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Today's
Stories
April 13,
2007
George Ciccarriello-Maher
The
Failed Chåvez Coup: Five Years On
April 12,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
We
May be Rid of Imus, But We're Still Stuck with the Culture
Paul Craig
Roberts
Big Profits from Big Brother
Marjorie Cohn
U.S. Attorneys and Voting Rights
Evelyn Pringle
Bush Family War Profiteering: Will Congress Finally Cut Them
Off?
Ron Jacobs
God
Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut
Norman Solomon
The Awful Truth About Hillary, Barack and John
Joe DeRaymond
The Release of Dennis Counterman: The Justice Game, the Alford
Plea and Death Row
Nicola Nasser
Squeezing Palestinians into an Impossible Mission
Nikolas Kozloff
Chile, a Country Geographically Located in South America "By
Accident"
William S.
Lind
Horatio Hornblower's Worst Nightmare
Siegfried L. Sassoon
A Statement Against the Continuation of the War
Website of
the Day
Where
You Want This Killin' Done?
April 11, 2007
R. T. Naylor
Quebec's
Lessons for the US: How "Wars on Terror" Should be
Fought
Vijay Prashad
The
Generation of IEDs and iPods
Patrick Cockburn
The Myth of Tal Afar
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Will the War Money Really Run Out?
Jack Balkwill
Prison for a Peacemaker: A Vietnam Vet Interviews Kathy Kelly
Alan Farago
Florida's Fundamentally Weak Environmental Movement
Russell D.
Hoffman
The Carbon Offset Tax is Just Another Nuke Bailout
Peter Rost, MD
The Fine Print on Drug Industry Kickbacks
Mike Whitney
Doomsday for the Greenback?
Dave Lindorff
Torture and Selective Outrage
Susie Day
Peter Pace Porks a Peck of Pinko Perverts
Website of the Day
Save the Internet!
April 10,
2007
James G. Abourezk
How
Syria Helped the US in the "War on Terror"--and How
Bush Said "Thanks"
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
Why Imus Should be Fired--And Why He Won't Be
Joshua Frank
Democrats for War
Lee Sustar
How Concessions by UAW Lost Jobs
Joseph Grosso
Tiger Woods in Dubai: Luxury and Exploitation
Nirmal Ghosh
China and the Fate of the Tiger
Robert Jensen
Impeach the System
Ramzy Baroud
Not an Intellectual Squabble
Paul Rockwell
History Will Vindicate Lt. Ehren Watada
Mario Joseph
and
Brian Concannon
Solidaridad? Chávez in Haiti
Fred Wilhelms
Why the New Royalty Rates Hurt Artists
Website of
the Day
Thaw!
April 9,
2007
Saul Landau
Whining
Imperialists
Uri Avnery
Shalom, Shin Bet
Nicole Colson
Sami Al-Arian's Nightmare: an Interview with Nahla Al-Arian
Gideon Levy
Israel Does Not Want Peace
Corporate Crime Reporter
Big Coal Invokes Reverse Nuremberg Defense
Evelyn Pringle
The Surge in Casualties
Hill Kemp
Mega Lessons from Iraq War, Year 5
Martha Rosenberg
Monsanto's
Desperate Plea: "Regulate Our Competitors!"
Keith Rosenthal
Behind Boston's Recent "Crime Wave"
Jane Stillwater
Green Zone Cabin Fever
Website of the Day
Support Norman Finkelstein
April 7 / 8, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Dead
Dogs Don't Bleed: How Giuliani Lost America
Sara Roy
A Jewish Plea
Arno J. Mayer
Back to Cleopatra's Nose: Bush-Bashing and Empire's Onward March
Jeffrey St.
Clair
In the Realm of the Grizzly Kings
Vicente Navarro
Why Huntington and Beck Are Wrong
Fidel Castro
Where Have All the Bees Gone? And Other Reflections on the Internationalizaton
of Genocide
Fred Gardner
Medical News from the Business Pages
Ralph Nader
The IRS Owes You Money
David N. Rahni
Test Tube Zealots: American Chemical Society Purges Iranian Chemists
Arthur Neslen
When an Anti-Semite is Not an Anti-Semite
Pratyush Chandra
Joseph Stiglitz's "Another World"
Missy Beattie
Enough Already! The Politics of Exasperation
Marc Levy
A Beginner's Guide to Combat
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Holt, Orloski and Louise
Website of the Weekend
Reactor Man
April 6,
2007
Franklin Lamb
Why
is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?
Gloria La Riva
On the Case of the Cuban Five and Luis Posada Carriles
Corporate Crime Reporter
The Politics of Coal in West Virginia
Ron Jacobs
Good Friday, Beethoven and Patti Smith
Felice Pace
Simon Says: The Pro-Israel Bias of NPR
Walter Brasch
Treason in the White House?
David Swanson
Heroes, Sung and Unsung
Sylvia Syracuse
Roadside Rampage: Salvadoran Murders in Guatemala
April 5, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
A
De Facto Hostage Exchange
Tom Barry
The Fred Thompson Factor
Richard W. Behan
Congressional Complicity
Nicola Nasser
Playing US Politics with Iraqi Blood for Oil
Bernadine Dohrn
The New and Old SDS: Convergence Not Division
Laray Polk
Lucky Dragon: Does the World Really Need a New H-Bomb?
Helen Redmond
Female Chauvinist Pigs?
April 4,
2007
Col. Dan Smith
"Have
You No Sense of Decency?": the Tillman Affair and the Moral
Decay of the Army
Joshua Frank
Democratic
Blood Money: Sen. Feinstein's War Profiteering
Margaret Kimberly
Of Confessions and Torture
Sharon Smith
Circuit City's Guinea Pigs: the Latest Trend in Corporate America
Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV
Martin Luther
King,Jr.
