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from: A
Question of Torture, CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on
Terror, Alfred W. McCoy,
Metropolitan, 2006. 'TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF
TORTURE In April 2004, the
American public was stunned [briefly!,
demonstrating group expectations] when CBS Television broadcast photographs
from Abu Ghraib prison, showing Iraqis naked, hooded, and contorted in
humiliating positions while U.S. soldiers stood over them, smiling.1 As the scandal grabbed
headlines around the globe, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assured
Congress that the abuse was "perpetrated by a small number of U.S.
military," whom columnist William Safire branded as
"creeps."2 Other
commentators—citing the famous Stanford prison experiment in which
ordinary students role-playing the "guards" soon became
brutal—attributed the abuse to a collapse of discipline by over-stretched
American soldiers in overcrowded prisons.3 But these photos are not, in fact, snapshots of
simple sadism or a breakdown in military discipline. Rather, they show CIA torture methods that
have metastasized like an undetected cancer inside the 'Through its use in
judicial interrogation, torture had played a central role in European law for
more than two thousand years. While
ancient 1 "delicate,
dangerous, and deceptive thing," often yielding problematic evidence. "For many persons have such strength of
body and soul that they heed pain very little, so that there is no means of
obtaining the truth from them," he explained, "while others are so
susceptible to pain that they will tell any lie rather than suffer it."20 With the rise of Christian Europe, the use of torture in
courts of law faded for several centuries[?]. Torture was antithetical to Christ's
teachings and so, in 866 [centuries late], Pope Nicholas I banned the
practice.21 But after a
Church council abolished trial by ordeal in 1215, European civil courts revived
Roman law with its reliance on torture to obtain confessions—an approach that
persisted for the next five centuries.22 With the parallel rise of the Inquisition, Church
interrogators also used torture for both confession and punishment, a procedure
that was formalized under Pope Innocent IV in 1252. By the fourteenth century, the Italian
Inquisition used the strappado to suspend the victim by ropes in
five degrees of escalating duration and severity—a scale preserved in modern
memory in the phrase "the third degree" to mean harsh police
questioning.23 The impact of judicial torture on European culture went
far beyond the dungeon, coinciding with a subtle shift in theological
emphasis from the life of Jesus
to the death of the Christ—a
change reflected in artistic representations, both painting and sculpture, of
his body being scourged, tortured, and crucified [like media stories
now: "If it bleeds it leads!"]. FROM LIMITED DETAILS
OF CHRIST'S AGONIES IN THE GOSPELS, MEDIEVAL ARTISTS, IN THE WORDS OF ONE SCHOLAR, "APPROXIMATED THESE GRISLY VIOLATIONS WITH
THE UNERRING EYE OF A FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST," CREATING AN IMAGE OF THE PAIN INFLICTED ON his [CHRIST'S] BATTERED BODY THAT MIMED [MIMICKED], AND may have LEGITIMATED, THE INCREASINGLY GRUESOME LEGAL SPECTACLE OF TORTURE AND PUBLIC EXECUTION.24 ["Monkey see, Monkey do."] 2 Excursus: from: Women
Without Superstition "No Gods—No Masters", The Collected Writings of Women Freethinkers of
the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freedom
From Religion Foundation, 1997. 'Annie
Besant The Quixotic Victorian October 1,
1847 – September 20,
1933 "God" is always the equivalent
of "I do not know." "The Gospel of Atheism"' [271] "Is
Christianity a Success? This
was published as a one-penny pamphlet by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh in
1885." [274].
"Look
where we will at the treatment experienced by the savage at Christian hands,
and we find ever the same old story—cruelty that sickens, treachery that
disgusts, brutality that appals…. Persecution also in Christendom has been more
ruthless, more bloody, more refined in cruelty, than
in lands subject to any other form of faith." [275]. End of Excursus. Later, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, the absolutist regimes elaborated on this embrace of
torture. "Military torture was
prodigious," wrote Alec Mellor of these sixteenth-century states,
"religious torture was
regularized; and judicial torture was enriched daily by new
varieties."25 But in the eighteenth century, evaluation of evidence
on its merits replaced forced confessions….' [16-17]. 3 'Under actual field conditions, the CIA's
psychological paradigm—of which this British interrogation is a textbook example—was
often supplemented by conventional physical tactics, whether from simple
cruelty or a need to accelerate psychological breakdown. With the physical thus compounding the
psychological, medieval and modern methods sometimes seemed indistinguishable. Inside the CIA's interrogation center
at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in 2002, for example, American guards would force
prisoners "to stand with their hands chained to the ceiling and their feet
shackled," creating an effect similar to the Italian Inquisition's strappado. At Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, U.S.
