July 9, 2006

Torture

The History of Torture

0 - 1948:

European law makes torture an accepted part of judicial interrogation (p. 16).

866:

(Saint) Pope Nicholas I (c.825-867, pope 858-867) prohibits torture (p. 16).

1215:

1. A Church council abolishes trial by ordeal.

2. European civil courts revive Roman law with its reliance on torture to obtain confessions. This approach would persist for the next 500 years (until about 1715) (p. 16).

1252:

During the Medieval Inquisition, Pope Innocent IV (d. 1254, pope 1243-1254) formalizes the use of torture by Church interrogators for both confession and punishment.

1350:

The Italian Medieval Inquisition uses the strappado to suspend the victim by ropes in five degrees of escalating duration and severity B a scale preserved in the modern phrase Athe third degree@ to mean harsh police questioning (p. 16).

1550-1650:

During the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Amilitary torture is prodigious, religious torture is regularized, and judicial torture is enriched daily by new varieties,@ writes Alec Mellor, in his 1949 book, La torture B son histoire, son abolition, sa reapparition au XX^e siecle (Torture B its history, its abolition, and its reappearance in the XX^th century) (p. 17).

1740:

King Frederick II (1712-1786, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia 1740-1786) bans ordinary torture. His friend and Enlightenment philosopher Francois Marie Voltaire (1694-1778) famously condemns the practice in polemics denouncing judicial torture, and thereby sparks a movement throughout Europe of the abolition of torture (p. 17).

1825:

Enlightenment Europe abolishes torture (p. 17).

1874:

French poet, dramatist and novelist Victor Hugo (1802-1885) claims that Atorture has ceased to exist (p. 17).

1920=s:

Torture reappears in Europe.

3. In Italy, in1922, Benito Mussolini (1883-1945, dictator 1929-1945) declares, AMan is nothing,@ and uses his secret police to torture the enemies of his all-powerful state (p. 18).

4. In Germany, during the Third Reich, under Adolf Hitler (1889-1945, chancellor 1933-1945), torture begins secretely and escalates until, in June 1942, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) orders interrogators to use the third degree of beatings, close confinement, and sleep deprivation (p. 18).

5. In the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin (1879-1953, dictator 1923-1953). Stalin not only revives the practice of torture but applies modern methods to expand the diversity and intensity of physical pain (p. 17).

1948:

The United States plays a central role in the drafting the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners, documents which ban torture in both principle and practice (p. 11).

1954-1962:

France=s massive pacification of Algeria includes the brutal torture of several hundred thousand suspected rebels and their sympathizers (p. 18).

1950-1962:

The United States uses its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to invest $1,000,000,000 annually into a secret, massive mind-control research effort whose objectives are both psychological warfare and the desintegration of human consciousness (p. 7).

1954:

Donald Hebb, psychologist at McGill University, Montreal, begins reporting, in the Canadian Journal of Psychology, on the devastating impact of sensory deprivation (pp. 32 and 35).

1957-1963:

Ewen Cameron, head of McGill=s Allan Memorial (Psychiatric) Institute, under the cover of treating schizophrenia, uses unwitting or unwilling subjects to experiment with an extreme form of behavioral experimentation B what Cameron calls Adepatterning@ (pp. 42-44 and 65).

Late 1950's:

Respected medical researchers use secret CIA funding for lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) experiments at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, simultaneously reporting medical results in academic journals and secret findings to the Agency (p. 29).

1963:

The CIA research has led to a counter-intuitive breakthrough B the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries. The new form of torture to which it gives rise, is a Ano-touch@ torture B torture which is entirely psychological, avoiding physical pain (pp. 7-8).

The CIA=s psychological paradigm fuses two new methods:

6. ASensory disorientation@ B a total assault on all senses and sensibilities (auditory, visual, tactile, temporal, temperature, survival, sexual and cultural).

7. ASelf-inflicted pain@ B victims feel responsible for their suffering and thus capitulate more readily (p. 8).

The fusion of these two techniques creates a synergy of physical and psychological trauma whose sum is a hammer-blow to the fundamentals of personal identity (p. 8)

The CIA codifes the results of its research in the Kubark Counter-intelligence Interrogation Manual (pp. 10, 26, 50, 52 and 91).

