Another Interrogator Speaks Out

If you haven't read it already, "Matthew Alexander's" Washington Post article about his experience as an Interrogator in Iraq is a crucial document in the story of America's decline. Alexander and I had similar experiences (I'm pretty sure I know him, actually). As a fellow former Interrogator, I found myself nodding in agreement through much of the piece.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

I'm hesitant to shift too much of the blame for the attacks themselves away from the ordinary Iraqis who supported those foreign fighters ("Zarqawi's Willing Executioners"?), but the connection to our detention policies is spot-on. I heard versions of this many, many times from detainees--America came waving the banner of freedom, then unjustly imprisoned and horrifically abused the people they were supposed to be saving, thus inviting a bloody backlash.

Not only was I told this directly, but like Alexander I was also told the correlate: the good treatment, adequate food and healthcare that they received in our prisons convinced at least five of the men I personally interrogated to give solid intelligence. Once they found out that we (all) weren't that bad, they opened right up. I wish this story were told more often--Alexander and I can't be the only ones who heard this:

"I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Imagine how different this war would have gone if that was a commonly-heard refrain. How tragic that it isn't.


(Cross-posted at Decline and Fall.)

There's more: "Another Interrogator Speaks Out" >>

Does America believes in justice for the people of Iraq? An Open Response To Matthew Walleser’s Informed Comment Editorial on Iraqi Collaborators

[Crossposted @ My Buffalo River Home]

If the Iraqi army invaded the United States and was repelled, what would become of the American collaborators, informers, and traitors?

Would Americans want them to escape unscathed to Iraq, or would American justice be demanded?

What if they were also responsible for questioning resisting Americans after brutal torture techniques were applied by... whomever?


I would like to think they would be hanged, or stood in front of a firing squad, in a manner and tenor similar to the trial outcomes for the internal security war criminals of Germany at Nuremberg.



The open letter which follows was a comment posting (slightly elaborated upon) rejected by the moderator @ Juan Cole's Informed Comment for the article:

Informed Comment
Saturday, March 01, 2008


Walleser Guest Editorial on Imperilled US Allies among the 4 Million Iraqi Refugees

...This is what has to be done by our government in this great time of need for Iraqi refugees which helped out the U.S. and are now at the end of their ropes. They have few options left and few places to turn. The U.S. government has the capacity and the funds to carry out this operation. The only matter left to contemplate is whether it has the compassion to do so. No matter what you think about the war and its discontents, this is not about politics.... [In Full]

I beg to differ... It's ALL about politics, patriotism, and social justice.

Now that the U.S. collaborators have helped the invaders of Iraq create circumstances such as this:

Baquba Losing Life – And Hope
Atlantic Free Press - Hard Truths for Hard Times
by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail

BAQUBA, Feb 27 (IPS) - Life has been bad enough in Diyala province north of Baghdad after prolonged violence, unemployment and loss of all forms of normal living. What could be worse now is the loss of hope that anything will ever be better.

In Baquba, capital city of Diyala province 40km northeast of Baghdad, it's all about staying alive. Most people have abandoned all projects and activities to sit at home in safety.

The Iraqi government achieved nothing, just death for this poor province, Hadi Obeid, a now idle trader in Baquba told IPS. If you look for rights, you will find death.

People of this province are dead, says resident Luay Amir, who returned to Iraq in 2004 after living 16 years in Austria. There is no sign of life to be seen. Faces are pale and lifeless, the city is desolate.

People in the city, he said, have no ambitions, no dreams. When they see each other, they greet one another saying, 'good to see you safe'. [In Full]


My only possible, non-emotional (rejected) response follows:

Sorry.

I DO NOT support bringing Iraqi military collaborators with the west here.

I did NOT support the invasion, the rationale for the invasion, or ANYONE who may have assisted that illegal immoral act in ANY WAY, and I won't willingly do so at any point in my life.

Apparently you intentionally or unintentionally support another 50 year low intensity war against whatever remains of Iraq, it's culture, and society much in the manner of our ongoing attempts to destabilize Cuba and much of Latin America.

If it makes it harder to find such collaborators in the future who would help the cretins in power within the U.S. government persecute another nasty little war like Iraq, so much the better... Maybe America's foreign policy actions will slowly be restored to something resembling respect for the global community.

