America: The Gift Shop
If American foreign policy had a gift shop, what would it sell? (Via Mike Soron.)
… in prison!
When Obama chaffed McCain for forgetting how many houses he owns, Rogers huffed, “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”
Yeah, it’s from a Maureen Dowd column, sorry. I couldn’t resist the pause.
Psychological Mind Games at Guantanamo
Stephen Soldz in The Boston Globe:
Psychologists have been identified as key figures in the design and conduct of abuses against detainees in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA’s secret “black sites,” and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologists should not be taking part in such practices.
Yet a steady stream of revelations from government documents, journalistic reports, and congressional hearings has revealed that psychologists designed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, which included locking prisoners in tiny cages in the fetal position, throwing them against the wall head first, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliation, and waterboarding.
Jane Mayer, in her new book, “The Dark Side,” reports that the central idea was the psychological concept of “learned helplessness.” Individuals are denied all control over their world, lose their will, and become totally dependent upon their captors.
This sort of thing makes The Black Book of Psychoanalysis look like a joke. On a related subject I hear they also use CBTs there. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Check out this great interactive venn diagram of Bush administration criminals over at Slate. The who’s-who of torturers, crooks and liars is about what you’d expect. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
The Party of Torture
Check out these amazing conservative t-shirts, particularly the waterboarding and Ann Coulter ones. Good to see that the GOP has made torture and imperialism its explicit slogans this year. Classy, as always. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
From Triumph to Torture
It’s a tragedy that any government is allowed to do something like this and get away with it, and I wouldn’t consider myself a committed partisan in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but if Israel is trying to make itself appear as a victim of Palestinian terrorist aggression, things like this are certainly brutal reminders of the truth. (Via Lenin’s Tomb.)
Pentagon Lied About Torture Memos
The Washington Post reports that a Senate investigation has uncovered evidence that research on torture methods came from the top chain of command (Donald Rumsfeld) as early as July 2002. Not that any of this should come as a surprise, or that anyone will actually read the investigation, but I guess having the proof is a good thing. (Via I cite.)