Download American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Michael Otterman PDF

By Michael Otterman

George W. Bush calls them an "alternative set of procedures": forcing sufferers to face for 40 hours; depriving them of sleep for weeks on finish; and strapping prisoners to vulnerable forums, then flooding their mouths with water. those concepts are torture, and they're criminal within the United States.

Michael Otterman unearths the lengthy background of U.S. torture. He indicates how those strategies turned commonplace perform in today's warfare on terror. at the start, the CIA dependent their ideas at the strategies in their enemies, the Nazis, Soviets, and chinese language. Billions of bucks have been spent learning, refining, then instructing those thoughts to interrogators charged with protecting communism at bay. They produced approach manuals that have been utilized in Vietnam, Latin the USA, and in other places. because the chilly conflict ended, those tortures---engineered to go away deep mental wounds yet few actual scars---were legalized utilizing the very legislation that have been designed to get rid of their use. After 9-11, they have been revived back to be used on enemy warring parties detained in America's gigantic gulag of prisoners around the globe---from mystery CIA black websites in Thailand to the reformatory at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Michael Otterman exhibits that those interrogation equipment violate greater than foreign legislations and basic human rights. They radicalize enemies, undermine credibility, and yield unreliable intelligence. they don't make us extra secure. They make us much less safe.

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Extra info for American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond

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A small unit within the CIA called the Technical Services Division (TSD) was charged with running the top secret program. Like Bluebird and Artichoke, MKULTRA’s existence was known only to a select few—Congress was kept completely in the dark. Most of the research for MKULTRA was conducted at mainstream institutions. Between 1953 and 1963, the CIA funded human experiments by 185 non-governmental researchers at eighty institutions, including forty-four universities and twelve hospitals. This included work at prestigious universities like Princeton, Harvard,Yale, Columbia and Stanford and at centres like the Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC, the Boston Psychopathic Hospital and the Mt Sinai Hospital in New York.

At first his isolation is punctuated only by beatings at the hands of violent inquisitors but over time the ‘ruffians in black’ are replaced by men in spectacles. According to Orwell: These other questioners saw to it that he was in constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain they relied on. They slapped his face, wrung his ears, pulled his hair, made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to urinate, shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water; but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning.

Under the watchful eyes of medical professionals, students at Stead were also subjected to a lengthy course of humiliating treatment tailored to their individual vulnerabilities. According to Wyden, ‘Lies and insults about a captive’s personality, race, national origin and religion are routine starters. (Catholics have it extra rough …)’. Tortures were also sexual in scope. ‘Men who are shy about undressing may not keep their shorts on’, noted Wyden. During questioning, thirsty students who asked for water ‘get it thrown in the face’ while ‘anyone asking to go to the latrine is sure to be questioned longer than scheduled’.

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