For FAR TOO LONG, our country has rejected economic immigrants unless they were from the rich and upper-middle class of their country arriving with the looted wealth of their nations (My town seems to be getting it's share of extremely bourgeois, westernized, Central Asian 'refugees' at the moment).

On the other hand, we're always too happy to bring in the collaborators from our nasty little global wars for looted resources.

I would suggest that socio-economically, in the long run, those collaborators are of much less value and potential to American society or indeed their own nation than a 'lowly' Mexican field hand or Dominican maid might be... Except perversely, as political or military pawns, satraps, proxies for continued violence against their nation of birth.

The 'Cuban' expat community of Miami is a perfect example of how the US government and the CIA uses these... for want of a better word, "tools".

If you want an organization who's willing to pose as a flying 'christian missionaries' while dropping diseased chickens on their home country, causing malnutrition in a place where it was previously non-existent, then the Cuban Gusano/CIA community in Florida is right up your foreign policy 'alley'.

Another classic example of how US military collaborationist refugees harm our society: The Vietnamese ARVN soldiers we imported after our SE Asian foray into imperial expansion committed strings of heavily armed home invasion robberies against their own expat community in San Jose California for years, before they got too old for it anymore.

Some of their children still do.

I say bring in the average Iraqi workers, the tired, the poor, (the huddled masses yearning to be free) ...the OTHER 3.999999 million Iraqis (Bring Riverbend from Syria!) who these very collaborators have caused to be displaced by GREEDILY (Self-centrically MIGHT be a kinder wording) BELIEVING they'd get a better deal if the west controlled Iraq.

They sold their birthright for pottage. They lacked patriotism to their own nation and their own people (although our government WOULD have us think otherwise, just as our government would have us believe all the other U.S.-centric nonsense our foreign policy hacks spew is applicable to other nations/cultures), and they will have to suffer the consequences of their actions.

That is what's commonly called "justice".

Does America believes in justice for the people of Iraq, or doesn't it?

I think not.

Da' Buffalo

[Minor edit March 02 2008]

Related @ Technorati: Abuse Of Authority, Accountability, Ahmed Ali, American Culture, American Society, Amoral, Amorality, ARVN, Atlantic Free Press, Baghdad, Balkanised, Balkanised Iraq, Baquba, Behavioral Psychology, Birthright, Black Shirt, Bush Administration, Bush Family Ranch, Bush War, BushCo, BushWar, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, CIA Operations, Citizenship, Civil Conflict, Civil War, Combat Support, Consequence Management, Corporate Ethics, Cost Of War, Criminology, Cuba, Culture of Corruption, Dahr Jamail, Defense Intelligence, Democracy Promotion, Department of Defense, Destabilization, Detainee Interogation, Diplomacy, Disinformation, Diyala, Dominant Ideology, Economic Immigrants, Economics, Ethics, Failed State, Foreign Policy, Global Community, Global Empire, Global Hegemony, Government Accountability, High Crimes, History, Home Invasion Robbery, Homeland Insecurity, Homeland Security, Hypocrisy, Hypocrite, Illegal Invasion, Imperialism, Imperialist, Imperialist Economics, Informed Comment, International Criminal, International Diplomacy, International Law, International Politics, Interrogation, Invasion of Iraq, Iraq, Iraq Reconstruction, Iraq War, Iraqi Collaborator, Iraqi Culture, Iraqi Government, Iraqi Interpreter, Iraqi Refugees, Iraqi Security Forces, Iraqi workers, Juan Cole, Jurisprudence, Justice, Latin America, Law, Law Enforcement, Legal Philosophy, Low Intensity War, Malnutrition, Matthew Walleser, Media, Media Concentration, Media Coverage, Media Disinformation, Media Spin, Mercenary, Middle East, Militarism, military collaborators, Military History, Military Operations, Moral Turpitude, National Sovereignty, Occupation Army, Oil Wars, Pacification, Patriotism, patriotism, Pentagon, Political Philosophy, Politically Motivated Persecution, politics, Psychological Warfare, Psych-ops, Psy-War, Realpolitik, Resource Wars, Riverbend, Social Justice, social justice, Socio-economic, State Department, Subversion, Torture, Traitor, U.S. Collaborators, U.S. History, U.S. Intelligence, U.S. Interests, Vietnam, Vietnam Flashback, Vietnam War, Walleser, War Crimes, War Criminal, War Pigs, Warmonger, Warmongering, War-mongering

