The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture

RT @CIRChrista: In his new memoir, #Bush admits that he approved #waterboarding. #torture #ruleoflaw

RT @phrTweets: More on the #CIA’s #Torture #Doctors /by Scott Horton

RT @phrTweets: BBC: Cameron 'agrees #torture #inquiry terms'

RT @phrTweets: When #research is #torture /by @Curiousreader, chief editor of @PLoSMedicine #junkscience #cia #eit

RT @phrTweets: MedCitizen: #Doctors’ roles in #torture at Guantanamo /by Jeffrey Parks, MD #junkscience #cia #eit

RT @phrTweets: Op-Ed: Say ‘Never again’ to #torture /by Rabbi David Saperstein #junkscience #experimentation #eit #cia

RT @phrTweets: “Bad Medicine”: #Doctors, #Ethics, and #Torture /by Nancy Chang, our @OpenSociety colleague #junkscience

(What I've been up to lately) RT @phrTweets: #Experiments in #Torture: Action and #Media Recap #junkscience #links

RT @phrTweets: JTA: #Jewish groups join call for #torture probe #cia #experimentation #eit #fb

RT @phrTweets: #Podcast: #Experiments in #Torture Press Conference #eit

RT @phrTweets: Exclusive: #Senate Intel Committee to Consider PHR Findings on #Torture #Experiments /by @jeff_kaye #eit

RT @phrTweets: Scott Horton: Bush-era #CIA Human #Experimentation Program Revealed #torture #eit

RT @phrTweets: NY Times Editorial: #Doctors Who Aid #Torture #experimentation #eit #fb

RT @phrTweets: Tapped: Report: US #Experimented on Terror #Detainees /by @AdamSerwer #cia #torture #eit

RT @phrTweets: Shakesville: You Can't Use People As Laboratories /by Maud #torture #experimentation #cia #eit

RT @phrTweets: Hullabaloo: First Do No Harm #torture #experimentation /by @digby56 #cia #eit

RT @phrTweets: MoJo:Did the Bush Administration #Experiment on #Detainees? /by @NickBaumann #torture #cia #eit

RT @phrTweets: PHR Report: Bush Admin Engaged in #Illegal Human #Experimentation on #Torture /by @jeff_kaye #eit

RT @phrTweets: Nature: Medics performed '#interrogation research' #CIA #torture #ethics #law

RT @phrTweets: Boing Boing interview with #Experiments in #Torture author Scott Allen, MD /by @xenijardin #eit

Torture.

Ghost detainees.

And a massive cover-up that continues even today.

This is the propulsive thriller that reveals the disturbing truths hidden behind the headlines. A thriller only former CIA operative turned bestselling novelist Barry Eisler could have written, and a story that urgently needs to be understood.

Marooned in a Manila jail after a bar fight fatality, black ops soldier Ben Treven gets a visit from his former commander, Colonel Scott Horton, who explains the price of Ben's release: find and eliminate Daniel Larison, a rogue operator from Ben's unit who has stolen ninety-two torture tapes from the CIA and is using them to blackmail the US government. But other players are after the tapes, too, and to find Larison, Ben will have to survive CIA hit teams, Blackwater mercenaries, and the long reach of the White House. He'll also have to find a way to handle Paula Lanier, a smart, sexy FBI agent who has her own reasons for wanting the tapes and is determined to get them before Ben does. With the stakes this high, everyone has an angle—everyone but Ben, who will have to find the right alliance if he wants to stay alive.

RT @phrTweets: NYT: #CIA Document Details Destruction of Tapes #torture

I've got a new post up on the #PHR blog: #Medicine Used for Harm in US #Torture #humanrights #waterboarding

AFTER five years of investigation, the Justice Department has released its findings regarding the government lawyers who authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. The report’s conclusion, that the lawyers exercised poor judgment but were not guilty of professional misconduct, is questionable at best. Still, the review reflects a commitment to a transparent investigation of professional behavior.

