Psychologists Shielded U.S. Torture Program, Report Finds

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erg923 said:
I hope we aren't suggesting that sleep deprivation is torture...because we might as lock up every NCO and drill instructor in the armed forces. Probably some medical residency TDs too.
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Being deprived of sleep for training, in voluntary circumstances seems quite different than having it done to you along with cold, heat, waterboarding that occurred to those detainees. Additionally torture has been shown not to be effective. Your minimization of these illegal, cruel, and useless actions. I guess I'm not surprised you took this position given how you treat others on this board.
 
erg923 said:
I am not for "torture" of course, but, call me crazy, I do not see why psychological science cant or shouldn't used for purposes of national security. Don't swat teams and ATF operations utilize principle of psychology for hostage negotiations, prolonged standoffs, etc.
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Are you serious? This playing dumb is dumb. Sadly we don't have an equivalent of the hippocratic oath, but maybe we adopt one. You minimize torture and state it's founded on science so it should be ok. Sickening. Should we ask to see your eugenics club card? That nonsense was based on science too.
 
WisNeuro said:
That would be great, if only terrorists had been tortured. Several governments, ourselves and allies, have readily admitted that some of their detainees who have been tortured were later found to have been detained with no actual evidence of them being involved in any terroristic activities.

I, for one, feel that if we as a country are going to openly flaunt the Geneva conventions that we have signed, we should at least have the common courtesy to take our name off the document. Relatedly, if a psychologist is going to go against their ethical code and commit war crimes, they should at least have the dignity to revoke their own license.
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I think it would have been great if nobody had been tortured. It's ineffective, and on that grounds simply cruel for cruelty's sake.
 
erg923 said:
And that, I agree, is wrong. Again, I am not advocating torture. But some of the activities (eg., sleep deprivation) people seem to be getting so ruffled about dont strike me as being much rougher than what any marine or soldier endures in basic training and/or AIT.
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Again, entering the Marine's a voluntary act. Most know it's coming. This is a poor comparison and should be abandoned. They also used low temperature, and one detainee died. Marines train in the snow, right? No biggie.
 
erg923 said:
Im ok with sleep deprivation (as an example). Maybe loud speakers with some AC/DC (again as an example..have no idea if there is any empirical support for this). If you consider that torture, so be it.
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I'm curious what you make of the CIA's own psychologists rancor against these practices. They seemed to think it was wrong, and reported it.
 
WisNeuro said:
I'd be careful about throwing accusations of misconduct. We can't infer details of his clinical work merely from his political leanings.
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It's more than political leanings. But you're right, it's not misconduct, it's just disgusting.
 
@LAPsyGuy
Please stop with the vendetta against Erg. It does not serve any purpose that I can see. So you don't like him and his views and his snarky style of posting. Move on. I actually appreciate his style and have found it quite humorous at times. I have been the target of it once or twice myself.
upload_2015-7-16_13-11-39.jpeg
 
smalltownpsych said:
@LAPsyGuy
Please stop with the vendetta against Erg. It does not serve any purpose that I can see. So you don't like him and his views and his snarky style of posting. Move on. I actually appreciate his style and have found it quite humorous at times. I have been the target of it once or twice myself.
View attachment 194008
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No. It's actually not a vendetta. I can see why it may seem like that. I'm actually just responding to the things he writes. It just happens that it's usually him saying things I feel need responses. Thanks for your concern.
 
WisNeuro said:
It certainly seems like a vendetta at times. Sure, I disagree with him wholeheartedly at times, but this level of constant threadjacking is tiresome.
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Wise, sorry about that. I actually don't think I thread jack without the help of others. For instance a couple of weeks ago, you just kept engaging me. Should I not answer you? Today, I was simply responding to posts as I read them. I can try to summarize in the future. Had I read initially how the brave soldier had with a few simple sentences, silenced erg with shame, I wouldn't have posted at all.
 
"threadjacking" - had to reread the context around that one a couple times...