There's more: "Does America believes in justice for the people of Iraq? An Open Response To Matthew Walleser’s Informed Comment Editorial on Iraqi Collaborators" >>

Fallout from the Torture Issue: Why I'm Leaving APA

I’m sending a letter off to the American Psychological Association (APA) explaining my decision to resign membership from that organization. The text of the letter follows below (with hypertext links added here to assist the reader with context).

January 27, 2008

Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D.
President, American Psychological Association
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002-4232

Dear Dr. Kazdin,

I hereby resign my membership in the American Psychological Association (APA). I have up until now been working with Psychologists for an Ethical APA for an overturn in APA policy on psychologist involvement in national security interrogations, and I greatly respect those who are fighting via a dues boycott to influence APA policy on this matter. I hope to still work with these principled and dedicated professionals, but I cannot do it anymore from a position within APA.

Unlike some others who have left APA, my resignation is not based solely on the stance APA has taken regarding the participation of psychologists in national security interrogations. Rather, I view APA’s shifting position on interrogations to spring from a decades-long commitment to serve uncritically the national security apparatus of the United States. Recent publications and both public and closed professional events sponsored by APA have made it clear that this organization is dedicated to serving the national security interests of the American government and military, to the extent of ignoring basic human rights practice and law. The influence of the Pentagon and the CIA in APA activities is overt and pervasive, if often hidden. The revelations over the constitution and behavior of the 2005 Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) panel are a case in point. While charged with investigating the dilemmas for psychologists involved in military interrogations in the light of the scandals surrounding Guanatamo’s Camp Delta and Abu Ghraib prison, it was stacked with military and governmental personnel, and closely monitored and pressured by APA staff.

I strongly disagree with APA’s current position on interrogations, and am unimpressed with recent clarifications to that position that allows for voluntary non-participation in specifically defined cases where torture and abuse of prisoners is proved to exist. I have discussed my reasoning for this elsewhere, both blogging on the Internet and in public. In 2007, I was a panelist in the “mini-convention,” which examined the dispute over interrogations held at the APA Convention in San Francisco, presenting my findings on secret and non-secret psychologist research into isolation, sensory deprivation and sensory overload.

I will briefly review my objections to APA policy and practices, then place them in the context of current APA institutional objectives and goals. I find the latter to be antithetical to the ideals of an ethical and beneficent organization promoting psychological knowledge and practice.

*** APA’s position on non-involvement in torture allows psychologists to work in settings that do not allow the basic right of habeas corpus, in addition to practices of humane confinement as delineated in the Conventions of the Geneva Protocols and various international documents and treaties.

*** APA maintains in private communications that relegating various modes of psychological torture (sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, isolation) and the use of drugs in interrogations to something less than outright prohibition in recent APA position papers does not mean APA had any intention of providing a “loophole” for interrogators in the practice of coercive interrogations. APA also promises to clarify its position on these matters in an “ethics casebook.” When it has found it exigent, as on the PENS resolution, to step outside normal procedure to clarify its position, it has done so. I find it noteworthy that recent APA clarifications of its position are treated as something requiring less than direct organizational expression.

*** APA continues to propagate a position that it knows is not true, specifically that psychologists operate in interrogation settings to prevent abusive interrogations. While sometimes citing the compelling conclusions about context and behavior outlined by Zimbardo, and stemming from his famous Prisoner Experiment, it twists the representation of this research by making psychologists into a quasi-police force monitoring abusive interrogations. On the contrary, the Zimbardo research leads to a more unsettling conclusion, i.e., that human beings in general are susceptible to participation in abusive behavior based upon contextual factors. In fact, the Zimbardo research argues, as Dr. Zimbardo himself has done, against participation in these kinds of interrogations.

*** APA has shown precious little interest in the many revelations regarding psychologist participation in torture, or in psychologist research into abusive or coercive interrogations. Excepting only a brief period in the late 1970s, when widespread and public exposure of CIA mind control programs raised considerable scandal, APA has shown little inclination to confront the history of psychologist participation in such research, nor of its own institutional role in this research.

