Where Even Nightmares Are Classified: Psychiatric Care at Guantánamo | Hacker News Reader

Where Even Nightmares Are Classified: Psychiatric Care at Guantánamo

nytimes.com

82 pointsleephillips69 comments

Ultimately, a person cannot control what other people do, but that person can control what decisions they make. After WW2, we decided that "following orders" is no excuse for war crimes (Nuremberg principle IV). To me, the situation seems eerily reminiscent of the doctor in V for Vendetta.

    Delia Surridge: [Curtains are drawn back, allowing moonlight to come in]
    It's you, isn't it? You've come to kill me?

    V: Yes.

    Delia Surridge: Thank God.

    Delia Surridge: After what happened. After what they did. I thought about
    killing myself. I knew that one day you'd come for me. I didn't know what
    they were going to do. I swear to you. Read my journal.

    V: What they did was only possible because of you.

    Delia Surridge: Oppenheimer was able to change more than a course of a
    war. It changed the entire course of human history. Is it wrong to hold
    on to that kind of hope?

    V: I've not come for what you've hoped to do. I've come for what you did.

    Delia Surridge: It's funny. I was given one of your roses today. I wasn't
    sure you were the terrorist until I saw it. What a strange coincidence
    that I should be given one today.

    V: There are no coincidences, Delia. Only the illusion of coincidences.

One of the most disturbing stories that I don't hear mentioned is of Sean Baker, who was working undercover for the USAF as part of an attempt to gauge the abuses at Guantanamo. Baker was beaten by the guards so badly that he got a serious brain injury.

"In January 2003, Baker was ordered by an officer at Guantanamo to play the role of a prisoner in a training drill. [...] The soldiers in the reaction force were operating under the impression that he was a genuine detainee that had assaulted a sergeant. [...] Although Baker shouted out the safeword ("red") he had been given to stop the exercise and stated that he was a U.S. soldier, the soldier continued beating Baker's head against the floor and choking him. Only after he ripped his prison jumpsuit in the struggle, revealing that he was wearing a battle dress uniform and government-issue boots underneath, did the beating stop."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Baker_(soldier)

How were the soldiers of the reaction force supposed to know the safe word?

The article doesn't mention anything about working under cover to gauge guantanomo abuses. It says it was a drill exercise for handling uncooperative prisoners.

Oi... wrong about that it looks like. I could swear I read something a long time ago about this that said it was at least part of an internal investigation, but maybe not. He was a veteran of the USAF and a military policemen at the time, and one of the higher officers asked him to do the drill apparently.

Seems pretty cruel to me. Would be nice if we had some sort of standards or guidelines or laws against this sort of treatment of prisoners.

Would one need a safe word at all if we did?

It is just plainly hypocritical to have psychiatric care at Guantánamo. The single purpose of that institution is to destroy people on the inside and outside.

In that kind of environment, I imagine the psychiatrists could only make things worse.

Reminds me of Peter Gabriel's 1982 song "Wallflower":

  "Loaded questions
  From clean white coats
  Their eyes are all as hidden
  As their Hippocratic Oaths"

The song is painfully truthful still.

Psychologists were recruited in order to build the protocol for breaking a person. Not safety protocols or whatnot, but they used their knowledge to permanently render people insane.

It isn't a stretch to assume psychotropic drugs were used to torture the prisoners as well.

https://www.rt.com/usa/318581-lawsuit-cia-torture-psychologi...

They don't care if you think they are hypocrites, they are believers in their own righteousness.

I wonder, do people broadly take away this message from Serenity? Not the slick-talkin space cowboys are cool message, the message about believing. The theme is repeated in the movie, but it's directly delivered by Shepherd Book. He labels the government antagonist as a believer. He literally says to Mal I don't care what you believe in, just believe in it.

In the end, the only thing that stops the believer is having his entire world torn down.

But yeah, it's pretty hypocritical.

I took a completely different message from Serenity. Shepherd new what Mal believed in and was encouraging him to stand for it. Up until that point in the film, he had behaved as if he were just a leaf on the wind.

I'm not sure that Shepherd's advice would have been the same had Mal believed differently.

That is kind of what I mean with believer, someone who is driven by their beliefs (rather than drifting or whatever).

The "we didn't know" bit is eerily familiar and I will not expand. The other thing that came to mind was the 1971 Stanford Experiment (Zimbardo). It is ironical that this experiment would not be able to take place today, out of "ethical" considerations but that its real-life version is publicly funded and tacitly approved. All this is extremely frightening...

I think people still don't really know. Forced sterilization was routine in parts of the US up until the 1970s (and widespread prior to WWII).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#Unite...

Interestingly the story of A. Turing usually ends with WWII, and doesn't go on to tell that the state he did so much for forcedly sterilized him, driving him into suicide.

I get the vague impression that there was some sort of unspoken deal not to prosecute the people who ordered torture and the people who followed those unlawful orders for the sake of reconciliation between sides of culture wars.