"Hey, have you guys ever threadjacked?"
"I totally threadjacked that guy. On his forum, I mean."
"Is it normal to threadjack?"
 
WisNeuro said:
Summarizing would be good. Or, better yet, write it all down in your "I hate Erg" journal.
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Again. I don't hate him, and I don't have a vendetta. It's really just about reacting to things as I read them.
 
I think if Erg receives infractions or warnings for saying certain things that he does, there will be no assumptions of "vendetta" or people derailing a thread, when someone makes a legitimate response to this person's intentionally inflammatory comments.

Imagine if somebody had said something about a gay person having been beaten to death and someone said something like, "I have no sympathy for 'perverts'." This might be funny to some people who also have subtle hostility towards gay people but it's not funny to me at all. Nor is it funny to many other people who knows how labels have been used to justify hurting others. That's what Erg does with calling Iraqis or Muslims who have been tortured "terrorist" or "Jihadist", as in post 19. But read through all his responses.

When we have report of well over a million people inured and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of US invasion, many millions displaced, thousands of children orphaned, and then we are now talking about torture of those people, many of whom were being held without us without sufficient evidence, without us respecting their rights, and this is the response by a supposed professional psychologist to involvement of APA in all of this? It's disgusting. I don't care who Erg is, and I am not making judgement of how good of a psychologist he is in real life, but the the responses he has been making on this forum on this topic are intentionally inflammatory. So anybody who thinks some people just happen to be "picking" on him, instead of defending him, look for a pattern.

I have been a moderator in several small and very large forums and in comparison the moderating here is surprisingly uneven, with certain few members or certain views being treated differently than others. For instance in one of the forums we have a rule about not posting inflammatory or provocative comments. If we did not have that rule, people could make all kinds of bigoted (but carefully worded) posts about gays, Jews, Muslims, women, trans people, about issues such as abortion, gun ownership, violence of all kind (be it war, invasion, occupation, terror, whatever) only to get a reaction out of others and bait them. That's what Erg does and he is well aware of it. When someone answers him directly, he does not engage them, as do people who are trolling, who just want a reaction, not a serious respectful argument. For instance see post 80.

There is time and place for jokes and making light of issues. And there are forums that have sections where people can chat and joke about things, where we don't engage in serious discussions. There they're allowed to mock anything they like (within reason), be it 9/11 tragedy, torture of Iraqis, Nazi atrocities, atomic bombing of Japan, whatever. He is welcome to go to such forums and make these comments.

But on such a forum, in this section, as I understand it, we have serious discussions and at least he should try to pretend to care, if he does not care about Muslims/Arabs or people being tortured. Many people visit these forums, people of different races and religions, psychology students and other psychologists, member of armed forces and their families, not to mention people who have been tortured or know others who have. I first visited this forum along a few other students, when we were trying to decide if psychology was the right choice for us.

So please show professionalism and respect and humanity. I hope Erg and moderators pay more attention to these issues that come up over and over again. This is very unprofessional.
 
Harmos said:
I think if Erg receives infractions or warnings for saying certain things that he does, there will be no assumptions of "vendetta" or people derailing a thread, when someone makes a legitimate response to this person's intentionally inflammatory comments.

Imagine if somebody had said something about a gay person having been beaten to death and someone said something like, "I have no sympathy for 'perverts'." This might be funny to some people who also have subtle hostility towards gay people but it's not funny to me at all. Nor is it funny to many other people who knows how labels have been used to justify hurting others. That's what Erg does with calling Iraqis or Muslims who have been tortured "terrorist" or "Jihadist", as in post 19. But read through all his responses.

When we have report of well over a million people inured and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of US invasion, many millions displaced, thousands of children orphaned, and then we are now talking about torture of those people, many of whom were being held without us without sufficient evidence, without us respecting their rights, and this is the response by a supposed professional psychologist to involvement of APA in all of this? It's disgusting. I don't care who Erg is, and I am not making judgement of how good of a psychologist he is in real life, but the the responses he has been making on this forum on this topic are intentionally inflammatory. So anybody who thinks some people just happen to be "picking" on him, instead of defending him, look for a pattern.