Beyond
Vietnam
Bill Quigley
Incident at Fort Huachuca, the Army's Torture Training Center
Dave Zirin
Picking Chicago's Pockets with the Olympics
Evelyn Pringle
Drug Companies Want Women of Childrearing Years
Peter Rost,
MD
Pfizer's Puny Fine
Website of the Day
Crash of the Honey Bees
April 3,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
US's
Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted hostage Taking
Marjorie Cohn
Coming Up Short on Habeas Corpus for Gitmo Detainees
Brian M. Downing
The Army's Road to Iraq
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Coddling
Pfizer: Praise the Criminal, Dis the Whistleblower
Carol Norris
A Psychologist on Sexual Assault: Yes, Virginia, There is a Sollution
Ralph Nader
Tailpipe Blues
Dave Lindorff
I Quit: A Movement of One (Or a Maybe a Million)
Scott Bontz
The Great Depletion
Thomas Dolby
Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Racism and the National Anthem
Website of
the Day
Cockburn on BookTV
April 2, 2007
Gary Leupp
A
Bogus Hostage Crisis
Uri Avnery
Condi
in the Middle East: Olmert and the Pussycat
James Petras
Palestine: The Political Economy of a Disaster
Norman Solomon
McCain in Baghdad: Walking in McNamara's Footsteps
Robert Fisk
War of Humiliation
Stanley Heller
A Neocon Looks Two Conquests Ahead: The Ravings of James Woolsey
Sherwood Ross
How the Pentagon Cheats Iraq Vets Out of Medical Care and Disability
Pay
Monica Benderman
On Keeping Men Alive: Report from Ft. Stewart
Stephen Fleischman
Winners and Losers in a Dog-Eat-Dog System
Anne McElroy
Dachel
Never Mind the Mercury
Website of the Day
Midwestern Common Sense on the War
March 31 / April 1, 2007
Cockburn /
St. Clair
That
Was an Antiwar Vote?
Fred Gardner
How Corrupt is Malcolm Gladwell? Shilling for Enron and Breast
Cancer
Greg Moses
The Pirates of Homeland Security
Gary Leupp
300 vs. Iran (and Herodotus)
Robert Fisk
Shakespeare and War
Roger Morris
The Politics of the Witch Hunt
Conn Hallinan
The Price of Fire: Oil, Water and Resistance in Bolivia
Kristin J.
Anderson
A Protocol for Death
Jason Hribal
California's Most Unhappy Cows
John Ross
Strange Fruit Down South
Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Politics of Falsehoods: If You're Going to Lie,
Lie Big
David Underhill
War Breeds Stranger Bedfellows
Elizabeth Schulte
The Pentagon's "Don't Ask" Disaster
Ben Terrall
Time for Lula to Stop Doing Bush's Dirty Work in Haiti
Missy Beattie
Guess Who Isn't Coming to Dinner: The Story of King Abdullah
and the O-Word
Sonja Karkar
How Palestine Became Israel's Land
Daniel Wolff
Have You Heard the News?
David Vest
A Romanian Jazz Rebel Drops a Bomb on Paris
Ron Jacobs
Wynton Marsalis Checks In on the Land That Never Has Been Yet
Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Wigley and Landau
Website of the Weekend
Kansas City Rocks
March 30, 2007
Alan Maass
Oil
and the Empire
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
A Memo on Iran: Brinksmanship in Uncharted Waters
Richard W. Behan
George Bush's Land Mine: If Iraqis Get Revenue Sharing, Exxon
Gets Their Oil
Gabriel Kolko
Israel's Last Chance
William S. Lind
Operation Anabasis
Stedjan / Weis
The Cluster Bomb Treaty: Again, It's the US vs. the World
Kevin Zeese
Is Bush Lame or Is Congress?
David Busch
Homeless in LA
Fidel Castro
Biofuels and Global Hunger
CounterPunch
News Service
Mistrial in Olympia 15 Case
Website of the Day
Free Shaquanda Cotton
March 29, 2007
Saul Landau
Comparing
Padillas
Patrick Cockburn
When Iraqi Cops Go on a Rampage
Dave Lindorff
War and the Futures Market: Oil Traders Fear an Attack on Iran
Arthur Neslen
Normalizing Injustice: Jaffa's Ugly Truth
Michael Dickinson
Incident at Westminster Abbey
Ingmar Lee
Plantskyyd: Planting Trees with Pig's Blood in British Columbia
Aseem Shrivastava
As India Goes Global, the Public Goes Private
Marlene Martin
Sacco and Vanzetti, Revisited
Mahmoud El-Yousseph
Wake Up, You Live in America!
Michael Foley
A Citizen's Peace Lobby
Website of the Day
Impeach Bush Club Parade
March 28,
2007
Nicole Colson
The
Ongoing Persecution of Sami Al-Arian
Harry Clark
Michigan Peaceworks on Palestine
Larry Everest
Another $100 Billion to Continue the War
Jonathan M.
Feldman
Citigroup,
Property and Theft
Dave Zirin
Yet Another Book on Muhammad Ali (and Why I Wrote It)
Jane Stillwater
How Runaway Inflation Has Slipped Under the Radar
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Pakistan's Cry for Justice
Jim Wilfong
Who Owns Maine's Water?
Hawra Karama
An Open Letter to Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi Uncle Tom
Website of
the Day
Free Fire on Iraqi Civilians
March 27, 2007
Iain Boal /
Standard Schaefer
British
Petroleum and the New Greenmail
Patrick Cockburn
The Hostage Game
Monica Benderman
On Ending War: Is America Ready for the Troops When They Come
Home?
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Political
Players and Single Payer
Joshua Frank
Dems in Power: Broken Promises and Bald-Faced Lies
Harvey Wasserman
Will Al Gore Deliver Us to Solartopia?
Sen. Russell Feingold
FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act
Tillman Family
Crimes and Cover Ups are Not "Missteps"
Patrick Bond
Zimbabwe's Descent
David Judd
Arbitrary Discipline at Columbia
Website of the Day
Why Work?
March 26, 2007
Patrick Cockburn
Seven
Days on Iraq's Cruel Roads
Uri Avnery
Schoolbooks and Borders
Greg Moses
Hothouses for Hapless Masses on the Rio Grande
Bill Hatch
A Plague of Big Shots
John V. Walsh
The Democrats' War Funding Debacle
Diane Christian
God Does Not Love the Aggressor
Dan La Botz
The Immigration Movement at a Crossroads
Frederico Fuentes
Latin America Tells Bush to "Get Out!"