*** Finally, recent APA activities, such as the joint CIA/Rand Corporation/APA July 2003 workshop in the “Science of Deception,” point to questionable current participation in unethical practices and illegal governmental activities. I queried relevant actors and APA leaders as to what actually occurred at this workshop, which the APA Science Directorate described as discussing how to use “pharmacological agents to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?” Also considered was the study of “sensory overloads on the maintenance of deceptive behaviors,” with workshop participants asked, “How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?” I never received any answer from relevant APA personnel, including the current director of ethics, about what was going on at this workshop.

The latter episode captures the terrible trap into which APA has fallen. When making agreements with state intelligence and military agencies, it is usual that secrecy agreements are signed. This makes it impossible to reasonably assess and monitor the activities of psychologists in national security settings. Furthermore, the subordination of military psychologists to the chain of command of the armed forces also allows for ineffective if not impossible oversight of psychologist activities. But the problem with secrecy does not end there. Major researchers, including even a former APA president, who contracted with the government, or had their work utilized by the military, as for the latter’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape or SERE program, have told me they are unable to discuss matters beyond a certain point, or tried to restrict discussion of these matters, no doubt due in part to secrecy restrictions. Summing up this point, governmental secrecy and scientific enterprise are in direct opposition to each other, and secrecy negates the promise of effective oversight, not to mention the distortions it renders upon the scientific process itself.

In the recently APA published book, Psychology in the Service of National Security (APA Press, 2006), the book’s editor, A. David Mangelsdorff, wrote, “As the military adjusts to its changing roles in the new national security environment, psychologists have much to offer” (p. 237). He notes the recent forward military deployment of psychologists, their use in so-called anti-terrorism research, and assistance in influencing public opinion about “national security problems facing the nation.” L. Morgan Banks, himself Chief of the Psychological Applications Directorate of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, and a member of the controversial PENS panel, wrote elsewhere in the same book about the “bright future” (p. 95) for psychologists working with Special Operations Forces. Never mind that SOPs have been implicated in torture in Afghanistan, including receiving instructions in such coercive procedures from psychologists from some of the same psychologists, by the way, that attended the APA/CIA workshop noted above.) Nowhere could I find in the entire book a discussion of ethical problems surrounding these issues, nor certainly of political and social questions implicit in such outright support of governmental initiatives and military policy. Additionally, and curiously, there is no discussion of psychologist participation in military interrogations anywhere in the book.

In my opinion, and despite the otherwise notable and positive stances and activities of APA on other aspects of social note, such as work against prejudice against gays and lesbians, or against race prejudice, it is an unfortunate but urgent fact that APA as an institution has become subordinated to the state when it comes to military matters. In other words, when it comes to interrogations and psychologist military activities in general, APA acts as an arm of the Pentagon and a support agency for the CIA. The differences around interrogation policy APA has with the Bush Administration is itself a mirror of differences with the administration itself, and within different governmental departments. In such instances, APA acts as the instrument of one or another faction within government, but not as an independent actor and representative of the profession and its ideals and goals.

I would suggest the following remedies, if any are still possible, in turning around the degeneration of APA into a willing instrument for U.S. military and intelligence interests:

1) A full opening of all APA archives related to research and participation in activities with the military, including its intelligence arms; and a call for the government to declassify all documents related to the same;

2) The disestablishment of Division 19, the Society for Military Psychology, from the APA;

3) The immediate recission of APA’s Ethics Code 1.02, which was changed from earlier formulations in 2002 to permit adherence “to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority” when there is otherwise a conflict between the law and psychologists’ ethical practice. Opponents of 1.02 have rightly compared it to the Nazi defense of “following orders” at Nuremberg;

4) A call for the formation of a civilian, cross-disciplinary investigatory panel to examine the past history and current collaboration of scientific and medical professionals with the government, especially its military and intelligence agencies, to encompass fields as diverse as psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and sociology, with a goal of producing recommendations on interactions between government and the scientific and medical communities;

5) A moratorium on research into interrogations;

6) Sever the link that ties APA’s definition of “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment” in its various resolutions from the Reagan-era Reservations to the UN Convention Against Torture, which seeks to weaken that definition by relying on suspect interpretations of U.S. law rather than international definitions;

7) The immediate cessation of all support for involvement of psychological personnel in participation in any activity that supports national security interrogations.

