wanted out of a person without having to resort to anything like butt hummus and small boxes. Maybe that stuff is passe and we wanted the "new" and "hip" torture?
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Dec 12, 2014 17:15
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spacetoaster posted:Yeah this makes me wonder. I was led to understand that during the cold war we had combinations of psychological preparation and drugs that would get anything we wanted out of a person without having to resort to anything like butt hummus and small boxes. I think that someone at the CIA watched too much 24, and then was surprised when torture, which had already been proven useless, was not working. They stepped up the torture hoping to get results, but none came.
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Dec 12, 2014 17:21
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spacetoaster posted:Yeah this makes me wonder. I was led to understand that during the cold war we had combinations of psychological preparation and drugs that would get anything we wanted out of a person without having to resort to anything like butt hummus and small boxes. Reminder that this is not new information, even the loving Nazis knew it.
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Dec 12, 2014 17:27
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hobbesmaster posted:No. As horrific as it is we "only" tortured about a hundred people. An issue I have with these revelations is that we only tortured about a hundred detainees under this specific CIA program. In my opinion a big problem is that the report explicitly does not cover any CIA detainee who is later transferred into any separate organization's custody, such as Libya under Qaddafi, pre-civil war Syria, Egypt pre(and post?)-Muslim Brotherhood, Somalia(as we learned just the other day), etc etc. I believe this became a normal practice as the vast majority of the report's detainees were through 2003, and all but 6 through 2004. With our recent revelations that our Somali program is in full swing I'm afraid for how many people we are actually torturing. Justice Department legal council posted:The Convention only applies when you know a suspect is more likely than not to be tortured, but what if you kind of know? That’s not enough. So there are ways to get around it. öld CIA officer quote" posted:If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt. Recent news video about our Somali site old New Yorker story posted:These men were bound, blindfolded, and taken to an abandoned airbase, then flown by jet to Cairo for interrogation. Attiya later alleged that he suffered electrical shocks to his genitals, was hung from his limbs, and was kept in a cell in filthy water up to his knees. Two other suspects, who had been sentenced to death, were hanged. quote:Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, told me that “the U.S. accepts quite a lot of intelligence from the Uzbeks” that has been extracted from suspects who have been tortured. This information was, he said, “largely rubbish.” He said he knew of “at least three” instances where the U.S. had rendered suspected militants from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan. Although Murray does not know the fate of the three men, he said, “They almost certainly would have been tortured.” In Uzbekistan, he said, “partial boiling of a hand or an arm is quite common.” He also knew of two cases in which prisoners had been boiled to death. quote:Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born citizen of Australia, was apprehended in Pakistan in October, 2001. According to his wife, Habib, a radical Muslim with four children, was visiting the country to tour religious schools and determine if his family should move to Pakistan. A spokesman at the Pentagon has claimed that Habib—who has expressed support for Islamist causes—spent most of his trip in Afghanistan, and was “either supporting hostile forces or on the battlefield fighting illegally against the U.S.” Last month, after a three-year ordeal, Habib was released without charges. treasured8elief fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 17:28
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spacetoaster posted:Yeah this makes me wonder. I was led to understand that during the cold war we had combinations of psychological preparation and drugs that would get anything we wanted out of a person without having to resort to anything like butt hummus and small boxes. Yeah, those were also massive boondoggles in bad psychology. The CIA has a history of this kinda thing.
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Dec 12, 2014 19:46
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IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:[i]Jamil el-Banna said that he was offered $10 million, and a US passport by US agents, if he would testify against Abu Qatada. You really, truly have to gently caress up if you get to a place where this kind of offer is thrown back in your face. That kind of deal would make most free people swear on a stack of The God Delusions that they heard Elvis admit to the Kennedy assassination, but this dude was so hosed over he just told them to get hosed. Either he already knew it was bullshit or he was so pissed he was willing to spite them. It's not like bribes don't work, they are a staple of the field, just make sure your people are comfortable and they will do what you ask. loving Christ.
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Dec 12, 2014 20:49
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He probably had no confidence they would follow through with the offer.
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Dec 12, 2014 21:03
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spacetoaster posted:Yeah this makes me wonder. I was led to understand that during the cold war we had combinations of psychological preparation and drugs that would get anything we wanted out of a person without having to resort to anything like butt hummus and small boxes. The only thing CIA managed to do with those drugs was to make people commit suicide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Olson
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Dec 12, 2014 21:10
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TACD posted:Is it safe to say at this point that the US has the most well-funded and expansive torture program that has ever existed? Well funded, yes. Expansive? Let me tell you about a humble Haitian man by the name of Papa Doc. e: Or Stalin, for that matter. I mean it's degrees of horribleness, but hey.