Sunsara Taylor
Democrats' Victory Means More Iraqi Deaths
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman: Beyond the Hype
Website of the Day
DynCorp's Iraq Training Policy
March 24 / 25, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Where
are the Laptop Bombardiers Now?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Nuclear Saviors?: Kyoto, Gore and the Atomic Lobby
David Rosen
An American Obituary: Anna Nicole Smith and the Exploitation
of Nature
Ron Jacobs
The Political History of the Car Bomb
Robert Fantina
Vietnam and Iraq, the Rhetoric Remains the Same
Alan Maass
Why Ralph Nader Took a Stand
Atul Gawande
On Washing Hands: A Surgeon's Notes on How Infections Spread
in Hospitals
Marianne McDonald
Staging
Anti-Colonial Protest
China Hand
Zealots Scheme to Derail North Korea Accord
Kaz Dziamka
The Iroquois Way of Impeachment
Andrew Wimmer
The Nursemaid's Tale
Don Monkerud
World's Biggest Debtor Nation
Anthony Papa
Bong Hits 4 Jesus Case
Matthew Provonsha
Return of the Black Bloc
Missy Beattie
Calling Youth and Young Adults
Stephen Fleischman
Confrontation, At Last
Poets' Basement
Newberry, Laymon, Harley and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
An Interview with Ron Jacobs
Song of the Weekend
"Who Would Jesus Bomb?"
March 23,
2007
Saul Landau
Return
to Syria
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Ban
Greg Moses
Protesting Immigrant Prisons in the Rio Grande Valley
Rep. Ron Paul
The War Funding Bill
Franklin Lamb
Will Hezbollah Hand Israel Its 6th Defeat?
Stephen Gowans
Mugabe Gets the Milosevic Treatment
Roger Burbach
Leftist Victory in Ecuador
Dave Lindorff
The Gutless Mini-Politics of the Congressional Democrats
William S. Lind
Candles in the Hurricane
Alan Mammoser
The New Rules of Food
Russell Hoffman
Al Gore's Nose is Glowing
Website of
the Day
Global Outsourcing and the US Working Class
March 22,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Oil-Rich
Kirkuk at the Melting Point
Robin Blackburn
Toxic
Waste in the Sub-Prime Market
Michael Donnelly
Mr. Green Goes to Washington: Another Oscar Performance from
Al Gore
Uzma Aslam
Khan
Down Pakistan's No-Constitution Avenue
Lee Sustar
Bush's Braceros: The Ugly Truth About the Guest Worker Program
Robert D. Skeels
LA's Vicious War on the Homeless
Rev. William Alberts
The Forbidden C-Word
Anne McElroy
Dachel
The Search for the Elusive Autism Gene
Mickey Z.
This is Your Brain on Meat
Website of
the Day
Raimondo Does Hitchens
March 21, 2007
Tao Ruspoli
A
Conversation with Robbie Conal
James Petras
Meet
the Global Ruling Class
Fred Gardner
A U.S. Army Pipe Dream
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Cramer Comes Clean: Lies, Market Manipulation and Wall Street
Faisal Kutty
Too Guilty to Fly, Too Innocent to Charge?
Robert Fantina
U.S. Imperialism in Action
Isabella Kenfield and Roger
Burbach
Brazilian Opposition to Bush-Lula Ethanol Accords
Lucinda Marshall
Missing in Action: Why is the Peace Movement Ignoring the Impact
of War on Women?
Winslow Wheeler
Dem Budget Tricks: Reform Means What We Say It Means!
Website of
the Day
Student Day of Action Against the War
March 20,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq
is a Vast, Blood-Drenched Human Disaster
Winslow T.
Wheeler
The Blank Check War
Sharon Smith
Hillary's Cojones: Our Bleached-Blond Thatcher?
Uri Avnery
The New Palestinian Unity Government
Stan Cox
Down-to-a-Trickle Economics
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Hating the Rich
Alan Farago
Why Al Gore Soft-Peddled the Environment in 2000
Richard W.
Behan
Impeachment and Patriotism
Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On
David Krieger
The Treaty of Tlatelolco
Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to Pfizer's CEO: $11 Million Salary, 36% Raise,
10,000 Fired Employees
Mickey Z.
A Cat-Eat-Cat World: Beyond the Pet Food Recall
Website of
the Day
Bringing the War Home
Webclip of
the Day
Sunsara Taylor Beats O'Reilly, Again
March 19,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Crime
Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Patrick Cockburn
Operation
Deepening Nightmare
Stauber / Rampton
Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?
Werther
Plame Wars: Valerie Plame, the Washington Post and the Ghost
of Joe McCarthy
Noam Chomsky
In Memory of Tanya Reinhart
Jeff Leys
Tap Dancing on Graves: How Democrats Bought the War
Richard May
And Then There Were None: Europe's Afghan Backlash
Ron Jacobs
Lessons of the Antiwar Movement and the Washington Post's Lessons
of the Iraq War
Mike Whitney
Rove in the Dock
Website of
the Day
Ringtones That Roar
March 17
/ 18, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Here
Comes Another "Crime Wave"
John Scagliotti
A Sissy's Manifesto
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Green Imposter: When Al Gore Was Veep
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Confession Backfired
Greg Moses
Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso
Harry Clark
Thrice-Told Tales: Those Israel-Syria Peace Talks
Brian Cloughley
In the Name of Improving People's Lives: Mounting Civilian Deaths
in Afghanistan and Iraq
Mehran Ghassemi
An Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh on the US, Israel and Iran
William Loren Katz
A Disturbing Expulsion: Racism and the Cherokee Nation
John Ross
Being a Zapatista Where You Live
Ralph Nader
Ban the Bomblets!
Walter Brasch
An Intolerant Minority: the Witch Hunt Against Gays in the Military
Samer Assad
The Palestinian Unity Government: Another for US Diplomacy
Dave Zirin
Bowie Kuhn: Death of a Baseball Reactionary
Ron Jacobs
The Darker Nation's: Remembering and Re-examining the Third World
Missy Beattie
No to War and Pace
Don Santina
First, They Came for the Democrats
Sami Adwan
What Hillary Should Know About Palestinian Schoolbooks
Dr. Susan Block
Gods of Spring: the Erotics of the Equinox
Poets' Basement
Reed, Landau, Engel, Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
God Save Helen Mirren
March 16,
2007
R. T. Naylor
The
Political Economy of Diamonds
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Last Days of Constitutional Rule
Joshua Frank
Obama's Israel Problem
Diane Farsetta
How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front
Groups
Tom Barry
Tancredo's Putsch: Anti-Immigrant Agenda Veers Hard Right
Stephen Lendman
Plays from a Political Fake Book: Congress's Phony Opposition
to War
Al Krebs
Compounding Infamy: Chiquita, Its Workers and Colombia's Death
Squads
Jackie Corr
Senator Schumer and the Corruption Culture
Ramzy Baroud
Palestinians Must Redefine Struggle
Reza Fiyouzat
The Chinese Way of Capitalism
Website of the Day
Introducing: the iRak
March 15,
2007
Alison Weir
Strip-Searching
Children at Israeli Checkpoints
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Under Surge
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo to Congressional Leaders on Iraq Funding: First Stop the
Bleeding
Franklin Spinney
Of Character and Contractors: the Unauthorized Rumsfeld
Standard Schaefer
Biofuels
and the Green Resistance
Conn Hallinan
The Right's Stuff in Africa: Neocons, Evangelicals and Sudan
Maureen Webb
Another Patriot Act Abuse
Sonja Karkar
Rachel Corrie and Palestine
Margaret Kimberly
The Profits of Self-Hatred: Malkin and D'Souza, Incorporated
Anthony Papa
The New Capones: It's Time to Rethink Drug Prohibition
Katherine Hancy
Wheeler Bush's
Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost
Video of the Day
The Easiest Targets
Website of
the Day
Memo to Kucinich: Watch Your Back!