The sordid history of American psychology when it comes to collaboration with governmental agencies in the research and implementation of techniques of psychological torture is one that our field will have to confront sooner or later. In a larger sense, the problems I have presented here are inherent in a larger societal dilemma regarding the uses of knowledge. This problem was recognized by the first critics of untrammeled scientific advance, and represented powerfully by Goethe’s Faust, and Mary Shelley’s Doctor Frankenstein. Human knowledge is capable of producing both good and evil. The scientist, the scholar, and the doctor hold tremendous responsibility in their hands. That they have not shown themselves, in a tragic number of instances, to ethically wield or control this responsibility has meant that the 21st century opens under the awful prospect of worldwide nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, while a sinister, behaviorally-designed torture apparatus operates as the servant of nation-states wielding these awful weapons of mass destruction.

It’s appropriate that I close with a statement about the problem of serving powerful national interests from a former president of the APA, a leading and important pioneer in our field, and also, for awhile, a member with top secret clearance in the CIA’s MKULTRA mind control program, Carl Rogers. One wonders, along with the authors of a recent study on Dr. Rogers’ CIA collaboration (see Demanchick & Kirschenbaum (2008), Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 48, pp. 6-30), if Rogers’ exposure to the world of secret government military projects didn’t inform his feelings about psychologists and government, as expressed in his famous debate with another seminal psychologist, B. F. Skinner:

To hope that the power which is being made available by the behavioral sciences will be exercised by the scientists, or by a benevolent group, seems to me a hope little supported by either recent or distant history. It seems far more likely that behavioral scientists, holding their present attitudes, will be in the position of the German rocket scientists specializing in guided missiles. First they worked devotedly for Hitler to destroy the U.S.S.R. and the United States. Now, depending on who captured them, they work devotedly for the U.S.S.R. in the interest of destroying the United States, or devotedly for the United States in the interest of destroying the U.S.S.R. If behavioral scientists are concerned solely with advancing their science, it seems most probably that they will serve the purposes of whatever individual or group has the power. (Rogers & Skinner (1956), “Some issues concerning the control of human behavior. A symposium.” Science, 124, p. 1061.)

Sincerely yours,

J------ K------, Ph.D.
San Francisco, CA

(Also posted at Invictus)

There's more: "Fallout from the Torture Issue: Why I'm Leaving APA" >>

"Battlefield of the Mind": U.S. Behavioral Specialists to "Deprogram" Iraqi Prisoners

(Also posted at Invictus)

This article details how U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies organize counterinsurgency operations against Iraqi prisoners, now numbering in the tens of thousands. No matter how they label and package it, it's counterinsurgency operations that are being described. And it was the special place of "behavioral specialists" in this plan that caught my attention. So please pardon this prefatory diversion into the world of science politics.

Psychologists at the American Psychological Association (APA) have been fighting for their place at the governmental funding table for decades now. A good part of what passes for politics in the field of behavioral sciences concerns the contest between psychologists and their institutional rivals (psychiatrists, and other types of behavioral "specialists"), most recently over the spoils of the lavishly-funded post-9/11 "war on terror". The internal split within APA over how or if psychologists should participate in CIA "black site" interrogations, and other such collaboration with U.S. torture, has roiled that organization.

An article over at the Psi Chi website, originally written in 2000, rehashes the issue of masters-level training for psychologists (Psi Chi being the honor society for psychologists), noting, in passing:

..."The master's degree in psychology continues to be the subject of considerable controversy".... Trent's (1993) opening statement in a more recent article followed the same vein when he said, "When the topic of master's-level training in psychology is broached, controversy abounds ..." (p. 586) and, citing Woods (1971), that "... Wilhelm Wundt raised questions about subdoctoral training even as psychology was establishing itself as a scientific discipline" (p. 586).

The American Psychological Association (APA) does not actively discourage pursuing the master's degree. APA, instead, tends to ignore it. For example, whereas APA's publication Getting In: A Step-By-Step Plan for Gaining Admission to Graduate School (1993) does discuss some pros and cons of a master's degree, there are only two pages of text devoted to the topic in this 221-page book.