How could we have prosecuted the torturers but not the people giving the orders? Or, how could we prosecute the former vice president, but not the former commander in chief? Even though we are part of treaties that promise we will not torture, practical politics seems to be more powerful than the rule of law, and there would have had to be a much more overwhelming mandate.

Instead, it seems like we have forgiven people for commandeering the power we gave them for unlawful uses from one perspective[1], but the other perspective is that they did not do something wrong. Based on the rhetoric of this campaign it seems like timidity, instead of leading to some sort of reconciliation, has lead to the normalization of torture. Now even low caliber network television shows such as 24 and Madame Secretary have protagonists casually carrying out or ordering torture without the implicit condemnation that would have been written into the plot 20 years ago.

[1] Forgiving the breach of trust for misusing power you gave someone is of course different than the type of forgiveness actual victims could grant.

Unspoken deal? Obama literally said we "should look forward not backwards" to Bush's crimes as soon as he got elected. And now Trump may hire some of the same worst of the worst people that Bush hired, and went unpunished.

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme, especially when people refuse to condemn certain past actions and "move forward" as if nothing happened. And then get surprised that those same actions are done again.

This is one of the best articles I've read post-election. I do hope this time America actually does wake-up and look itself in the mirror. It's about time it did that.

https://medium.com/@omarkamel/im-arab-and-many-of-us-are-gla...

I've also said before that Americans don't really get what mass surveillance is about, and are thus allowing it to happen and expand under their "favorite president" because they've never really had to suffer for it, as some eastern European countries have. Well, now, they may get that opportunity, and even some staunch surveillance defenders are getting freaked out about it. Good luck.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161111/00230136015/long-...

Let's not forget that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for ...well, for not being Bush?

A prize from a war profiteur in explosives and munitions to a war monger of drones.

So many things are failing, sometimes I think we are a hopeless race.

But fortunately, there are decent people around - and that gives me hope.

I'm not saying Obama's look-forward-not-backward schtick was the moral decision, and I can't really defend it on moral grounds at all, so I won't. But, the notion of a new president coming in and immediately prosecuting members of the previous administration suddenly sounds a lot scarier when the next president has no moral compass and has openly run on the platform of locking up his political enemies.

That said, the architects of the Bush torture program deserve to rot in jail.

Remember when Obama promised to close the Guantánamo prison? I think that was more than 8 years ago now. Good times. I even believed it. I guess he didn't care that much about human rights after all.

Read this:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/01/why-obama-has-f...

Yes, it's very long. It turned out to be much harder to close Guantánamo Bay than Obama thought, with powerful forces in the government opposing or stalling.

(It's also illustrative of the difficulties Trump may have carrying through any of his promises that are controversial with the Republican orthodoxy.)

Whether it was feasible for Obama to close it or not, it's hard to deny that there was a fundamental shift in Obama's ideology once he took office (see: extra-judicial assassinations, abandoning Guantanamo closure, etc)

I suspect that there are some pretty powerful briefings a new president receives that draw back the veil in such a way that targeted killings and torture seem like the only effective response.

That or the surveillance apparatus was used in a way so as to ensure that he toed the line...

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post today about these covert-op and nuclear briefings for the president-elect:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/presi...

Some quotes that kind of confirm what you inferred about Obama:

After one of the briefings in 2008, Obama told a close adviser that it was perhaps one of the most sobering experiences of his life. He said, “I’m inheriting a world that could blow up any minute in half a dozen ways, and I will have some powerful but limited and perhaps even dubious tools to keep it from happening.”

“Events are messy out there,” he said. “At any given moment of the day, there are explosive, tragic, heinous, hazardous things taking place.” He acknowledged that as president it was his responsibility to deal with all these problems. “People are saying, ‘You’re the most powerful person in the world. Why aren’t you doing something about it?’ ”

The following made my hair raise a bit:

Trump will receive a book of options benignly called the “Presidential Decision Handbook.” This top secret/code-word book, known as the “Black Book,” of about 75 pages has separate contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against potential adversaries such as Russia and China. ... Two officials said that the “Black Book” also includes estimates on the number of casualties for each of the main options that run into the millions, and in some cases over 100 million.

A man who habitually gets into 3am Twitter fights will command choices that can result in the near-instant death of 100+ million people. That's way more than Hitler, Stalin and Mao managed to kill all together. It's a strange world.

I think we can't discuss it without taking into account the fact that the President effectively lacks the power to close it himself. He has greatly reduced the population there, and may reduce it more before his term ends.

The focus on Guantanamo in particular is disturbing. We operate other prisons with similar purposes, practices, and conditions around the world. Even the people who wanted it closed only wanted that one closed.

I'm surprised they didn't just move everyone to black sites and call it a day.