March 14,
2007
Tao Ruspoli
A
Conversation with Peter Linebaugh on the Slave Trade, Magna Carta
and the State of the Left
Philip Agee
The
Decline of the US, the Rise of Latin America
Bruce Dixon
The Digital Redlining of African-Americans
John Walsh
How One Senator Could End the War
Sunsara Taylor
Red Light, Green Light: the Democrats and Iran
William Johnson
Still Reeling from Katrina: The Spirited Strike at Pascagoula
Shipyards
Richard Thieme
Entitlement and Empire
Jeffrey Klein
Right-Wing Academic Values
Nicola Nasser
This Time, Israeli is Missing an Historic Opportunity
Dave Lindorff
Political Hide-and-Seek with the Democrats
Website of
the Day
Oil Change
March 13,
2007
Catherine Wilkerson,
M.D.
Scenes
from a Cop Riot
Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Invastion of Lebanon
Robert Bryce
Beyond Redemption: the Legacy of George the Second
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Coal-Powered Democrats
Pierre Rimbert
Libération and the Evolution of French Neoliberalism
Dave Lindorff
What's Good for Halliburton is Good ... for Dubai
Elizabeth Schulte
The Repackaging of John Edwards
Norman Solomon
The Pragmatism of Prolonged War
Kevin Zeese
The Democrats' Fraudulent Iraq Exit Plan
Jeff Conant
Greeting Rumsfeld in Taos
Website of the Day
Tacoma and the Big Heat
March 12,
2007
Marjorie Cohn
Patriot
Act Unbound
Col. Dan Smith
Ghost Prisoners, Shadowy Jails and Secret Trials
Paul Craig Roberts
Neocons in Kafkaland
Ingmar Lee
The Sentencing of Betty Krawczyk: a 78-Year-Old Eco-Heroine
Fred Gardner
Cannabis for the Wounded: Another Walter Reed Scandal
Ron Jacobs
Showdown at Port Tacoma: Confronting the War Machine in the Northwest
Ralph Nader
Send the Bush Twins to Iraq!
John Ross
Political Prisoners in Calderon's Mexico
Stephen Fleischman
Bush's Latin American Slip
Eva Carazo Vargas
Why We Reject CAFTA
Website of
the Day
Mountain Justice Spring Break
March 9
/ 11, 2007
Sameer Dossani
Interview
with Noam Chomsky: War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st
Century
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Crude Alliance: The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil
Dave Marsh
Bono's Bullshit: Not One Red Cent
Patrick Cockburn
Shia Pilgrims Die Despite US Offensive
Jennifer Van Bergen
A Gonzo Argument: Alberto Gonzales's Defense of NSA Domestic
Spying
James P. Stevenson
Pardon Whom? Libby and the Cheney Unseen
Arthur J. Versluis
Crusade for Commercialism
Corporate Crime
Reporter
Not a Dime's Worth of Difference: Congress and Corporate Crime
Missy Beattie
Too Much Info, Newt!: Sex, God and Praying
Michael Simmons
Annie Get Your Gums: Why I Like Ann Coulter
Kevin Zeese
Making Democrats Pay the Price: Voting Against the War is No
Longer Enough
David Swanson
Shocking Video: The Dark Side of the Democrats
John A. Murphy
Are the Congressional Democrats Spineless?
Dave Lindorff
Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico: Abetted by
Democrats
Nikolas Kozloff
Lights! Camera! Chavez!
Christopher
Fons
Bush Goes to Latin America: Is It All About (N)PR?
Mike Roselle
A Thousand Miles of Bad River
Mike Mejia
Justice for Sibel Edmonds
Susie Day
Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran!
Michael Donnelly
LA Story: Rock Stars, Porn Stars and Peace
Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know (Parts 4 and 5)
Poets' Basement
Reed, Laymon, Mezmer and Harley
Website of the Weekend
Japanese Dolphin Massacre
March 8,
2007
Elaine Cassel
The
Tragic Case of Jose Padilla
Yifat Susskind
Iraq's Other War: Violence Against Women Under US Occupation
Corporate Crime Reporter
Politics and the Prosecutors
Col. Dan Smith
The Sins of Walter Reed
William S. Lind
The Washington Dodgers
Mark Engler
Bush's Latin American Spring Break
Roger Burbach
With Negroponte as Tour Director, Bush's Trip Destined to Fail
Dana Cloud
Return of the Campus Witch Hunts: David Horowitz and the Thought
Police
Isabella Kenfield
Brazil's Ethanol Pland: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental
Degradation
Lucinda Marshall
We Stand with the Women of the World
Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction (Part
3)
Website of
the Day
Filibuster for Peace
March 7, 2007
Christopher Ketcham
What Did Israel Know in Advance
of the 9/11 Attacks?
Christopher
Ketcham
The
Kuala Lumpur Deceit: a CIA Cover Up
Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey
St. Clair
Ketcham's Story: Coming in From the Cold
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Mismeasuring the Defense Budget
Sean Donahue
Free Scooter Libby!
Dave Lindorff
The Fall Guy Has Fallen
Evelyn Pringle
Psychosis and Mania: ADHD Drug Warnings Come Too Late for Many
Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction
Website of the Day
Debating Iraq: Gaffney Against the World!
