“Advances in the History of Psychology has alerted me to a gripping video lecture on the development of CIA psychological torture techniques from the Cold War to War on Terror. It was an invited lecture at the University of California by historian Prof Alfred McCoy who has long specialised in the history of the US secret services.He argues that the results of CIA research into psychological torture can be clearly seen in both the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo bay and images of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
By contrast when I looked at those photos, I did not see snapshots of simple brutality or a breakdown in military discipline. For example, that most iconic photo of a hooded Iraqi with fake electrical wires hanging from his extended arms shows not the sadism of a few ‘creeps’, but instead, the two key trademarks of the CIA’s psychological torture: the hood was for sensory disorientation and the arms extended for self-inflicted pain.
McCoy discusses how these techniques were researched and developed by some of the most distinguished cognitive scientists of the time and were reflected in now uncovered CIA documents, including the 1961 ‘Manipulation of Human Behavior’ research summary, the 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual, and the 1983 ‘Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual’. He notes that these techniques have been developed and legitimised by a legal framework that was deliberately designed not to outlaw existing techniques, despite the fact there is no strong basis for their effectiveness and evidence suggests that psychological torture has a similar long-term impact to physical torture.”
(via Mind Hacks)
(video:”A Short History of Psychological Torture“)
July 4, 2008 at 7:48 pm
The CIA has a secret program which involves putting someone into a life like bodysuit. They heat seal a suit directly onto a person’s body and then add life like skin color and hair and blemishes and it looks like you’re talking to a regular person. Just look at Pres. Bush at the 2006 White House correspondant’s dinner. “Sometimes he does press conferences for me.” Or Barack Obama on Saturday Night Live. “I enjoy being myself. I’m not going to change just because it’s halloween.” The big buzzword this election season is “change” because of this government program that I just described. It is a torturous program which involves dehumanizing the person to be recruited and ripping families apart, only to replace them with people who wear these life like bodysuits made to look exactly like the real person. This is inhumane and illegal and being carried out by the United States government. I know this from first hand experience and I hope it becomes mainstream news very soon. I haven’t seen my Mother, Father, Sister or best friends in years because of this government program and I am worried sick about them. Thank You.