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Author: Shane O'Mara Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674743903 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 333
Book Description
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
Author: Shane O'Mara Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674743903 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 333
Book Description
Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O’Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer’s trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable—and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O’Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin’s Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O’Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: “It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.”
Author: Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Publisher: Melville House ISBN: 1612198473 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 672
Book Description
The study edition of book the Los Angeles Times called, "The most extensive review of U.S. intelligence-gathering tactics in generations." This is the complete Executive Summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the CIA's interrogation and detention programs -- a.k.a., The Torture Report. Based on over six million pages of secret CIA documents, the report details a covert program of secret prisons, prisoner deaths, interrogation practices, and cooperation with other foreign and domestic agencies, as well as the CIA's efforts to hide the details of the program from the White House, the Department of Justice, the Congress, and the American people. Over five years in the making, it is presented here exactly as redacted and released by the United States government on December 9, 2014, with an introduction by Daniel J. Jones, who led the Senate investigation. This special edition includes: • Large, easy-to-read format. • Almost 3,000 notes formatted as footnotes, exactly as they appeared in the original report. This allows readers to see obscured or clarifying details as they read the main text. • An introduction by Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones who led the investigation and wrote the report for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a forward by the head of that committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Author: Gary Wiener Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC ISBN: 1534502300 Category : Juvenile Nonfiction Languages : en Pages : 186
Book Description
You hear about "waterboarding," but what exactly does it mean? This informative, and at times unflinching, collection of essays explores the radical tactics used by government-sanctioned agencies, and those used by terror groups, to ferret out key intelligence from detainees. Topics range from the Geneva Convention to the conditions at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to the impact of the viral execution videos released by ISIS. A frank look at a difficult subject, this book is recommended for older readers who may already be studying the effects of war or current events.
Author: John W. Schiemann Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0190262362 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
Is interrogational torture effective? What do we mean by "effective"? How brutal can torture get and be considered justifiable? In this book, John Schiemann adopts game theory in an attempt to answer these questions, walking the reader through the logic of interrogational torture - and finding that it is far more brutal than proponents believe.
Author: James E. Mitchell, Ph.D. Publisher: Forum Books ISBN: 1101906855 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qa'ida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training U.S. military members to resist interrogation should they be captured, Mitchell, aware of the urgent need to prevent impending catastrophic attacks, worked with the CIA to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques"--which included waterboarding. In Enhanced Interrogation, Mitchell now offers a first-person account of the EIT program, providing a contribution to our historical understanding of one of the most controversial elements of America's ongoing war on terror. Readers will follow him inside the secretive "black sites" and cells of terrorists and terror suspects where he personally applied enhanced interrogation techniques. Mitchell personally questioned thirteen of the most senior high-value detainees in U.S. custody, including Abu Zubaydah; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the amir or "commander" of the USS Cole bombing; and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terror attacks--obtaining information that he maintains remains essential to winning the war against al-Qa'ida and informing our strategy to defeat ISIS and all of radical Islam. From the interrogation program's earliest moments to its darkest hours, Mitchell also lifts the curtain on its immediate effects, the controversy surrounding its methods, and its downfall. He shares his view that EIT, when applied correctly, were useful in drawing detainees to cooperate, and that, when applied incorrectly, they were counter-productive. He also chronicles what it is like to undertake a several-years-long critical mission at the request of the government only to be hounded for nearly a decade afterward by congressional investigations and Justice Department prosecutors. Gripping in its detail and deeply illuminating, Enhanced Interrogation argues that it is necessary for America to take strong measures to defend itself from its enemies and that the country is less safe now without them than it was before 9/11.