March 6,
2007
Gary Leupp
Meet
Eliot Cohen: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It
Gets"
Uri Avnery
Esterina Tartman: The Big Mouth of Israeli Fascism
Patrick Cockburn
The War on Terror is a Bust: Bush is Now Al Qaeda's Top Recruiter
Saul Landau
World
in Crisis, Candidates in Denial
Corporate Crime Reporter
John Edwards' Big Lie
Ron Jacobs
The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong!
Mike Roselle
Judi Bari: Ten Years Gone
P. Sainath
Neoliberalism and the Ideology of the Cancer Cell
Joshua Frank
Dump the Dems, Unite Against the War
Aniket Alam
Women's Day, Lenin and a Riot in Copenhagen
Dave Zirin
Resurrecting Don Barksdale: Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer
Website of
the Day
Physicians for a National Health Program
March 5,
2007
Greg Moses
Holding
Suzi Hazahza for Profit
Patrick Cockburn
Exodus of Iraq's Ancient Minorities
James Petras
Bush vs. Chavez
Frida Berrigan
US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
Marjorie Cohn
Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial:
the Case of Augustín Aguayo
Douglas Kammen
and S.W. Hayati
The Rice Crisis in East Timor
Sen. Barack Obama
On Israel and AIPAC: "We Must Preserve Our Total Commitment
to Our Unique Defense Relationship with Israel"
Michael Young
Sy Hersh and Iran: the Dark Side of Spun a Lot?
Dave Lindorff
It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al
Sonja Karkar
Raiding Nablus: Israel's Hot Winter Offensive
Website of the Day
How Obama Learned to Love Israel
March 3
/ 4, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
The
Persecution of Sami Al-Arian
Corporate Crime
Reporter
"No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim
Bias
Jeffrey St. Clair
Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite
Patrick Cockburn
War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply
Ralph Nader
Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America
M. Shahid Alam
American Mamlukes
Gilad Atzmon
From Esther to AIPAC
Fred Gardner
It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela
Rock &
Rap Confidential
Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively
for Blacks"
Gillian Russom
The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo
Michael McPhearson
My Small Act of Civil Disobedience
Kevin Zeese
The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom?
Sunsara Taylor
Four Years of an Unjust War
Wendy Thompson
Re-Organizing the UAW
Kenneth Rexroth
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"
Missy Beattie
Regarding Cheney
Don Monkerud
Jesus Turned Away at US Border
Tina Louise
Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams
Poets' Basement
Richards, Landau and Davies
Website of the Weekend
John Prine: Flag Decal
March 2,
2007
Roger Morris
Cheney's
Bagram Ghosts
Phil Gasper
Prisoners of Ideology
Mike Roselle
Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone
Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scam
John V. Walsh
Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the
War
Sherwood Ross
Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget
China Hand
Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb?
David Rosen
To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America
Chris Genovali
Connecting the Dots
Peter Harley
The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela
Website of the Day
Courage to Resist
March 1,
2007
Laura Carlsen
Return
to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men
Ray McGovern
How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows?
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Theater of the Absurd
Najum Mustaq
America's Musharraf Dilemma
Brent Bowden
The War on Terror and the Terror of War
Tina Richards
Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds
Ethan Nadelman
Mexico and the Drug War
Mike Stark
"Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution
Wadner Pierre
/ Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN
Mike Whitney
Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan
Website of
the Day
Dylan Hears a Who
|
April
13, 2007
Psychology and
Coercive Interrogations in Historical Perspective
Aid
and Comfort for Torturers
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
On January 24, 2003, National Guardsman
Sean Baker, stationed as a military policeman at Guantanamo detention
center, volunteered to be a mock prisoner, donning an orange
suit and refusing to leave his cell as part of a training exercise.
As planned, an Immediate Reaction Force team of MPs attempted
to extract him from the cell. When he uttered the code word,
"red," indicating that this was a drill and that he'd
had enough, one of the MPs "forced my head down against
the steel floor and was sort of just grinding it into the floor.
The individual then, when I picked up my head and said, 'Red,'
slammed my head down against the floor," says Baker. "I
was so afraid, I groaned out, 'I'm a U.S. soldier.' And when
I said that, he slammed my head again, one more time against
the floor. And I groaned out one more time, I said, 'I'm a U.S.
soldier.' And I heard them say, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa,' ". Even
though, unlike if Baker had been a real prisoner, the "extraction"
was called off part-way through, he was diagnosed with traumatic
brain injury and was left with permanent injuries, including
frequent epileptic-style seizures.
When asked what would have
happened if he had been a real detainee, Baker told CBS's 60
Minutes: "I think they would have busted him up. I've
seen detainees come outta there with blood on 'em. If there wasn't
someone to say, 'I'm a U.S. soldier,' if you were speaking Arabic
or Pashto or Urdu or some other language in the camp, we may
never know what would have happened to that individual."
This detention facility is
one of the environments in which psychologists serve as consultants
to interrogations. The American Psychological Association sees
no ethical problems with psychologists serving there.
We psychoanalysts know that
understanding requires a historical perspective. The abuses being
perpetrated on America's detainees in the War of Terror, and
psychologists' roles in those abuses have a long history.
About 60 years ago, as the
Cold War shifted into high gear, people in the American government,
most notably the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), became concerned
that the Communist enemies had developed specialized techniques
for mind control. They observed senior Soviet officials and others
confessing to crimes they likely had not committed. They were
shocked by the number of American Korean War soldiers who collaborated
with their captors and denounced the United States. At first
defensively, and then as an offensive tool, the CIA undertook
what became a 25-year program of research into mind control techniques
under a variety of names, including, most notoriously MKULTRA.
While time precludes an extensive review of this program, [the
December 1977 APA Monitor contains an account of some
of these activities] two components are of special relevance
to today's topic. 1) For years the Agency, as the CIA is known,
searched for a magic "truth serum" that would allow
them to get captives to reveal their secrets; and 2) the CIA
and the military funded extensive research into potentially effective
interrogation techniques, including the possible use of hypnosis,
of drugs, of isolation and extreme sensory deprivation, of brain
stimulation, etc..
Some of the knowledge developed
during MKULTRA and related programs were incorporated into the
CIA's KUBARK interrogation Manual in 1963. Similar techniques
were contained in CIA training manuals distributed throughout
Latin America in the 1970's and 80's. The only one of these manuals
which became public is one used to train in Honduras in 1983,
as was revealed in a January 1997 Baltimore Sun article
entitled: "Torture was taught by CIA; Declassified manual
details the methods used in Honduras; Agency denials refuted"
The manual advises an interrogator
to "manipulate the subject's environment, to create unpleasant
or intolerable situations."