Even more recently, the school psychologists of APA's Division 16 were shocked to find that APA's hierarchy, in the course of rewriting their Model Licensure Act (designed to guide states in the drafting of legislation and policies related to psychological licensure), planned to strip master's level practitioners in educational settings of the "psychologist" label, even though they have held this distinction for decades now. (You can read Division 16's Oct. 2007 reply to APA here).

Bitva over Plennies (apologies to A. Burgess)

Why is this discussion about masters-level practitioners relevant here? Well, if you have a well-attuned sense of irony, then you can appreciate the bitter humor that lurks among the larger atrocity that is U.S. treatment of its Iraqi detainees, and the role of medical and behavioral professionals in assisting the military and the intelligence agencies in this crime. What follows is from a Dec. 23 article in the Washington Post, "Deprogramming" Iraqi Detainees, by Walter Pincus. Bold emphases are mine.

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commanding general in charge of detainee operations in Iraq, is seeking reinforcements from a contractor as he continues to maneuver on what he has called "the battlefield of the mind" and win over the roughly 25,000 Iraqi prisoners under his control.

In a proposal put out for bid Dec. 15, the Joint Contracting Command is seeking a team of professionals, including "teachers, religious and behavioral science counselors," who will "execute a program that effectively reintegrates [into Iraqi society] detainees, particularly those disposed to violent, radical ideology through education and counseling," according to the statement of work.

Part of the program will involve small detainee groups, possibly led by an Iraqi cleric and a behavioral scientist, "undergoing enlightenment, deprogramming and de-radicalization sessions" for six weeks.

The U.S. is looking for a contractor -- are you listening Blackwater? Or CACI International? Or Titan? -- to assemble the team, to be led by an American with managerial experience, and a "secret" level security clearance. Besides some years experience analyzing Middle Eastern affairs, this team leader should hopefully have, in addition, a master's degree in psychology or behavioral science. Why is this? Let us wait and see.

The No. 2 in the group is to be a "lead analyst" who must also be a U.S. citizen, have a secret-level clearance and have management experience. This person must also have five years of background in intelligence gathering and interrogation.

Looking for a Few Good Brainwashers

The emphasis on intelligence gathering and interrogation belies the programs purpose as one of "deprogramming and de-radicalization". But it makes sense when you realize one of the main non-enlightenment purposes of the Team is assembling "comprehensive individual assessments" of juvenile and adult prisoners, which could be used to "enable prudent decision-making on release or continued detention of detainees."

The third person in the proposed "leadership team" is supposed to be an an Iraqi cleric or some other person with a formal Islamic education, and an Arabic-speaker, as they will serve as the front man -- I mean, the "lead trainer/counselor for the deprogramming and de-radicalization efforts." And to make sure the Islamic specialist doesn't get too far off the enlightenment path, he will be assisted "by a 'psychological enlightenment' specialist who must have a master's degree in behavioral science. This assistant has the privilege of interviewing

"radicalized detainees to collect information about their motivations and pathways to radicalization" in order to "identify openings for change."

If that weren't enough, this battle for the Iraqi mind will include Iraqi social workers, teachers, and a cleric counselor, not to mention a specialists in "juvenile psychological enlightenment" (with the requisite master's degree in behavioral science, naturally).

The New Thought Reform

It seems the U.S. government is going to try and reprogram Iraqi prisoners, including children, using the same level of expertise used at your typical U.S. public mental health service. And APA, who has sworn to work with the National Security government, as their best handmaidens, gets to see its precious jobs go to non-doctoral workers. APA, as an advocacy group for its membership, has long posited the special role doctoral-level psychologists can play in society at large, and for the military in particular. (See their 2006 book, Psychology in the Service of National Security, edited by A. David Mangelsdorff.) But, here's the U.S. government placing a major new initiative on detainees and interrogation in the hands of -- gasp -- non-doctoral behavioral "specialists".

