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Routine and systematic torture is at
the heart of America 's "War on Terror"

Comment by Larry Ross, December 15, 2006

George Monbiot describes "total sensory deprivation" a US technique of torture that often makes prisoners like Jose Padilla lose their minds. Jose Padilla, a US  citizen detained as an "enemy combatant" and suspected of planning to detonate a dirty bomb, was imprisoned for 3 years without any charge being laid against him. He was subjected to "total sensory deprivation”. Now...."his mind is no longer there" Monbiot wrote.

Other techniques are documented by "The Detainees Abuse and Accountability Project (DAA), a coalition of academics and human rights groups. They have documented the abuse or killing of 460 inmates of US military prisons in Afghanistan , Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay . The prisoners were beaten, raped, forced to abuse themselves, forced to maintain "stress positions" and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation and mock executions."...The DAA points out that no officer has yet been held to account for torture practised by subordinates. US torturers appear to enjoy impunity" except for "a very few small fish", Monbiot writes.

 "Torture of all kinds - physical or mental - produces the result that people will say anything to make it end" Monbiot writes. Many experts have said the same thing- that in interrogators experience, torture produces unreliable results.  So why would an all-powerful Administration, set up a gigantic billion dollar system to use foreign prisons in Dictatorships which use torture, as well as its own torture prisons, engage in these practices which are against the US Constitution, produce no reliable results, create much fear and loathing of the US, and are so obviously counter-productive?

The suspects are kidnapped from any country in the world, and without charge, delivered to prisons for torture in many countries for indefinite periods.

In many cases they 'disappear' which means they are tortured to death.

Bear in mind that the USA calls itself a 'Christian society' led by a Born Again Fundamentalist Christian named George Bush. He likes to claim "that he is fighting a war against threats to the "values of civilised nations - terror, cruelty, barbarism and extremism".

In fact he is a war criminal using "terror, cruelty, barbarism and extremism" in direct defiance of the teachings of Jesus Christ the Lord, who he and millions of Americans claim to follow. He uses the very techniques he denounces, backed by all the power of the super state to enforce his will to conquer the countries he has illegally invaded. 

By the widespread use of torture for no useable results, the Bush regime will nevertheless accomplish some of the important goals of a dictatorship.

Every human being in the world can feel intimidation in any dictatorship. People are encouraged to believe they will not lose their job, be kidnapped or tortured, if they keep a low profile and do not protest such outrages to their fellow man. Torture of opponents, which in practice turns out to be anyone, kidnapped at anytime for phoney trumped-up reasons, encourages people not to protest any other acts of the dictator, such as illegally invading Iraq and killing 655,000 people, or planning to wage pre-emptive nuclear war against Iran and possibly other chosen targets. Everyone is meant to feel intimidated.

It's a very effective tool in the CIA-Pentagon psychological warfare tool boxes

Remember that the dictator has warned you: "You are with us or with the terrorists". Torture of anyone is a way of underlining this statement. Bush means it and his US Senate and Congress have passed laws that will soon make it very real for those Americans who dare to oppose their very own home-grown dictator. According to the new laws, they can be taken, imprisoned and tortured as 'enemy combatants'. The Democratic Party respect and follow the dictator and obey his commands, as they are still doing in the USA today. Huge war budgets to fight illegal and unjustified wars and fascist-type legislation have been approved by most Democrats. Now they have won in the Congress and Senate and they now directly share the responsibility for the war in Iraq and whatever outrage comes next. Of course they may stage a little cosmetic opposition for the benefit of the 7 out of 10 Americans, which polls show disapprove of the war. But in the real world the Democrats never shrink from repeating and following meekly, every Bush lie or proposal that their media endlessly repeat for the Bush regime.

Will they believe and follow a US-staged "False Flag" terrorist attack on the US to incriminate Iran and provide a false justification to make war on that country?

Only if Americans can be forewarned and educated, is it possible that enough people will resist and act against Bush's next pre-planned act of war and dictatorship before it is launched.

That makes it particularly difficult. Because once a so-called 'justifying terrorist event' has taken place, and the new pre-emptive war launched, the US will be in the grip of a rapidly developing, pre-planned massive pro-war campaign, with stringent new fascist legislation to greatly increase presidential dictatorial power. In other words protest, disagreement and impeachment actions will be of no use, once the fog of a massive new war takes over the minds of most American people.

Remember, with pre-emptive nuclear war millions can be killed in hours. The world, if it continues, will be irreparably damaged for all the time that remains.

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Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America's "war on terror"

by George Monbiot, December 12, 2006

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

Last week, defence lawyers acting for José Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant", released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk - taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Is Padilla really that dangerous? Far from it: his warders describe him as so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for "a piece of furniture". The purpose of these measures appeared to be to sustain the regime under which he had lived for more than three years: total sensory deprivation. He had been kept in a blacked-out cell, unable to see or hear anything beyond it. Most importantly, he had had no human contact, except for being bounced off the walls from time to time by his interrogators. As a result, he appears to have lost his mind. I don't mean this metaphorically. I mean that his mind is no longer there.

The forensic psychiatrist who examined him says that he "does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, ie, post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation". José Padilla appears to have been lobotomised: not medically, but socially.

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