From this Baltimore Sun article:
""While we do not stress the use of coercive
techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper
way to use them," the manual's introduction states. The
manual says such methods are justified when subjects have been
trained to resist noncoercive measures.
Forms of coercion explained
in the interrogation manual include: Inflicting pain or the threat
of pain: "The threat to inflict pain may trigger fears more
damaging than the immediate sensation of pain. In fact, most
people underestimate their capacity to withstand pain."
A later section states: "The
pain which is being inflicted upon him from outside himself may
actually intensify his will to resist. On the other hand, pain
which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to
sap his resistance. "
Those who have examined practices
at US detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo
have identified, as a 2005 126 page report from Physicians for
Human Rights entitled Break Them Down describes in its
subtitle: "Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US
Forces."
The practice of Psychological
Torture in US facilities includes:
Prolonged Isolation for months, even years.
Sleep Deprivation, sometimes allowing as little as two
hours a night, for prolonged periods
Sensory Distortion including sensory deprivation (masks,
goggles, etc.), very loud music; and hypothermia (turning air
conditioning on high)
Sexual and Cultural Humiliation -- forced urination on self; forced
nakedness; sexual humiliation; religious humiliation (Koran's
being thrown around); being led naked on a leash. Being forced
to bark like a dog. [As regards religious humiliation, former
Guantanamo Chaplain James Yee was quoted as stating in a recent
lecture: " 'Guantanamo Bay's secret weapon,' is
'the use of Islam against prisoners to break them.' He said prisoners
were forced to prostrate in the center of a circle inscribed
with a pentagram by a guard who yelled, 'Satan is your God now,
not Allah.' He said female interrogators 'exploit(ed) conservative
Islamic etiquette" by undressing before interrogating detainees
and "giving lap dances" to unnerve them.
Yee said the Quran, believed
by Muslims to be the literal word of God, was 'desecrated in
many different ways,' such as being urinated upon and 'tossed
on the floor.' "]
These purely psychological
techniques are often combined with another component:
Self-inflicted pain--the infamous "stress positions",
including chaining in positions for hours on end and the infamous
Abu Ghraib picture of a detainee balancing on a box with arms
outstretched and electrodes attached (this technique is referred
to in the torture literature as the "Vietnam") [Remember,
from the Honduras interrogation manual: 'On the other hand, pain
which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to
sap his resistance.']
Additionally, there have been
repeated claims by detainees that they were subjected to drugging.
[Remember that developing drugs for use in interrogations was
a key element of the CIA's MKULTRA research.] Thus, as one example
out of many, on March 2, 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald
contained an account of Australian detainee David Hicks in US
custody. In addition to the beatings, the isolation, the cultural
assaults, the self-inflicted pain, there was this line: "He
was also injected with a substance that 'made my head feel strange.'
"
Many of these techniques, in
reduced form, were used in the military's SERE (Survival, Evasion,
Resistance, Escape) program to teach American officers counter-resistance
training. According to several journalists, these methods were
"reverse-engineered" and exported to Guantanamo and
elsewhere through training in SERE techniques. Thus Salon's
Mark Benjamin, in an article entitled "Torture Teachers"
documents that SERE techniques were indeed taught to interrogators
at Guantanamo. Benjamin goes on to state:
"There are striking similarities
between the reported detainee abuse at both Guantánamo
and Abu Ghraib and the techniques used on soldiers going through
SERE school, including forced nudity, stress positions, isolation,
sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and exhaustion from exercise.
The unnamed interrogation chief from Guantánamo notes
in his statement that on his watch detainees were exposed to
loud music and yelling. 'The rule on volume," he said, "was
that it should not be so loud that it would blow the detainees'
ears out.' The chief claimed interrogators would crank up the
air conditioning to make detainees cold, and that one prisoner
was also given a "lap dance" by a female interrogator
'to use sexual tension in an attempt to break a detainee.' "
While the role of psychologists
at Guantanamo and elsewhere is still murky, due to the extreme
secrecy surrounding it, more and more evidence is dribbling out.
It increasingly looks like key agents in this were psychologists
and, initially, psychiatrists, in so-called Behavioral Science
Consultation Teams (BSCT) that participated in selected interrogations.
Mohammed al-Qahtani was interrogated
over many months at Guantanamo. BSCT Psychologist Major John
Leso was present during this interrogation.
During al-Qahtani's interrogation
he was subjected to extreme cold to the point where his heart
slowed and he was hospitalized (he was then warmed up and again
subjected to extreme cold), he was injected with several bags
of saline solution while being strapped to a table until he urinated
on himself, and he was forced to bark like a dog; we are not
told what was done to him to get him to bark. He required cardiac
monitoring after 60 days in a cell flooded with artificial light,
being questioned for 48 out of 54 days for 20 hours at a time.
He was briefly hospitalized and immediately returned for continued
interrogation.
By the way, the US government
insists that al-Qahtani was treated "humanely," as
are, it claims, all the Guantanamo detainees. And the American
Psychological Association leadership has repeatedly claimed that
the BSCT psychologists participate in interrogations to prevent
abuse, to ensure "that such processes are safe and ethical
for all participants". They have never commented publicly
on the interrogation involvement of Major Leso, an APA member,
not have they taken any steps whatsoever to investigate the repeated
claims that BSCT psychologists are in Guantanamo to teach torture
techniques, not to prevent their use.
In July 2005, the New Yorker
published an article by Jane Mayer entitled The Experiment.
In it she presents the evidence available at that time on SERE
and its role in the interrogation process at Guantanamo. She
quotes Baher Azmy, an attorney for one of the detainees whose
client reported physical brutality, sexual humiliation, and being
injected with debilitating drugs:
Attorney Azmy told Mayer:
"These psychological gambits
are obviously not isolated events. They're prevalent and systematic.
They're tried, measured, and charted. These are ways to humiliate
and disorient the detainees. The whole place appears to be one
giant human experiment."
The prominent Middle East scholar
Juan Cole, on his Informed Comment blog posted an email
from a former military officer:
"I'm a former US [military
officer], and had the 'pleasure' of attending SERE school.
The course I attended . . .
[had] a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners
for 2-3 days. The camp is also used as a training tool for CI
[counter-intelligence], interrogators, etc.
I'm sure you must also realize
that Gitmo must be being used as a "laboratory" for
all these psychological manipulation techniques by the CI guys.
