Finally Confirmed: US Got Torture Lessons from Israel

[Must_B_Free]

...the USA employed Israeli security service (Shin Bet) experts to help their US counterparts 'break' their captives.

So we know they were doing something to "break" the captives in Iraq, but The abuses at Abu Graib weren't part of that? So what else does that leave?

...20 years ago, an Israeli government committee investigated the security service's practices and the use of torture was subsequently banned, forcing Shin Bet to adopt a variety of techniques that did not cause physical damage. These new methods are much more palatable to US sensibilities. They also brought faster and more convincing results.

Oh, but its OK, you see it's a "kinder, gentler" form of torture that doesn't leave visible marks for public consumption. They have softened the PR problems of torture, with the help of Alan Dershowitz

...US sources say that in spite of the incidences of abuse in Abu Ghraib prison, such events are not representative of the sophisticated methods that Shin Bet used in Iraq.

Then, I wonder what other things they were doing that we don't yet know about... They must be talking about wrapping the Musilm captives in the Israeli flag that we found out about this week from the ACLU FOIA.

Here's the Orwell 1984 Room 101 stuff that we just found was used in Guantanamo:

...Before each interrogation a psychologist who has studied in depth the mental profile of the prisoner is consulted. The interrogator will also read intelligence reports about their charge.

Source:
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr040707_1_n.shtml

Add this to the "Warrior Ethos" program that used Israeli consultants to train US troops for urban combat.

What's it all add up to?

[brainshrub]

1. Perhaps this should be moved to the I/P forum?

[Must_B_Free]

2. Why, does it have something to do with Palestinians?

This post is about torture, not I/P issues, unless you assume that anyone who is concerned with US torture is automatically considered a Palestinian. I don't.

[brainshrub]

3. Because whenever you talk about Israel

it opens a whole can of worms.

That's why the I/P room was created: ALL topics about Israel lead to the Palestinians and their treatment.

US --> Torture --> Shin Bet --> Israel --> Palestine.

Cheese Whiz --> Kosher foods --> Jewish Law --> Israel --> Palestine.

[DireStrike]

17. Ooh, can I try?

Kevin Bacon --> Bacon --> Jews don't eat bacon --> Israel --> Palestine.

Hah! You're right!

[Must_B_Free]

19. Let me try one

Francis Bacon --> Shakespeare --> Spearchucker --> M*A*S*H --> Spam --> Email --> You've Got Mail! --> Meg Ryan --> Billy Crystal --> SNL --> Joe Piscapo --> Brrrrrrumski! --> Cleavage --> Beaver Cleaver --> Beaver Brown --> Brown rice --> Condi Rice --> Neocon --> Zionist --> Likud --> Israel --> Palestine.

Yep, I guess we better leave it alone...

[brainshrub]

25. Good one!

[coda]

24. LOL!

Thanks for that. heh, heh

[President Kerry]

4. when will these dumbasses finally see that

TORTURE DOESN'T WORK!!

[Must_B_Free]

5. It might not work, but at least...

"They also brought faster and more convincing results. "

Whatever the heck "more convincing results" are... :eyes:

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Must_B_Free]

7. A flawed premise

"believing in Jesus Christ" is a nebuous notion

all three groups "honor and respects Jesus Christ as a messenger of God". Yes, it is my understanding that Jesus Christ is "a jewish prophet", just not "the Messiah"

My working theme is now that terror has always been the predominant source of power for Rulers, whether it's fear of hell, witness of human sacrifice, or torture.

My sarchastic thread last night was written in the spirit of this same theme:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2855570&mesg_id=2855570

So in summary, the power we are facing today as progressives is the same power we have always been facing as progressive peasants/slaves/proles.

Church/Nation has always been living high on the hog off the sweat of our brow, and they have always employed terror is the main vehicle of that power.

So this tiny population (i.e. people with power) is again trying to control us with the same thing as ever. They are conscious of it and they know terror is the tool to protect their inequitable share of resources.

When will we realize and progress beyond this? We need a system that will end this recurring oppression.

[gulogulo]

18. You say:

"Yes, it is my understanding that Jesus Christ is "a jewish prophet", just not "the Messiah""

Response: Um, no. Wrong. Jews certainly do not consider Jesus a prophet.

[Must_B_Free]

20. its possibly debatable

I think there is a case there for debate, however not much of one. I'd say you are correct.

Here's why
http://www.forjewsforjesus.org/qanda/index.html#jew_christian
Although this point goes too far, as these people would seem to consider him "the Messiah"

here's Wikipedia:
Judaism has deemed Jesus a false messiah, and religious Jews are still awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. Christianity originated as a sect of Judaism, but developed into its own religion; there are thus many similarities dating to the time of origin, but also many radical and fundamental differences dating to the period in which the two were in competition and then antagonism. Today, following the work of critical historians, many Jews minimize Jesus' role as miracle worker, but a small number consider him a great teacher.

