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Eric Fair served as an interrogator in Iraq working as a military contractor for the private security firm CACI. [...] Fair writes about feeling haunted by what he did, what he saw and what he heard in Iraq, from the beating of prisoners to witnessing the use of sleep deprivation, stress positions and isolation to break prisoners.
[...] Raad Hussein is bound to the Palestinian chair. His hands are tied to his ankles. The chair forces him to lean forward in a crouch, forcing all of his weight onto his thighs. It's as if he's been trapped in the act of kneeling down to pray, his knees frozen just above the floor, his arms pinned below his legs. He is blindfolded. His head has collapsed into his chest. He wheezes and gasps for air. There is a pool of urine at his feet. He moans: too tired to cry, but in too much pain to remain silent.
[...] Sleep deprivation, as I've said before, can be accomplished in a matter of hours. You can let someone go to sleep in a dark room with no windows, and you can wake them up in 15 or 20 minutes. They have no idea how long they've been asleep. And with no windows, they have no idea what time of day it is. You can let them go back to sleep, and you can wake them up in 20 minutes. They still have no idea. And they've since—within 45 minutes, they've lost all sense of time. Two or three hours later, you can convince this person that he's been living for four or five days, when it's really only been an hour.
[...] [The purpose of sleep deprivation:] The complete lack of hope. It is to strip away someone's hope and to insert a different way of thinking into their mind, which would be my mind into theirs, so that they're going to cooperate with me.
Part 1: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/7/a_torturer_s_confession_former_abu
Part 2: http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/7/ex_abu_ghraib_interrogator_israelis_trained
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by RamiK on Sunday April 17 2016, @05:05AM
Absolution is given by the god and church. This isn't about morality. This is about laws rules and policy. They received their orders in writing. They complained through official channels and were reassured by the executive branch and attorney general it's all kosher. There's a limit to what can be reasonably expected of a person under such circumstances. The fact that there weren't any, and I mean ANY meaningful acts of subordination isn't to their fault. It's simply teaches us that to keep repeating this axiom of "they should have known better" is idiotic. They shouldn't have known better. No soldier ever knows better. And to have this ignorant self deluded mentality that soldiers should disobey orders when they think they're not moral, is the height of hypocrisy.
There's nothing moral in murdering other people on command. The people doing it for a living should not be expected to be saints and martyrs. They'll do as soldier always did since the dawn of time, they'll follow orders. The fact that we delude our selves they'll do any differently is what stopping constructive actions to reform the military.
The drug wars... Prohibition... Even the simplest of things like speeding tickets. When all the laws and regulation are based on lies, nothing works right and nothing gets done.
compiling...