Absolutely sickening . ..
1. My gut feeling tells me
that the SERE camps were 'laboratories' and part of the training
program for military counter-intelligence and interrogator personnel.
I heard this anecdotally as far as the training goes.
2. Looking at Gitmo in the
'big picture', you have to wonder why it is still in operation
though they know so many are innocent of major charges. A look
through history at the various 'experimentation' programs of
the DOD gives a ready answer. The camp provides a major opportunity
to expose a population to various psychological control techniques.
Look at some of the stuff that has become public, and this becomes
even more apparent. Especially the sensory deprivation--not only
sleep, but there are the photos of inmates in gas masks or sight/hearing/smell
deprivation setups. There has already been voluminous research
into sensory deprivation, and it seems this is another good opportunity
for more."
PENS Task
Force
As word spread about the involvement
of health professionals, psychologists included, in abusive interrogations,
pressure built on professional associations to do something about
the situation. The American Psychological Association decided
to form a Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and
National Security (PENS). Strangely, the APA did not release
the names of PEN task force to the APA membership, nor were the
names included in the report. The PENS membership was first published
in the press in full by Mark Benjamin of Salon last July,
more than a year after the PENS report was released; Benjamin
got the names from a Congressional source, not the APA.
Let's look at a few of the
members, as described in their official APA biographical statements:
Colonel Morgan Banks is currently the Command Psychologist
and Chief of the Psychological Applications Directorate of the
U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). " He
is the senior Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape
(SERE) Psychologist, responsible for the training and oversight
of all Army SERE Psychologists, who include those involved in
SERE training. He provides technical support and consultation
to all Army psychologists providing interrogation support, and
his office currently provides the only Army training for psychologists
in repatriation planning and execution, interrogation support,
and behavioral profiling."
Robert A. Fein is currently a consultant to the
Directorate for Behavioral Sciences of the Department of Defense
Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the DOD Criminal
Investigative Task Force (CITF), and the U.S. Secret Service's
National Threat Assessment Center. He also serves as a member
of the Intelligence Science Board.
Colonel Larry C. James In 2003, he was the Chief Psychologist
for the Joint Intelligence Group at GTMO, Cuba, and in
2004 he was the Director, Behavioral Science Unit, Joint Interrogation
and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Col. James was
assigned to Iraq to develop legal and ethical policies consistent
with the Geneva Convention Guidelines and the APA Ethics Code
in response to the abuse scandal.
Captain Bryce E. Lefever as assigned to the Navy's Survival
Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) School from 1990 to 1993.
He served with Navy Special Forces from 1998 to 2003 and was
deployed as the Joint Special Forces Task Force psychologist
to Afghanistan in 2002, where he lectured to interrogators and
was consulted on various interrogation techniques. Capt. Lefever
has been deployed to many parts of the world during his career
including Haiti, Panama, Israel, Afghanistan, Italy, Bahrain,
Crete, Puerto Rico, Iceland, Antarctica, and Spain where he has
lectured on Brainwashing: The Method of Forceful Interrogation.
R. Scott Shumate has worked for the federal government
in highly classified positions that have required him to travel
extensively and live overseas. He has performed many of his
duties under highly stressful and difficult circumstances. In
May of 2003, Dr. Shumate accepted a senior position in the Department
of Defense as the Director of Behavioral Science for the Counterintelligence
Field Activity. DOD/CIFA is responsible for support to offensive
and defensive counterintelligence (CI) efforts. His team of renowned
forensic psychologists are engaged in risk assessments of
the Guantanamo Bay Detainees.
Also on the PENS taskforce
was Michael Gelles. Dr. Gelles was the chief psychologist
for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Dr. Gelles was
at Guantanamo in order to develop evidence for potential criminal
prosecution of detainees. As he witnessed the treatment of detainees,
he was outraged and became a whistleblower. According to a Boston
Globe article "Dr. Michael Gelles, completed a study of
Guantánamo interrogations in December 2003 that included
extracts of detainee interrogation logs. Gelles reported to the
service director, David Brant, that interrogators were using
'abusive techniques and coercive psychological procedures.'"
As such, Dr. Gelles is one of the true heroes of this rather
sordid tale. At the same time, however, it is at least debateable
for two reasons whether he should have been on the PENS taskforce.
First, as a member of the military hierarchy he was subject
to military discipline, rather than being a free agent; like
the other PENS members from the military and intelligence services,
his career could be directly affected by the outcome of the PENS
process. [Just ask the heroic Navy JAG attorney, Lt. Commander
Charles Swift who won a landmark Supreme Court victory against
the Guantanamo military tribunals in the Hamdan case, only to
be forced to retire after over 20 years of sevice.] Further,
as a psychologist and military interrogator, Dr. Gelles was in
no position to seriously consider the view that involvement in
interrogations was, in itself, unethical.
Not surprisingly, given its
composition, the PENS report concluded:
"The Task Force stated
that it is consistent with the APA Ethics Code for psychologists
to serve in consultative roles to interrogation and information-gathering
processes for national security-related purposes."
In handling this report, the
APA did not follow normal procedures and did not present it to
the elected Council of Representatives for discussion and approval.
Rather, within days it was presented to and approved by the APA
Board, circumventing Council.
Other Professional
Associations
In contrast, the American Medical
Association, in June 2006 adopted: "Physicians must neither
conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation, because
a role as physician-interrogator undermines the physician's role
as healer and thereby erodes trust in the individual physician-interrogator
and in the medical profession."
In June, 2005, the American
Psychiatric Association expressed concern over the reports of
psychiatrist involvement in abuses at Guantanamo:
"The American Psychiatric
Association is troubled by recent reports regarding alleged violations
of professional medical ethics by psychiatrists at Guantanamo
Bay. APA is reviewing issues related to psychiatry and interrogation
procedures and plans to develop a specific policy statement in
the near future."
I have been unable to find
one mention of concern regarding reports of involvement of psychologists
in Guantanamo abuses by the American Psychological Association
or any of its recent leadership. Rather, in February 2006, then
President Gerald Koocher wrote:
"A number of opportunistic
commentators masquerading as scholars have continued to report
on alleged abuses by mental health professionals."
In May, 2006 the American Psychiatric
Association went on to ban all direct participation in interrogations
by psychiatrists:
"No psychiatrist should
participate directly in the interrogation of person[s] held in
custody by military or civilian investigative or law enforcement
authorities, whether in the United States or elsewhere."