Here s a no answer
http://jewish.com/askarabbi/askarabbi/askr4975.htm

Unless I totally pulled that out of my ass, I was told that by Rabbi Ziontz in a course in college.

[gulogulo]

22. "Jews for Jesus"

is a proselytizing offshoot of the Southern Baptists, contains very few if any Jews among its membership, and is a Christian sect. Don't take their opinion as "Jewish".

[gottaB]

9. You don't get it because you don't believe in torture

Haven't you heard, Americans believe in torture.

That's why Bush says Rumsfeld is a "good, decent human being" and that he's doing a "super job." They have shared beliefs.

[IndyOp]

8. Okay - thanks for the validation...

I just made a new website for the undergraduates majoring in psychology at my school. I included descriptions of all kinds of amazing specialties in psychology -- but I would not, will not, shall not EVER post one damned word about one of the new specializations: Military Psychology.

I know that some psychologists in the military do good -- I read a report from one who helped Bosnian refugees communicate what they wanted after the war had torn their country apart. I think the bad far outweigh the good. It is really sad for me to think about the college students I know who are majoring in psych because they want to help people -- and how they get brainwashed by this society to believe that helping people means going to war or working for the CIA or using what they know about psychology to manipulate the masses.

x(

[Tinoire]

10. I thought this was common knowledge

Iraq is crawling with Israeli "military experts" and several of them were implicated in the Abu Ghraib incident.

Good ole farm boys from Idaho didn't dream up wrapping Muslims in Israeli flags in their sleep, nor did the US Army have them trained by Israelis to learn how to string up concertina wire.

I once posted here at DU pictures of Palestinian prisoners in ISRAEL wearing hoods and in isolation just like the ones at Abu Ghraib. Coincidence? I don't think so. Read up about the torture Palestinians have been reporting for years. The similarities are endless.


Amazingly enough, I still have one of those articles with photos:

Wednesday, 9 February, 2000, 22:46 GMT
Israel admits torture



An official Israeli report has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli security service tortured detainees during the Palestinian uprising, the Intifada, between 1988 and 1992.

The report, written five years ago but kept secret until now, said the leadership of the security service Shin Bet knew about the torture but did nothing to stop it.

The report did not detail the torture methods used, but human rights organisations say some detainees died or were left paralysed.

(snip)
The report accuses the entire leadership of the Shin Bet of knowing what was going on but doing nothing to stop it. It says that the agents lied about their activities in court, to other investigating agencies and in their reports to superiors.

(snip)

The report describes this activity as "holy work" but criticises the methods used and recommends measures to ensure that they be stopped

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/637293.stm

===========

Facility 1391: Israel's secret prison

It has been removed from maps and airbrushed from aerial photographs. But Facility 1391 certainly exists - you just have to ask the Palestinians and Lebanese who have been imprisoned and tortured there. Chris McGreal reports

Friday November 14, 2003
The Guardian

The men under the black hoods all have the same question once the blindfolds and manacles are off: Where am I? A voice filtering through a narrow slit in the steel door told Sameer Jadala he was "in Honolulu", Raab Bader that he was "in a submarine" and "outside the borders of Israel", Bashar Jadala that he was "on the moon". None of them imagined it at the time, because only a handful of the political and security establishment knew such a thing existed, but they were prisoners in Israel's Guantanamo: Facility 1391.

(snip)

Those who have been through its gates know it is no illusion. One former inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was raped twice - once by a man and once with a stick - during questioning. But most of those who emerge say the real torture is the psychological impact of solitary confinement in filthy, blackened cells so poorly lit that inmates can barely see their own hands, and with no idea where they are or, in many cases, why they are there.

"Our main conclusion is that it exists to make torture possible - a particular kind of torture that creates progressive states of dread, dependency, debility," says Manal Hazzan, a human rights lawyer who helped expose the prison's existence. "The law gives the army enough authority already to hide prisoners, so why do they need a secret facility?"

Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access. One leftwing MP, Zahava Gal-On, describes Facility 1391 as "one of the signs of totalitarian regimes and of the third world". The Israeli government declines to discuss the secret prison other than to issue a standard response: "Facility 1391 is situated on a secret military base. The base is used by the security services for various classified activities and thus its location is kept confidential."

(snip)

Mustafa Dirani, the primary target of the abductions, had been the head of security in the Shi'ite movement Amal, and held Arad for about two years, at times driving around with the Israeli colonel in the boot of his car. Dirani was questioned for five weeks around the clock. Freed from Facility 1391 eight years later but locked up in another Israeli prison, he filed a lawsuit in the Israeli courts alleging that he was sodomised by his Israeli interrogators. The legal action names a "Major George" who, Dirani alleges, ordered a soldier to rape him. On another occasion, the Lebanese prisoner accuses the major of thrusting a stick up his rectum. Other former prisoners at 1391 have described how they were stripped naked for interrogation, blindfolded and handcuffed, and a stick was pressed against their buttocks as they were threatened with rape.