I have been a moderator in several small and very large forums and in comparison the moderating here is surprisingly uneven, with certain few members or certain views being treated differently than others. For instance in one of the forums we have a rule about not posting inflammatory or provocative comments. If we did not have that rule, people could make all kinds of bigoted (but carefully worded) posts about gays, Jews, Muslims, women, trans people, about issues such as abortion, gun ownership, violence of all kind (be it war, invasion, occupation, terror, whatever) only to get a reaction out of others and bait them. That's what Erg does and he is well aware of it. When someone answers him directly, he does not engage them, as do people who are trolling, who just want a reaction, not a serious respectful argument. For instance see post 80.

There is time and place for jokes and making light of issues. And there are forums that have sections where people can chat and joke about things, where we don't engage in serious discussions. There they're allowed to mock anything they like (within reason), be it 9/11 tragedy, torture of Iraqis, Nazi atrocities, atomic bombing of Japan, whatever. He is welcome to go to such forums and make these comments.

But on such a forum, in this section, as I understand it, we have serious discussions and at least he should try to pretend to care, if he does not care about Muslims/Arabs or people being tortured. Many people visit these forums, people of different races and religions, psychology students and other psychologists, member of armed forces and their families, not to mention people who have been tortured or know others who have. I first visited this forum along a few other students, when we were trying to decide if psychology was the right choice for us.

So please show professionalism and respect and humanity. I hope Erg and moderators pay more attention to these issues that come up over and over again. This is very unprofessional.
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Thank you. You said it more sensitively and eloquently than I could or have said it. I will try to follow your example.
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about calling out his logical fallacies and when he is just straight out objectively wrong, as there were instances of this in the thread. But, no need to resort to name calling, or making inferences about unethical clinical practices. As Harmos somewhat verbosely stated, humor can play a role at times, but there are clearly some crossings of lines in terms of tact here. We can all be guilty of it at times, just seems to have run rampant here.
 
Terrorists as "heathens" is being nice. You're welcome.
 
Harmos said:
I think if Erg receives infractions or warnings for saying certain things that he does, there will be no assumptions of "vendetta" or people derailing a thread, when someone makes a legitimate response to this person's intentionally inflammatory comments.

Imagine if somebody had said something about a gay person having been beaten to death and someone said something like, "I have no sympathy for 'perverts'." This might be funny to some people who also have subtle hostility towards gay people but it's not funny to me at all. Nor is it funny to many other people who knows how labels have been used to justify hurting others. That's what Erg does with calling Iraqis or Muslims who have been tortured "terrorist" or "Jihadist", as in post 19. But read through all his responses.

When we have report of well over a million people inured and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of US invasion, many millions displaced, thousands of children orphaned, and then we are now talking about torture of those people, many of whom were being held without us without sufficient evidence, without us respecting their rights, and this is the response by a supposed professional psychologist to involvement of APA in all of this? It's disgusting. I don't care who Erg is, and I am not making judgement of how good of a psychologist he is in real life, but the the responses he has been making on this forum on this topic are intentionally inflammatory. So anybody who thinks some people just happen to be "picking" on him, instead of defending him, look for a pattern.

I have been a moderator in several small and very large forums and in comparison the moderating here is surprisingly uneven, with certain few members or certain views being treated differently than others. For instance in one of the forums we have a rule about not posting inflammatory or provocative comments. If we did not have that rule, people could make all kinds of bigoted (but carefully worded) posts about gays, Jews, Muslims, women, trans people, about issues such as abortion, gun ownership, violence of all kind (be it war, invasion, occupation, terror, whatever) only to get a reaction out of others and bait them. That's what Erg does and he is well aware of it. When someone answers him directly, he does not engage them, as do people who are trolling, who just want a reaction, not a serious respectful argument. For instance see post 80.