In contrast, the government doctors and psychologists who participated in and authorized the torture of detainees have escaped discipline, accountability or even internal investigation

RT @phrTweets: Legal Opinion Needed? Consult a Psychologist /by John Bradshaw & @Katilist #opr #olc #torture #doj

For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity

A Pentagon review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document.

Bradbury Memo methods list

We broadcast from Spokane, Washington, less than three miles from the headquarters of a secretive CIA contractor that played a key role in developing the Bush administration’s interrogation methods. The firm, Mitchell Jessen & Associates, is named after the two military psychologists who founded the company, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Beginning in 2002, the CIA hired the psychologists to train interrogators in brutal techniques, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and pain. We speak with three journalists who have closely followed the story.

April 22, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released an exhaustive review of torture under the Bush administration that, among other revelations, torpedoes the notion that the administration only chose torture as a last resort. Bush officials have long argued that they turned to coercive interrogations in 2002 only after captured al-Qaida suspects wouldn't talk, but the report shows the administration set the wheels in motion soon after 9/11. The Bush White House began planning for torture in December 2001, set up a program to develop the interrogation techniques by the next month, and the military and the CIA began training interrogators in coercive practices in early 2002, before they had any high-value al-Qaida suspects or any trouble eliciting information from detainees.

force detainees at Guantánamo Bay to stand for hours on end, in order to soften them up and make them talk to U.S. interrogators, he made a joke about it. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day," the then-defense secretary wrote on Dec. 2, 2002, at the bottom of a memo authorizing military officials to use extreme techniques against prisoners. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

WASHINGTON — A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration.

The report on abuse of captured terrorist suspects that the Senate Armed Services Committee completed last November has now been declassified. All 263 pages with light redacting can be read on-line here. (Warning: pdf.)

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

In the wake of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) report on detainee abuse, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is calling for the psychologists who justified, designed, and implemented torture for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Defense (DoD), to lose their professional licenses and to face criminal prosecution.

Today we’re releasing the declassified report [PDF] of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The report was approved by the Committee on November 20, 2008, and has, in the intervening period, been under review at the Department of Defense for declassification.

LEGO recreation of the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison by US troops and CIA interrogators.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was fond of saying that when it came to handling high value terror suspects, he would play in fair territory, but with "chalk dust on my cleats." Four legal memos released last week by the Obama Administration make it clear that the referee role in CIA interrogations was played by its medical and psychological personnel.

NEW YORK, Apr 7 (IPS) - Human rights advocates are expressing alarm about recent disclosures that medical professionals assisted the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in harsh interrogations at secret prisons overseas and at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. It has also been brought to light that judges have ignored the mental health problems of government witnesses in terror-related trials.

In his quest to obtain key documents proving that his client was tortured at the hands of the Bush administration, Smith is now involved in a truly bizarre though revealing controversy, first reported last Thursday by The Guardian. In February, Smith wrote a letter to President Obama urging Obama to authorize the release of evidence relevant to Mohamed's torture so that Obama does not become complicit in covering-up crimes of torture (which is itself a crime). Smith attached to his letter to Obama a 2-page memo detailing the facts proving his client's torture. But under the rigid rules of Guantanamo, all lawyers for detainees are barred (under threat of criminal penalties) from disclosing any information they learn from their clients -- even if the subject of the communication is the torture to which their clients were subjected -- without first obtaining the approval from something called the "Privilege Review Team," a secret tribunal of Pentagon officials who monitor and ...

Third, the Nelly account shows that health professionals are right in the thick of the torture and abuse of the prisoners—suggesting a systematic collapse of professional ethics driven by the Pentagon itself. He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners.

But a closer look at the modern history of torture suggests that exactly the opposite is true. Torture isn't an alien force invading our democracy from the benighted realms of dictatorships. In fact, it is the democracies that have been the real innovator

Jon Burge grew up in a South Side neighborhood not far from the police headquarters where he would make his name, first as a smart detective with a bright future and then as the infamous commander who special prosecutors say tortured suspects.

The debate over the wishes, intentions, and purposes of those who were responsible for Abu Ghraib is ongoing, but this point about the influence of culture is worth noting, because it highlights the need for "those outside the culture to offer external pe