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Dec 12, 2014 21:28
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spacetoaster posted:Yeah this makes me wonder. I was led to understand that during the cold war we had combinations of psychological preparation and drugs that would get anything we wanted out of a person without having to resort to anything like butt hummus and small boxes. It's because it wasn't to extract information, it was to abuse prisoners.
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Dec 12, 2014 21:30
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So what interrogation methods are actually effective for extracting information, if I may ask?
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Dec 12, 2014 21:49
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Darth Walrus posted:So what interrogation methods are actually effective for extracting information, if I may ask? As mentioned above, rapport-building and conversational sleight-of-hand (cold reading, etc.).
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Dec 12, 2014 21:55
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Darth Walrus posted:So what interrogation methods are actually effective for extracting information, if I may ask? There's more but here's what I know about : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_2-22.3_Human_Intelligence_Collector_Operations#Interrogation_methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique And for good measured, an article about this kind of thing: "We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture." Edit: Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7pkFNEg5c Accretionist fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 21:56
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Vermain posted:As mentioned above, rapport-building and conversational sleight-of-hand (cold reading, etc.). Like with this: quote:Jamil el-Banna said that he was offered $10 million, and a US passport by US agents, if he would testify against Abu Qatada. fade5 fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 22:00
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Good piece on NPR about media changing people's views of torture: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/12/37034...tm_content=2038
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Dec 12, 2014 22:13
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CommieGIR posted:Good piece on NPR about media changing people's views of torture: I hope now, more than ever, that Amnesty International is still writing letters to companies depicting torture in media as something other than a negative. (Even though it doesn't seem like anyone cares)
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Dec 12, 2014 22:24
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fade5 posted:I mean $10 million and a US passport pretty much guarantees you're set for the rest of your life if you don't go insane with spending money. Ron Popeil it into some boring mutual funds and you're looking at 2% to 3% per year in straight up distributions, which for $10m is $200,000 to $300,000. He turned down becoming an American 1%-er. I agree, I can't imagine he thought they were good for it.
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Dec 12, 2014 22:32
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yes, but mostly because of solitary confinement in us prisons. This is what frustrates me most about the report. It sounds like a collection of cases from a state prison system.
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Dec 12, 2014 22:41
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Trabisnikof posted:This is what frustrates me most about the report. It sounds like a collection of cases from a state prison system. Hey when our state prisons leave people in a box to die of exposure it is from heat not from freezing 
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Dec 12, 2014 22:44
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Missed in all of this discussion, of course, is the topic of "butt hummus" and my request thereof for my user name.
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Dec 13, 2014 00:01
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I missed most of this. no chance of anything happening? how about sanctions, anything there? no? alright then 
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Dec 13, 2014 07:02
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Fantastic_Mr_Fox posted:I missed most of this. no chance of anything happening? how about sanctions, anything there? no? alright then Well one guy got charged over it, but if you've been following Obama you can guess it was a whistleblower. Obama is a really loving bad president. I'd rate him worse than Bush just because Bush has the IQ of a 9 year old and just wants to be a cowboy, whereas Obama is using his knowledge of constitutional law almost exclusively to justify US war crimes and give them legal precedent. I should thank him for disillusioning me about politicians in time for me to not support the Lib Dems in the UK, but even if I had at worst I'd be supporting some dumb charlatans helping the Tories purposefully wreck our economy. At least Nick Clegg isn't assassinating hundreds of children in allied states via robot. ... As far as I know anyway. E: Probably still be better than Hillary though, assuming the Republicans keep fielding unelectable candidates. Communist Thoughts fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 08:29
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Orange Devil posted:This isn't entirely true. There are cases of Germans refusing orders on ethical grounds and most of the time the reaction was to just get someone else to do it instead. There was iirc only one or 2 cases where getting shot for refusing that kind of order happened, and these are contentious. The situation may have been different for non Germans und German command.
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Dec 13, 2014 10:32
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Fantastic_Mr_Fox posted:I missed most of this. no chance of anything happening? how about sanctions, anything there? no? alright then Expecting anything to happen is pretty foolish. Hell, the CIA (and the Australian Army's Vietnamese unit) tortured 40,000 people to death in Vietnam during the war and you don't see anybody giving two shits about that. By comparison they treated the prisoners under the Bush program with kid gloves. Party Plane Jones fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Dec 13, 2014 |
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Dec 13, 2014 11:50
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Fantastic_Mr_Fox posted:I missed most of this. no chance of anything happening? how about sanctions, anything there? no? alright then nopantsjack posted:Well one guy got charged over it, but if you've been following Obama you can guess it was a whistleblower. He's actually not though. I could easily name like 10 American presidents who are worse by almost any metric. He's pretty average.
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