Remember when Congress worked tirelessly to block him, and ended up winning because they're ultimately the ones in control? Obama shouldn't have promised something beyond his power, but you shouldn't have believed him either, considering.

Trump has said that "torture works", and "I like waterboarding a lot", and that he would "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding".

When asked about former CIA Director Michael Hayden’s recent comments that the military could defy unlawful orders to torture or kill civilians, Trump said, "They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse, believe me."

Thanks 50% of American voters. You're helping to make the world an even worse shithole than it already is.

Trump couldn't have done it without you.

No presidential candidate got ≥50% of the vote. Clinton got the most votes, but still less than half. And that's just out of votes cast. Clinton got the backing of barely 27% of eligible voters and Trump got even less.

Comment said "of American voters".

If you don't vote, you lose it, so why mention this?

To me "voters" seems as likely to mean "those eligible to vote" as not. I agree that the proportion of votes cast is more relevant.

Even if you include only votes cast, both Clinton and Trump got < 50% of votes.

Oh, then if Trump only got 47% of the vote, the OP's point is irrelevant? Phew.

Well, Hillary received more votes than Trump either way.

I think people voted for Trump because they agree with his stance. Is that such a ridiculous idea?

Trump is a reflection of American society.

Or not?

I share your condemnation of torture, but can we at least drop the partisanship and admit the alternative was hardly any better:

> So the problem for the US and the Europeans has been from the very beginning: What is it you -- who is it you are going to try to arm? [Hillary Clinton -- Goldman Sachs speeches]

In a world where the US acknowledges its role funneling weapons to extremists, the mainstream media doesn't raise an eyebrow at drone-bombings and the President is openly running an extrajudicial kill-list out of the White House, having a presidential candidate suggest that torture is a legitimate tool of war isn't even comparatively retrograde.

The staff and all involved are traitors to the human race. I hope they're charged as war criminals some day.

Unfortunately, it might be a decade before that would even be possible again.

We can only hope that he'll be impeached for his raping/sexual assaulting.

Impeaching that rapey rapscallion with our House & Senate? Doubtful.

I don't foresee either changing, the Democrats are not likely to have better turnout 2 or 6 years from now, so the mid-terms are likely both losers that will give Trump a stronger House & Senate.

I predict a huge Democratic turnout in 2018. I don't think Trump will run for reelection in 2020.

I predict that Trump will actually be very popular and win 2020 in a landslide. The things that Trump campaigned on aren't necessarily the things that he actually needs to do to be successful.

Good luck with that, I don't see Democrats surging in 2018, or retaking much ground locally in the interim. At the local level, the Democratic party is dead. The party needs to have a few dozen people volunteering in each district, so that we can actually have decent momentum to retake each state house & senate. Without that, the Democrats are sunk.

For a lewd discussion? Show me proof of rape.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/woman-says-she-was...

I did say proof didn't I?

Is this the same Rolling Stone that wrote "A rape on campus"? I note the article says "Four people close to Leeds corroborated her account" - does this mean close to her on the plane, or personal friends?

For that it must be a war.

Killing random people in terror acts is not making you a warrior, it just de-facto withdraws your human rights.

Isn't terrorism outside war a criminal act? Aren't human rights so called because all humans have them?

Formally, yes. But let's remember why rights and laws exist at all. To regulate the society and reintegrate erroneous elements after correction. In practice, you cannot reintegrate extremist outsiders, because they are not even 'our elements'. (I'm not american, if that is important.)

If we get human rights as an axiom, then yes, these are broken. But the picture is much wider now than just 'all humans are equal and same in rights', because enemy doesn't think so (also as an axiom). When two axioms clash, only bigger theory can resolve that. Am I wrong?

As I understand it, human rights aren't entirely uniform. There is a right to liberty that doesn't extend to all convicted criminals. However, convicted criminals (even those convicted of serious crimes) should be (and often are) granted some rights. For one thing, they might be innocent or improperly convicted.

There are no exceptions to human rights as listed in the UN Declaration on Human Rights. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/inde... However, article 29 says:

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

So you can be limited, legally, in the exercise of your rights, but you still have all the rights.

There is a simplified version of the UNDHR (easily readable and intended for young people) at http://www.youthforhumanrights.org/what-are-human-rights/uni...

Youth for Human Rights International is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to educate the young on human rights and activate supporters and promoters and defenders of human rights.

There are many victims of torture, including those doing it.

They get promoted. Potential new CIA director:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rt.com/document/5826a952c46...

Who would I trust more than RT to tell me about American politics?

> I hope they're charged as war criminals some day.

Yeah, one must always Hope 4 Change

Victors don't get charged with war crimes.

They will die in their own beds, surrounded by their grandchildren, whom your grandchildren will be begging for a job.

>Even interviewing prisoners to assess their mental health set off recriminations and claims that she was torturing them. “What would your Jesus think?” they demanded.

Oh, so you didn't expect symmetric suffering, right?

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