military police would parade Iraqi prisoners naked with plastic sandbags over
their heads, combining psychological humiliation with the pain of restricted
breathing—just as medieval victims were once displayed in town squares with
iron masks clamped on their heads, suffering both "imagined
ridiculousness" and "physical torture through obstruction of the
mouth or the nose."95 Yet there are also subtle, significant differences in the
CIA's techniques, which dispensed with crude physical implements to make
the pain seem self-inflicted. In place of the Inquisition's
"crippling stork"
that twisted the victim's body to fit into an iron frame, CIA
interrogators made their victims assume "stress positions" without
any external mechanism. Similarly, both
the Paris Inquisition's "water question" and the CIA's
"water boarding" forced fluids down the victim's throat to simulate a
sense of drowning. The Church, of course, sought to purge [create] evil with physical
punishment, while the agency [CIA] aims to induce the
survival reflex of a near-death experience and thus break the victim
psychologically.96 These modern innovations, while absent from the research
first codified in the CIA's Kubark manual, would evolve, over
time, as the agency set about propagating its new torture techniques
worldwide. Like many important
discoveries, the CIA's psychological paradigm, once a complex problem
that had challenged brilliant behavioral scientists, soon became, through this
global journey, a simple technique easily mastered by any police sergeant with
a secondary education. It would prove,
moreover, a surprisingly supple procedure, readily refined by any officer or
operative with taste for torture.'
[58-59]. ● ● ● ● ● 4 Excursus: from: http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/cross.htm "'Strange', she said, pointing to the cross hanging from her neck, 'how
the cross, an instrument of torture, has become a fashion icon. Would we use a guillotine [no!, because its symbolism does not include immortality,
etc.]?'" ● ● ● ● ● Excursus: from: Encyclopaedia
of Religion and Ethics, edited
by James Hastings, Charles Scribner's Sons, Vol. IV, 1961. "II. The Christian cross.—The cross in
the Christian sense is the…[Greek word] or lignum infelix, a wooden post
surmounted by a cross-beam, to which the Romans, following the example of the
Greeks and the Easterns, nailed or attached certain classes of condemned
criminals till they died. The fact
that Jesus suffered death on the cross has converted this infamous figure
[the cross] into a symbol of resurrection and salvation. 'I determined to know among you nothing save
Jesus Christ and him crucified,' writes 5 __________________________________________________________________ unclean
spirits. One of the most ancient
portable crosses, found in a Christian tomb at "Strangely enough, the early
Christians, in spite of the importance they attached to the cross, refrained
from reproducing it in their iconography.
During the first three centuries (with possibly a single exception,
that of the equilateral [Greek] cross cut on a sepulchral
inscription, which de Rossi believes may be assigned to the end of the 2nd or
the beginning of the 3rd cent.) the cross of Christ is invariably dissimulated
under the form of an object which recalls its image: a trident, an anchor (see figs. 22, 23), a
ship with rigging; or under the forms of the cross already employed by other
cults. the
cross potencée [T shaped (Tau Cross)] and the gammate [two
illustrations]…[swastika] cross. The
cross potencée, according to certain archaeologists, is, by the way, the
form which most accurately recalls the instrument of crucifixion employed by
the Romans…. Further,
the Latin [equilateral (Greek)] cross already
appears upon certain coins of Constantine, although this emperor, true to his
policy of religious eclecticism, shows no scruple about introducing on the same
coins representations of Mars or Apollo as gods. Julian [Emperor 361 – 363 (331 – 363)],
of course, suppressed both cross and chi-rho. But, after his time, the cross finally takes
its place upon coins [see:
www.christianism.com, Links, The Non-Christian Cross] and
even upon the Imperial diadem. At the
same time it asserts itself under its proper form in funeral inscriptions, upon
altars, reliquaries, lamps, jewels, and even upon the facades of houses and the
tops of basilicas, where it takes the place of the monogram; and before
long it may be seen furnishing the ground plan of churches. In the 5th cent. the employment of the cross potencée becomes rare
except in Celtic countries, where it continues to show itself in
inscriptions. In like manner the gammate
[swastika] cross now appears only sporadically, in the west and the north of 6 __________________________________________________________________ The so-called Latin cross and the equilateral cross
were at first employed without discrimination.
Only gradually did the equilateral come to be the specialty of the
East, and the form with unequal limbs that of the West. As to the crucifix, i.e. a cross with the body of Jesus nailed to it,
this representation does not make its appearance till the 7th century [see page 9]. The art of the Middle
Ages was not slow to heighten its realism still more. But at the same time a distinction was
drawn between the cross of the Passion, which is accompanied by all the
implements of crucifixion, and the cross of the Resurrection, with which Jesus
ascends to heaven. The first is
painted sometimes green, because it was cut from a tree; sometimes red, because
it was stained with the blood of Christ.