Author: Christina Ann-Marie DiEdoardo Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1440862281 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 387
Book Description
A comprehensive look at torture, this book examines societal understanding of its use, how we got here, and how it might be regarded in the future. Torture and Enhanced Interrogation: A Reference Handbook begins with an overview of the history of torture, beginning in Ancient Greece and continuing to Guantanamo Bay and beyond. After grounding the reader in the historical fundamentals, the work goes on to examine the key controversies that surround the use of torture, including but not limited to whether it should be used at all as an aid to interrogation or to procure testimony. Then, the book presents the views of several outside contributors with personal experience or special expertise in the area. The book achieves a balance of profiles of those persons and organizations that have played a role in the development of our understanding of torture, a data and documents section, and an annotated bibliography for future research, as well as an event timeline and glossary of key terms. This volume is aims to present facts in as objective a way as possible while providing readers with the resources they need for further study.
Author: Jose A. Rodriguez Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 145166348X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
An explosive memoir about the creation and implementation of the controversial Enhanced Interrogation Techniques by the former Chief Operations Officer for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
Author: Jeremy Raguain Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 3668446369 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 26
Book Description
Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Region: USA, grade: 77.00%, University of Cape Town, course: Conflict in World Politics, language: English, abstract: The U.S.’s War on Terror has generated and continues to engender a great deal of international and domestic condemnation. This essay consequently analyses one of the most controversial and insidious repercussions of the ‘War on Terror’: the U.S.’s use of torture on terrorist suspects. Ultimately, this paper argues that torture as a counter-terrorism tactic was an ill-conceived act of desperation that violated human rights, damaged the U.S. government’s integrity and potentially increased terrorism. For this reason, the U.S.’s choice of torture is argued to be the basest of its mistakes in its War on Terror. Thus, this discussion focuses on the emergence of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, cases of torture at Guantanamo Bay, the indefensibility of torture and the irreconcilable consequences of state sponsored torture. To substantiate its main arguments, this analysis draws on the International Committee of the Red Cross Report On The Treatment Of Fourteen High Value Detainees In CIA Custody and reports from the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence.
Author: Jared Del Rosso Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231539495 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
When the photographs depicting torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were released in 2004, U.S. politicians attributed the incident to a few bad apples in the American military, exonerated high-ranking members of the George W. Bush administration, promoted Guantánamo as a model prison, and dismissed the illegality of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation." By the end of the Bush administration, members of both major congressional parties had come to denounce enhanced interrogation as torture and argue for the closing of Guantánamo. What initiated this shift? In Talking About Torture, Jared Del Rosso reviews transcripts from congressional hearings and scholarship on denial, torture, and state violence to document this wholesale change in rhetoric and attitude toward the use of torture by the CIA and the U.S. military during the War on Terror. He plots the evolution of the "torture issue" in U.S. politics and its manipulation by politicians to serve various ends. Most important, Talking About Torture integrates into the debate about torture the testimony of those who suffered under American interrogation practices and demonstrates how the conversation continues to influence current counterterrorism policies, such as the reliance on drones.
Author: Alfred McCoy Publisher: Metropolitan Books ISBN: 1429900687 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
A startling exposé of the CIA's development and spread of psychological torture, from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and beyond In this revelatory account of the CIA's secret, fifty-year effort to develop new forms of torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy uncovers the deep, disturbing roots of recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Far from aberrations, as the White House has claimed, A Question of Torture shows that these abuses are the product of a long-standing covert program of interrogation. Developed at the cost of billions of dollars, the CIA's method combined "sensory deprivation" and "self-inflicted pain" to create a revolutionary psychological approach—the first innovation in torture in centuries. The simple techniques—involving isolation, hooding, hours of standing, extremes of hot and cold, and manipulation of time—constitute an all-out assault on the victim's senses, destroying the basis of personal identity. McCoy follows the years of research—which, he reveals, compromised universities and the U.S. Army—and the method's dissemination, from Vietnam through Iran to Central America. He traces how after 9/11 torture became Washington's weapon of choice in both the CIA's global prisons and in "torture-friendly" countries to which detainees are dispatched. Finally McCoy argues that information extracted by coercion is worthless, making a case for the legal approach favored by the FBI. Scrupulously documented and grippingly told, A Question of Torture is a devastating indictment of inhumane practices that have spread throughout the intelligence system, damaging American's laws, military, and international standing.