That's the "irony" part. The more substantive point is that once again the U.S. government is going to use these behavioral "specialists" in a mass campaign of interrogation and "re-education", of the sort that was decried when the Chinese did it in the 1940s and 1950s. Robert Jay Lifton described it as "thought reform and the psychology of totalism". The CIA paid journalists to label it "brainwashing". Now, the U.S. wants to call it "deprogramming", "deradicalization", and even more sinisterly, "enlightenment." Major General Stone refers to it generically as "the battlefield of the mind", channelling perhaps British psychiatrist William Sargant's 1957 classic of interrogation "science", Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-washing. The choice of words is likely coincidental, but isn't Maj. Gen. Stone looking for something like this, when he thinks of his new "team", deprogramming Iraqi detainees. Perhaps, like many religions, a "confession" will be involved. And Dr. Sargant happened to have a word or two to say about that battle over the mind:

To elicit confessions, one must try to create feelings of anxiety and guilt, and induce states of mental conflict if these are not already present. Even if the accused person is genuinely guilty, the normal functioning of his brain must be disturbed so that judgment becomes impaired. If possible he must be made to feel a preference for punishment -- especially if combined with a hope for salvation when it is over rather than a continuation of the mental tension already present, or now being induced by the examiner. (pp. 203-204, Malor Books, 1997)

Now, I ask any member of the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association, do you want masters-level psychologists taking on this level of work? Of course, the real question is, why would any organization of behavioral professionals even endorse the intent and goals of such abhorrent procedures as proposed by Sargant, or in whatever form the Marines' new counterinsurgency program is taking in Iraq today?

However you want to portray Maj. Gen. Stone's new "team" of behavioral specialists, interrogators, intelligence agents, social workers, and clerics, it represents a particularly sick form of imperialist intervention, and one that any mental health advocacy group, such as APA, should denounce forthwith, if it had any healthy bones left in its corrupted body.

Oh, and for those interested:

Bids for the three-year program must be submitted by Jan. 8. The contracting agency has capped the cost at $210 million, with a minimum offer of $5 million.

(H/T on this item goes to "skywriter". Thanks.)

There's more: ""Battlefield of the Mind": U.S. Behavioral Specialists to "Deprogram" Iraqi Prisoners" >>

Islam Isn't the Problem

Cross-Posted at Decline and Fall.

Regarding the motivations of the insurgents I interrogated in Iraq, a week ago I wrote:

The vast majority of them weren't radical Muslims, bin Laden acolytes or Saddam hardliners; they were motivated by nationalism. They opposed the U.S. occupation of what they saw as their sovereign land (silly them!) so they lashed out in the most meaningful way they could: at the "collaborators" in their midst aiding and abetting the occupying, colonial power. It's basic insurgency doctrine, folks. In my experience, "religious fanaticism" is the veneer that some in Iraq, and even more in the West, use to cover what is essentially the struggle to get out from under the thumb of a strongman.

Later last week, The Washington Monthly published an article by Andrew Tilghman, former Stars & Stripes reporter, that came to a similar conclusion, and on Tuesday Gallup released a poll analysis that supports my anecdotal experience. (Thanks to Framing Science for the link) The pollsters discovered that political grievances, rather than religious ones, are the prime motivating factors behind Violent Islamic Extremism:

After analyzing survey data representing more than 90% of the global Muslim population, Gallup found that despite widespread anti-American sentiment, only a small minority saw the 9/11 attacks as morally justified. Even more significant, there was no correlation between level of religiosity and extremism among respondents. Among the 7% of the population that fits in the politically radicalized category -- those who saw the 9/11 attacks as completely justifiable and have an unfavorable view of the United States -- 94% said religion is an important part of their daily lives, compared with 90% among those in the moderate majority. And no significant difference exists between radicals and moderates in mosque attendance.

Gallup probed respondents further and actually asked both those who condoned and condemned extremist acts why they said what they did. The responses fly in the face of conventional wisdom. For example, in Indonesia, the largest Muslim majority country in the world, many of those who condemned terrorism cited humanitarian or religious justifications to support their response. For example, one woman said, "Killing one life is as sinful as killing the whole world," paraphrasing verse 5:32 in the Quran.

On the other hand, not a single respondent in Indonesia who condoned the attacks of 9/11 cited the Quran for justification. Instead, this group's responses were markedly secular and worldly. For example, one Indonesian respondent said, "The U.S. government is too controlling toward other countries, seems like colonizing."