There is time and place for jokes and making light of issues. And there are forums that have sections where people can chat and joke about things, where we don't engage in serious discussions. There they're allowed to mock anything they like (within reason), be it 9/11 tragedy, torture of Iraqis, Nazi atrocities, atomic bombing of Japan, whatever. He is welcome to go to such forums and make these comments.

But on such a forum, in this section, as I understand it, we have serious discussions and at least he should try to pretend to care, if he does not care about Muslims/Arabs or people being tortured. Many people visit these forums, people of different races and religions, psychology students and other psychologists, member of armed forces and their families, not to mention people who have been tortured or know others who have. I first visited this forum along a few other students, when we were trying to decide if psychology was the right choice for us.

So please show professionalism and respect and humanity. I hope Erg and moderators pay more attention to these issues that come up over and over again. This is very unprofessional.
Click to expand...

Really good post. I agree that I also reacted unprofessionally to erg, but erg's comments were petty disgusting.
 
erg923 said:
So is involvement in terrorist movements/cells.
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So torture is a natural result? Your logic is poor here. Torture does not produce actionable information. If you're suggesting that it should be used as a punishment, then that is barbaric.
 
smalltownpsych said:
Calling someone who is suspected by the US government of being a terrorist a terrorist is inflammatory? That is the same thing as calling a gay person who has been beaten to death a pervert? I find that offensive to the memory of Matthew Shepard.
:wtf:
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I give in. Terrorists are: "misguided soles, with slight pension for decapitations of innocent Americans, but are generally open to reason, and just need a little CBT."

Maybe this will be PC enough for the psych crowd. They will probably be offended by something in that statement too though, so whats a guy to do?
 
You're being willfully obtuse erg. You know for a fact that there is more to torture than sleep deprivation. And, it is a known fact that many of the incarcerated and tortured individuals were later found to have no known terrorist ties. You are creating false dichotomies to justify a political position. And also not acknowledging the known science behind torture and intense interrogation sessions. You can't genuinely defend evidence based practices in other areas, but completely disregard them here.
 
erg923 said:
I give in. Terrorists are: "misguided soles, with slight pension for decapitations of innocent Americans, but are generally open to reason, and just need a little CBT."

Maybe this will be PC enough for the psych crowd. They will probably be offended by something in that statement too though, so whats a guy to do?
Click to expand...
Having your positions called disgusting shouldn't deter your from holding or sharing those positions.
 
Harmos said:
I think if Erg receives infractions or warnings for saying certain things that he does, there will be no assumptions of "vendetta" or people derailing a thread, when someone makes a legitimate response to this person's intentionally inflammatory comments.

Imagine if somebody had said something about a gay person having been beaten to death and someone said something like, "I have no sympathy for 'perverts'." This might be funny to some people who also have subtle hostility towards gay people but it's not funny to me at all. Nor is it funny to many other people who knows how labels have been used to justify hurting others. That's what Erg does with calling Iraqis or Muslims who have been tortured "terrorist" or "Jihadist", as in post 19. But read through all his responses.

When we have report of well over a million people inured and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of US invasion, many millions displaced, thousands of children orphaned, and then we are now talking about torture of those people, many of whom were being held without us without sufficient evidence, without us respecting their rights, and this is the response by a supposed professional psychologist to involvement of APA in all of this? It's disgusting. I don't care who Erg is, and I am not making judgement of how good of a psychologist he is in real life, but the the responses he has been making on this forum on this topic are intentionally inflammatory. So anybody who thinks some people just happen to be "picking" on him, instead of defending him, look for a pattern.

I have been a moderator in several small and very large forums and in comparison the moderating here is surprisingly uneven, with certain few members or certain views being treated differently than others. For instance in one of the forums we have a rule about not posting inflammatory or provocative comments. If we did not have that rule, people could make all kinds of bigoted (but carefully worded) posts about gays, Jews, Muslims, women, trans people, about issues such as abortion, gun ownership, violence of all kind (be it war, invasion, occupation, terror, whatever) only to get a reaction out of others and bait them. That's what Erg does and he is well aware of it. When someone answers him directly, he does not engage them, as do people who are trolling, who just want a reaction, not a serious respectful argument. For instance see post 80.