American Psychiatric Association
President Steven S. Sharfstein devoted a significant portion
of his 2006 Presidential Address to this issue:
"We must exercise vigilance
over our other core values. When I read in the New England
Journal of Medicine about psychiatrists participating in
the interrogation of Guantanamo detainees, I wrote to the Assistant
Secretary for Health in the Department of Defense expressing
serious concern about this practice. In mid-October I found myself
on a Navy jet out of Andrews Air Force Base on a 3-hour trip
to Guantanamo Bay. We were briefed thoroughly on interrogation
methods and the involvement of Behavioral Science Consultation
Teams in the process.
After returning to Andrews, we began a spirited 3-hour discussion
over dinner. I found myself looking eye to eye with top Pentagon
brass -- they are much taller than I am, but we were sitting
down. I told the generals that psychiatrists will not participate
in the interrogation of persons held in custody. Psychologists,
by contrast, had issued a position statement allowing consultations
in interrogations.
If you were ever wondering
what makes us different from psychologists, here it is. This
is a paramount challenge to our ethics and our Hippocratic training.
Judging from the record of the actual treatment of detainees,
it is the thinnest of thin lines that separates such consultation
from involvement in facilitating deception and cruel and degrading
treatment. Innocent people being released from Guantanamo-people
who never were our enemies and had no useful information in the
War on Terror-are returning to their homes and families bearing
terrible internal scars. Our profession is lost if we play any
role in inflicting these wounds."
As President Sharfstein looked
eye to eye with Pentagon brass, then American Psychological
Association President Ronald Levant was along for the trip to
Guantanamo. While the psychiatrists' President told the brass
"that psychiatrists will not participate in the interrogation
of persons held in custody," here is what the psychologists'
President had to say upon return:
I accepted this offer to visit Guantanamo because I saw the invitation
as an important opportunity to continue to provide our expertise
and guidance for how psychologists can play an appropriate and
ethical role in national security investigations. Our goals are
to ensure that psychologists add value and safeguards to such
investigations and that they are done in an ethical and effective
manner that protects the safety of all involved."
As a psychologist, it deeply saddens me to admit that Psychiatric
Association President Sharfstein has it correct. What distinguishes
the two professions is that psychiatrists have taken a moral
position, at the cost of a potential loss of access to top military
decision-makers and funding-providers, while the leadership of
psychologists, in contrast, have put access and, potentially,
funding, above taking a moral stand on the perversions of the
War on Terror. In the process of protecting this access, the
psychological association has regularly used deception and bad
faith, trying to argue that participation in interrogations is,
indeed, ethical.
The Association leadership
has worked persistently to protect the ability of psychologists
to participate in "national security" interrogations,
even, at times, claiming an ethical obligation to do so to prevent
harm to society, presumably from the "terrorists" imprisoned
there for the last five years. [See also Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter's
report on the PENS Task Force she chaired: "as experts in
human behavior, psychologists contribute to effective interrogations."]
These efforts have paid off:
On June 7, 2006 the New York Times reported:
"Pentagon officials said
Tuesday that they would try to use only psychologists, and not
psychiatrists, to help interrogators devise strategies to get
information from detainees at places like Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba.
The new policy follows by little
more than two weeks an overwhelming vote by the American Psychiatric
Association discouraging its members from participating in those
efforts.
Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr.,
assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told reporters
that the new policy favoring the use of psychologists over psychiatrists
was a recognition of differing positions taken by their respective
professional groups."
Thus did psychologist score
a major victory over their ancient enemy, the psychiatrists.
On January 8, 2007, British
attorney Brent Mickum wrote of his two clients, Bisher al-Rawi
and Jamil el-Banna, in Guantánamo's lost souls
on the website of the British newspaper the Guardian.
These two men are known from extensive evidence almost certainly
to be innocent:
Bisher al-Rawi is, slowly but
surely, slipping into madness.
The diminution of Bisher's
mental faculties has not taken place all at once. Gradually,
over time, Bisher simply has worn down. He no longer has the
power to withstand the ravages of psychological isolation and
the constant abuse he suffers. To be sure, Bisher is not the
only affected prisoner; attorneys representing other prisoners
at Guantánamo report that clients who are being kept in
isolation are going insane..
Bisher's world is a 6 by 8-foot
cell in Camp V, where alleged "non-compliant" prisoners
are incarcerated. After years and hundreds of interrogations,
Bisher finally refused to be interrogated further. Despite the
fact that Guantánamo officials have publicly proclaimed
that prisoners are no longer required to participate in interrogations,
Bisher is deemed non-compliant and tortured daily.
Solitary confinement is but
a single aspect of the torture that Bisher endures on a daily
basis. While in isolation, Bisher has been constantly subjected
to severe temperature extremes and other sensory torments, many
of which are part of a sleep deprivation program that never abates.
Frequently, Bisher's cell is unbearably cold because the air
conditioning is turned up to the maximum. Sometimes, his captors
take his orange jumpsuit and sheet, leaving him only in his shorts.
For a week at a time, Bisher constantly shivers and is unable
to sleep because of the extreme cold. Once, when Bisher attempted
to warm himself by covering himself with his prayer rug, one
of the few "comfort items" permitted to him, his guards
removed it for "misuse". On other occasions, the heat
is allowed to become so unbearable that breathing is difficult
and labored. For a week at a time, all Bisher can do is lie completely
still, sweat pouring off his body during the day when the Cuban
heat can reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature inside
Camp V is even higher.
Bisher is allowed no contact
with fellow prisoners. Bright lights are kept on 24 hours a day.
Bisher is given 15 sheets of toilet paper per day, but because
he used his sheets to cover his eyes to help him to sleep, his
toilet paper - considered another comfort itemhas been removed
for "misuse".
Accordingly, he is no longer
receives his daily ration of 15 sheets of toilet paper. Imagine
being in the position of having to make a choice between using
your tiny allotment of toilet paper for the purpose for which
it was intended or using it to sleep, and then having it removed
altogether.
Dinner never arrives before 9.30pm and sometimes comes as late
as 12.00am. It is almost always cold. Changes of clothing take
place at midnight when prisoners are given a single, thin cotton
sheet for sleeping. Thereafter, a noisy library cart is dragged
through the corridors; Bisher has been denied library privileges
for some time, but the library cart and the noise are constant
reminders that |