1963-Present:

The CIA disseminates the new practices worldwide. They are used:

1. In Vietnam during the 1960's, by the United States.

2. In Chile, by President Augusto Pinochet (1915-, president 1973-1990).

3. In Central America during the 1980=s.

4. In the Philippines, by President Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989, president 1965-1986), particularly from 1972 to 1986.

5. In Iran, by Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi (1919-1980, shah 1941-1979) (pp. 7, 9, 12, 14, 75, 86, 91 and 136).

Late 1960=s:

Stanley Milgram, a young psychologist at Yale University, performs a series of obedience experiments which may well be part of the CIA=s mind-control project. Milgram=s close ties to the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) lends substance to this speculation. Milgram concludes that social convention leads normal individuals to accept authority and ignore the victim=s pain (pp. 47-48)

1971:

Britain uses psychological torture against the Irish Republican Army (p. 54).

1984:

The United Nations General Assembly adopts the Convention against Torture, defining the practice broadly, under Article I, as:

Aany act by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purpose as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession@ (p. 100).

1993:

The United States participates in the World Conference on Human Rights, in Vienna (p. 11).

1994:

The United States ratifies the United Nations Convention against Torture B but with a narrowed interpretation of torture which exempts the CIA=s psychological methods. The document, as ratified by Congress, effectively exempts from international law the interrogation methods used by the CIA. The Clinton administration, therefore, by approving the U.N. Convention with torture as narrowly re-defined, in 1988, by the Reagan administration, in essence, legitimates torture as an open, accepted practice in the U.S. intelligence community (pp. 11 and 100-102).

2001:

After the 9/11 attacks, a public consensus emerges in the United States in favor of torture. On January 20, 2002, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz tells the audience of CBS Television=s popular 60 Minutes that torture is inevitable:

AIf you=ve got the ticking bomb case, the case of the terrorist who knew precisely where and when the bomb would go off, and it was the only way of saving 500 or 1,000 lives, every democratic society would, have, and will use torture@ (pp. 110 and 234).

2001-Present:

The United States uses torture:

1. In Afghanistan, since 2001.

2. On its military base at Guantanamo, Cuba, with the use of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT), since January 2002.

3. In Iraq, since 2003 (pp. 6-7, 12, 14, 35, 114, 134, 145, 147-148, 157, 179 and 181-182).

The CIA is both the lead agency for the torture of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison, and the source of the systematic tortures practiced in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq. Psychological torture is a distinctively American form of torture and emerges as a central, if clandestine, facet of American foreign policy (pp. 6-7).

On December 29^th, John Yoo, in the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, writes a detailed memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, arguing that

Aa federal district court could not properly exercise habeas jurisdiction over an alien detained [at Guantanamo]@ (p. 114).

2002:

1. On January 9^th, John Yoo, in the Justice Department, writes a 42-page memo asserting that the Geneva Convention and the U.S. War Crimes Act do not apply to the Afghanistan conflict (p. 113).

2. In August, John Yoo, in the Justice Department, aids in the writing of a 50-page memo to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, providing Asweeping legal authority@ for harsh interrogation. It argues that federal law limits the crime of torture to Aacts inflicting, and . . . specifically intended to inflict, severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical.@ To constitute torture, the physical pain must Abe equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death@ (p. 121).

2004:

In April, writing in the New York Times Magazine, Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff, advocates Apermissible duress@ as a justification for torture, arguing, in effect, for legalization of CIA psychological torture (pp. 177-178).

In June, photos from Abu Ghraib prison are leaked to the American media (pp. 151 and 178).

In July, Michael Ignatieff reverses his position on torture. In contrast, Alan Dershowitz would remain resolute throughout (p. 178).

In August, an ABC News/Washington Post poll reveals that 35 percent of Americans feel that torture is acceptable in some circumstances (p. 151)).

In November, the presidential campaign is silent about Abu Ghraib. The Democratic candidate, the media, and the American public ignore the torture scandal (pp. 160-161).

2005:

In February, John Yoo, now back as law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that the re-election of President George W. Bush has ended the discussion about torture:

AThe debate is over. The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum@ (p. 161).