The second is painted sometimes blue, the colour of the sky;
sometimes white, as symbolizing the invisible Divinity. It is this last which is carried at the head
of processions. The
cross became a hierarchical symbol in the Church [and, the Christian Cross imposes a
negative hierarchy on non-Christian peoples]. Thus the Pope
has the privilege of having carried before him a cross with three bars, while
cardinals and archbishops have to be content with two, and bishops with
one." [328-329]. "Goblet D'Alviella." [329]. ● ● ● ● ● Excursus:
from Article 9, 218: from: Minucius Felix ["d.
c. 250"], [Octavius],
English Translation by Gerald H. Rendall, [Note: no "Jesus" or
"Paul", in the Index (for this book [2 book
Index])]. [29.6] "Crosses again we neither worship nor
set our hopes on ["Cruces etiam nec colimus nec optamus."
[406]].a
You, who consecrate gods of wood, very possibly adore
wooden crosses as being portions of your gods. [7] For what are your standards, and 7 __________________________________________________________________ banners,
and ensigns but gilded and decorated crosses? Your trophies of victory show not only the figure of
a simple cross, but also of one crucified [EARLY CHRISTIAN REFERENCE TO PAGAN CRUCIFIXION]
. [8]
Quite true we see the sign of the cross naturally
figured in a ship riding the swelling waves, or impelled by outspread
oars; a cross-beam set up forms the sign of the cross; and so too does
a man with outstretched hands devoutly offering worship to God. In this way the system of nature leans on the
sign of the cross or your religion is shaped thereby." [407]. _____
_____ _____ Excursus:
from: Article 20, 402: from: Aryan
Sun-Myths, The Origin of Religions, [Sarah Elizabeth Titcomb
1842 - 1895 (only other reference(s) encountered: Nat. Union Cat., 1978,
Vol. 595, 204)] [published anonymously], With an Introduction by Charles Morris
[1833 - 1922 (prolific author)], Author of "A Manual of Classical
Literature," and "The Aryan Race:
Its Origin and Its Achievements.", Nims and Knight, 1889. [received 3/11/97]. [See: #13, 263-328 passim; #15, 335-341 passim]. Reprinted 1996 by The Book Tree, P.O. Box 724, Escondido, CA
92033. [The Book Tree was my source for The Christ Myth
(see #15, 335-341)]. 'Preface The attention of the writer having been called to the fact that all Indo-Germanic nations have worshipped crucified Saviours, an investigation of the subject was made. Overwhelming proof was obtained that the sun-myths of the ancient Aryans were the origin of the religions in all of the countries which were peopled by the Aryans. The Saviours worshipped in these lands are personifications of the Sun [see #13, 263-328 passim; #15, 336-337], the chief god of the Aryans. That Pagan nations worshipped a crucified man, was admitted by the Fathers of the early Christian Church. The holy Father 8 __________________________________________________________________ Minucius Felix [d. c. 250], in his Octavius, written as late as A.D. 211, indignantly resents the supposition that the sign of the cross should be considered as exclusively a Christian symbol; and represents his advocate of the Christian argument as retorting on an infidel opponent thus: "As for the adoration of crosses, which you object to against us, I must tell you that we neither adore crosses nor desire them. You it is, ye Pagans, who worship wooden gods, who are the most likely people to adore wooden crosses, as being parts of the same substance with your deities. For what else are your ensigns, flags, and standards, but crosses gilt and beautified? Your victorious trophies not only represent a simple cross, but a cross with a man upon it [EARLY CHRISTIAN REFERENCE TO PAGAN CRUCIFIXION]."' ["5"-6]. [See: #9, 218 (Minucius Felix (Octavius))]. "Not until
the pontificate of Agathon (A.D. 608 [680]) [Pope
Agatho 678 - 681 (577? - 681)] was Christ represented as a
man on a cross. During the reign of Constantine Pogonatus [Constans
II Pogonatus, Byzantine emperor 641 - 668], by the Sixth Synod of Constantinople
(Canon 82) it was ORDAINED that instead of the ancient symbol,
which had been the lamb, the figure of a man nailed to a cross
should be represented. All
this was confirmed by Pope Adrian I ["Hadrian I (d. 795), Pope
from 772." (Ox. Dict.
C.C.)].2 ["2Quoted in Higgins's
Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 3."]" [111]. ● ● ● ● ● Christian Cross: symbol of everlasting life—immortality, a symbol derived from prior Pagans,
produced by fear of death. The Christian Cross [not the crosses of prior Pagans (see: www.christianism.com, Links, The
Non-Christian Cross ("Summary"))], also, is the perennial
masochistic—sadistic symbol of torture; and, like skulls in a village of
Cannibals, the symbol, the Christian Cross, inculcates and inures—mental and
physical torture! 9 ________________________________________________________________________ |