There is time and place for jokes and making light of issues. And there are forums that have sections where people can chat and joke about things, where we don't engage in serious discussions. There they're allowed to mock anything they like (within reason), be it 9/11 tragedy, torture of Iraqis, Nazi atrocities, atomic bombing of Japan, whatever. He is welcome to go to such forums and make these comments.

But on such a forum, in this section, as I understand it, we have serious discussions and at least he should try to pretend to care, if he does not care about Muslims/Arabs or people being tortured. Many people visit these forums, people of different races and religions, psychology students and other psychologists, member of armed forces and their families, not to mention people who have been tortured or know others who have. I first visited this forum along a few other students, when we were trying to decide if psychology was the right choice for us.

So please show professionalism and respect and humanity. I hope Erg and moderators pay more attention to these issues that come up over and over again. This is very unprofessional.
Click to expand...

I'm not defending erg, but have you read other SDN boards? They're constantly mocking serious topics and making inflammatory comments. IMO this is one of the tamer sub-forums.
 
WisNeuro said:
You're being willfully obtuse erg. You know for a fact that there is more to torture than sleep deprivation. And, it is a known fact that many of the incarcerated and tortured individuals were later found to have no known terrorist ties. You are creating false dichotomies to justify a political position. And also not acknowledging the known science behind torture and intense interrogation sessions. You can't genuinely defend evidence based practices in other areas, but completely disregard them here.
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I do not approve of torture.
 
erg923 said:
correct
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What you seem to be saying, and please correct and fill in, is that radicalization makes people evil instead of dreadfully misguided. I guess my question is how are people engaging in torture significantly less misguided than those engaging in terror?
 
LAPsyGuy said:
So your bar for what qualifies as torture is just higher?
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That is exactly what he said and it is a valid argument that people can disagree over where to draw that line. The hyperbole and strawman arguments came from the other direction.
 
smalltownpsych said:
Have you ever been incarcerated? The treatment there is pretty damn barbaric and much of it could be characterized as torture.
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I dunno...I didn't think the little baloney sandwiches they serve there were THAT bad.
 
LAPsyGuy said:
How do you determine what is torture?
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Beyond my pay grade, LaPsyGuy. I suppose I could sit here and think hard about it and type out a long response.... but I'm not going to.
 
smalltownpsych said:
Have you ever been incarcerated? The treatment there is pretty damn barbaric and much of it could be characterized as torture.
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Agreed. I think much of that system is immoral as well.
 
erg923 said:
Beyond my pay grade, LaPsyGuy. I suppose I could sit here and think hard about it and type out a long response.... but I'm not going to.
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You stated you thought sleep deprivation was not torture. HOW did you determine that? Can your process be applied to other techniques?
 
LAPsyGuy said:
Agreed. I think much of that system is immoral as well.
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The flip side of that is have you ever been assaulted or robbed or the victim of a serious crime? I have personally experienced abusive practices from both criminals and police, but I still would trust law enforcement over terrorists or gang members or misguided souls any day of the week.
 
smalltownpsych said:
The flip side of that is have you ever been assaulted or robbed or the victim of a serious crime? I have personally experienced abusive practices from both criminals and police, but I still would trust law enforcement over terrorists or gang members or misguided souls any day of the week.
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I didn't know it was a competition. I don't trust any of them.
 
LAPsyGuy said:
You stated you thought sleep deprivation was not torture. HOW did you determine that? Can your process be applied to other techniques?
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If you're looking to take subjectively out of this, then you will be waiting a long time.
 
Last edited:
erg923 said:
If you're looking to take subjectively out of this, then you will be waiting a long time.
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Because of those subjected to the techniques?
 
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