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Report: CIA Interrogations Informed by Bad Science
WASHINGTON — The CIA's harsh interrogation program likely damaged the brain and memory functions of terrorist suspects, diminishing their physical ability to provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.
The paper scrutinizes the harsh techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology. Researchers concluded that the harsh methods were biologically counterproductive to eliciting quality information because prolonged stress harms the brain's ability to retain and recall information.
"Solid scientific evidence on how repeated and extreme stress and pain affect memory and executive functions (such as planning or forming intentions) suggests these techniques are unlikely to do anything other than the opposite of that intended by coercive or enhanced interrogation," according to the paper published Monday in the scientific journal, "Trends in Cognitive Science: Science and Society."
In the paper, Shane O'Mara, a professor at Ireland's Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, wrote that the severe interrogation techniques appear based on "folk psychology" — a layman's idea of how the brain works as opposed to science-based understanding of memory and cognitive function.
The list of techniques the CIA used included prolonged sleep deprivation — six days in at least one instance — being chained in painful positions, exploiting prisoners' phobias, and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that President Barack Obama has called torture. Three CIA prisoners were waterboarded, two of them extensively.
Those methods cause the brain to release stress hormones that, if their release is repeated and prolonged, may result in compromised brain function and even tissue loss, O'Mara wrote.
He warned that this could lead to brain lobe disorders, making the prisoners vulnerable to confabulation — the pathological production of false memories based on suggestions from an interrogator. Those false memories mix with true information in the interrogation, making it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fabricated.
Waterboarding is especially stressful "with the potential to cause widespread stress-induced changes in the brain, especially when these are repeated frequently and intensively," O'Mara wrote.
"The fact that the detrimental effects of these techniques on the brain are not visible to the naked eye makes them no less real," O'Mara wrote.
The paper also asserted that forcibly exposing prisoners to what they are afraid of — the CIA got approval to use a suspect's fear of insects against him — is actually a method used to cure phobias.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllWell Duh! This has been well known since the Inquisition.
Back then, torture was used to force a false 'confession'
so that the execution and seizure of property could continue.
Is this not what we are still doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Anyone that can believe that the Bush/Cheney neo-con nazi regime was anything but a sicko retarded group of self made nothings are somewhat insane themselves. Everyone knew Bush was a stupid corrupt dope smoking brain dead idiot born by the nasty five on the surpreme court. But no one was looking at how dangerous fathead liverlip Cheney was. They did their dirty tricks against another human being. Now the dont think they should have to answer to any of that. Why not?
In 1984, the torture that ultimately breaks Orwell's hero, Winston Smith, lies within Room 101. "Here a person's greatest fear is forced upon him or her for the final re-education step: acceptance. Winston, who has a primal fear of rats, is shown a wire cage filled with starving rats and told that it will be fitted over his head like a mask, so that when the cage door is opened, the rats will bore into his face until it is stripped to the bone." (wikipedia)
1984 -- a description the ultimate police state, a state engaged in perpetual war and total surveilance. War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom. Ignorance is Strength. Big Brother is watching.
No relation to the US, however.
It's gratifying that scientific research establishes that torture is not a particularly effective method of obtaining information.
But, as has been observed innumerable times in discussions on "torture", the issue of the "effectivness" of torture is beside the point.
It avoids the threshold issue of the ethical and moral prohibitions on torture, and implicitly justifies improving and refining torture techniques to increase their efficacy.
Which is exactly what the Amerikan military and state security apparatus has been doing, with the cooperation of the medical establishment.
Torture is universally criminal and sociopathic behavior. This fully remains the case even if torture is "effective".
Period.
· Yr Obd't Servant
As Humbaba pointed out above, confession is the objective of the torturer, not obtaining information.
The truth or falsity of the confession is a minor detail.
Torture aims at two results:
1) one inside the walls of the torture chamber, and that is, as Humbaba rightly stated, the obtainment of a confession, no matter what the truth value of that confession is;
2) the other outside the walls of the chamber, namely the sending of a wave of terror in the population at large, and a self-servingly vague message that says something like 'See what will happen to you if you do not behave yourselves'.
This is an almost complete description of torture's objectives. The third objective, let's face it, is to dehumanize the person being tortured for the amusement of the torturer.
Joe
Since when do the people practicing evil in the ranks of government and its agencies care about what science has to say if that does not dovetail with their prejudices?
It also provokes lying, of course.
Thanks to "Trends in Cognitive Science: Science and Society" for again documenting the absurdity of defending this kind of behavior as a means of getting information.
That torture is counterproductive has actually been known for hundreds of years. But I guess it's still good to see it re-affirmed.
The torturer's job is to secure oil fields and gas pipeline routes -- not information. The torture is to terrify the locals. They already know where to find the oil and gas.
http://freepublictransit.org
This particular version of the AP release leaves out the quote from the CIA spokeperson which is classic:
“The CIA’s former interrogation program was conducted pursuant to legal guidance from the Department of Justice. It produced intelligence on which our government acted to disrupt terrorist operations. Those are facts. The author of this study did not, to my knowledge, have direct contact with individuals who had been part of the agency’s high-value detainee program,” said CIA spokesman George Little.
So there Prof O'Mara, they've got the facts and nothing but the facts, science be damned, eh.
The original full AP piece is here:
http://bit.ly/r6qL2
Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, some other bunch of ignoramusi are actually taking seriously the notion that one can kill a goat by staring at it. Gawd, what sheer mind power that would be!
Add to which their prior 'work' on the equally fantastic idea of 'remote viewing,' on which they wasted who knows how many millions of the taxpayers' money.
Cannot folks in GS positions be fired for ignorance?
Now now, it well known that torture produces actionable intelligence.
If you need proof of that you need only go to spain.
You will not find any witches flying on Broomsticks or having sexual relations with Beezlebub. Nor will you find Jews secretly sacrificing Christian babies to the Devil.
Indeed no such thing has happened in well over 500 years and this because Torquemada and other such patriots rooted out all the Satanists heading off all manner of Plots to destroy Christiandom.
Torquemeda KEPT SPAIN safe and Christian and if he had been forced to stop , they would be overrun with Broomstick flying witches.