The real difference between those who condone terrorist acts and all others is about politics, not piety. For example, the politically radicalized often cite "occupation and U.S. domination" as their greatest fear for their country and only a small minority of them agree the United States would allow people in the region to fashion their own political future or that it is serious about supporting democracy in the region. Also, among this group's top responses was the view that to better relations with the Muslim world, the West should respect Islam and stop imposing its beliefs and policies. In contrast, moderates most often mentioned economic problems as their greatest fear for their country, and along with respecting Islam, they see economic support and investments as a way for the West to better relations. Moderates are also more likely than the politically radicalized to say the United States is serious about promoting democracy.

Note how counter-intuitive this all seems from the Clash of Civilizations perspective through which the entire GWOT has been filtered for us. No significant difference in mosque attendance between radicals and moderates. The Quran cited only as justification for abhorring violence, not condoning it. American occupation and lack of respect are the reasons the radicals fight us, not the results of their fight against us.

The implications of a study such as this are enormous. The most obvious is that if we are going to claim to be serious about fighting terrorism, we need to focus our efforts on the factors that actually motivate people to become terrorists, not the factors we continue to insist motivate them. Killing or incarcerating a terrorist or insurgent may take one of them out of circulation, but if you create two new ones for every one you destroy, you are going backward, not forward.

I saw this dynamic when I was an interrogator in Iraq. Coalition forces would arrest an insurgent, humiliate him in front of his family, keep him in prison for months, and then release him without charges. In the meantime he learned to hate us (even if he hadn't before) and, more importantly, his family learned to hate us. While he was learning to hate us, he was in a population that was uniquely qualified to fan the flames of his hatred and teach him how he might better act on it. Meanwhile his family and close friends were now easy targets for recruitment. In getting rid of one "terrorist," we created several. Is it any wonder that the estimated number of insurgents in Iraq jumped from 5,000 (total) in 2003 to 70,000 (Sunni) in 2007, while the prison population skyrocketed from 10,000 to 60,000? (See pp. 25-26 of this Brookings Institute report for details.)

When will we realize that our presence in the Middle East and our support of tyrants such as Mubarek and the Saudi Royal Family are not only not helping ease the troubles in the region, they are the primary cause for those troubles? Middle Easterners are not stupid. They can see that America has a long history of supporting brutal dictators (remember the Shah?) and they have learned from that experience that we are not to be trusted. They see us stomping around the world with our big stick and turn to whatever means of resistance they can find to resist what they see as the assault on their culture by the biggest bully on earth. The fact that militant Islam is their only major option should not cause us to confuse their motives.

There's more: "Islam Isn't the Problem" >>

Desire to Hold Detainees Motivates Torture

The US military in Iraq has rules. For example, there were apparently rules against having non-trained interrogators conduct interrogations. So, according to pfc. Evan Knappenberger...

We didn’t call them interrogations. The terminology had to be changed, as is the case with many things we do in the military that we’re not really allowed to do. If you change the name, you can – you are allowed to do it but, because it’s not – it’s the same action, a different name. We call them tactical questionings.

Another set of military rules determines how to handle detainees. In a response to a question from DemocracyNow's Amy Goodman about who's in the room during a "tactical questioning" session, Knappenberger describes his experience:

Well, I can’t really go into specifics, but typically there would be one or two soldiers. At times it would be nobody more than two junior enlisted soldiers, and an Iraqi interpreter, and the suspect.

When asked about the kinds of questions asked he replied by describing the 24-hour rule:

the rule was we could hold these guys for 24 hours without doing any paperwork on them. And at the end of that 24 hours, if we had enough on them,... we’d keep them in. Otherwise we had to release them.

Basically, it's a rule that keeps one-day detentions secret by having no paper work. But, Knappenbergers' next statement that is even more troubling:

The problem then became getting something out of them to keep them.

Hmmm.... Imagine young, junior enlisted soldiers, who likely feel angry about their situation, trying to "get something" on a detainee to "justify" holding them longer. It's a formula for abusive treatment, that is, torture.

Take Action:

If you feel a responsibility to bring this flawed situation to someone's attention, you might consider contacting the US Department of Defense.

There's more: "Desire to Hold Detainees Motivates Torture" >>