Photographs
If you haven’t already, go read Jane Mayer’s article on our methods of torture. The short version: we’re using psychological methods to impose "learned helplessness" and dependency, and as a result, we’re getting some intelligence, a whole lot of garbage, and we’re turning our own interrogators into moral zombies.
I wanted to focus on one aspect of the calculated humiliation she describes:
A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeoutâ€of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, duringwhich a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded,sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported byplane to a secret location.
[snip]
The interrogation became a process not just of getting information butof utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.†The formerC.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed theprisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.†The person involved inthe Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of theC.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to caseofficers for review. [my emphasis]
Part of the very calculating treatment we give these detainees is photographing them, both to humiliate them and for "quality-control." (Quality control of what? Is this like glorified meat inspection?)
I wanted to call attention to these passages because of the dust-up Read more →