(snip)

"Major George" was sacked. Dozens of other interrogators signed a petition objecting to his punishment for using methods they said were sanctioned by the authorities.

(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1084796,00.html



====

Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq

Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday December 9, 2003
The Guardian

Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq.

US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.

(snip)

"It is bonkers, insane. Here we are - we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams."

"They are being trained by Israelis in Fort Bragg," a well-informed intelligence source in Washington said.

"Some Israelis went to Iraq as well, not to do training, but for providing consultations."

(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1102940,00.html

===
TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT
Israel's Interrogation of
Palestinians from the Occupied Territories
Human Rights Watch/Middle East

Human Rights Watch

New York · Washington · Los Angeles · London

(snip)

The threats made by Israeli interrogators generally fall into the following categories:

· Indefinite incommunicado detention;

· Death;

· Insanity;

· Severe bodily harm, including causing impotence;

· Sexual abuse, including rape;

· Abuse of relatives, most commonly, rape of sisters and mothers;

· Ominous unspecified abuses.

(snip)

A. M., interrogated at Tulkarm for forty-nine days, said he was at one point shown a document by "Major Shalom," who told him, "This is from the chief of interrogations. It says the interrogation must go on. You have two choices: to die or to confess." A. M. said another Tulkarm interrogator, "Captain Jimmy," said to him at one point, "I will kill you by putting an electric wire here and here for seven seconds."

(snip)

Y. D. said that on the next day he was brought back before "Major Jerry":

I immediately had my hands tied and was ordered down on my knees. He read me the same accusations and I denied them. He began to yell and scream at me, and spat in my face. Then he grabbed my throat and said, "Now I'm going to kill you." He began to squeeze. It hurt, and I couldn't breathe. I thought at firsthe was really going to kill me, but later I realized that he wouldn't.

Y. D. added that an interrogator code-named "Captain Sami" asked him, "Have you ever seen blood come from your ass?" Y. D. recalled, "I thought he meant it, that they would use bottles or a stick. I was very scared."

A few ex-detainees said they had been threatened sexually.3 U. Gh. said he was fondled at Tulkarm by an interrogator whom he described as "fat, with glasses and dark hair":

He asked, "Are you a homosexual? You look like a woman. Have you ever fucked a woman?" Then he came up to me very close. He put his hand down my shirt and touched my chest, then my cheeks and hair, and was talking as if to a girl. Then he turned off the lights and kept on touching me. My hands were cuffed behind my back, but I kept on trying to twist my chest away from his hands. He kept pulling me straight. He touched me like that for about ten minutes. Then he said, "I can bring a woman soldier for you here."

In cases where IDF interrogators beat a detainee in the testicles, they sometimes threatened to continue until the person could no longer father children. The threat appeared credible to some of the detainees, in light of the pain, swelling, and other symptoms.

(snip)

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1994/israel/ (Urgh- and I just skimmed & snipped that one!)

[JohnyCanuck]

11. IMHO the Saudi billionaire princes

might have America by the short and curlies, but Israel has America by the balls.

[oh_uhUH]

12. What's torture and what's not

"Good ole farm boys from Idaho didn't dream up wrapping Muslims in Israeli flags in their sleep"


I just have a hard time getting all in a bunch and screaming about the horrible torture going on everywhere when this is one of the examples used. I mean, sure it's not a cool thing to do to a Muslim, but torture? When I see the radical militants chopping off a Red Cross lady's head in front of a camera, it kind of makes some of these complaints look lame. Even if it's not right, I don't think a war crimes tribunal is required. It just seems like there is a lot of attention paid to something silly like an Israeli flag being wrapped around them, and people aren't as bothered as I am about the torture and murders of innocents by the other side. Maybe I haven't been watching the news close enough, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of proof yet for the torture at Guantanimo, and the slimes at Abu Graib are getting their butts landed in jail. I have relatives in the military so it bugs me when people start equating our troops with people who torture civilians in horrific ways.

[Tinoire]

13. Silly me not to recognize a garden party of "stupid, kid things - pranks"

Yep, you weren't paying close attention- as you admitted.

Did you read the story last week about the soldier who raped a 17 year old boy up in a guard tower and then put 17 bullets to his head? Lied and said it was consensual sex (that was the 3rd version of the lie)... so consensual he had to shoot him in the head 17 times afterwards? That poor Iraqi kid had a wife and a baby girl.

You have not been paying close attention to the torture scandal and Rumsfeld certainly doesn't want you to. Wants you to keep thinking it was "stupid, kid things - pranks" "frat party pranks".

And then next time planes thousands of Americans die in direct retaliation for the misery we've caused, we can all sit around crying "why do they hate us?". Spare yourself and start reading up about what's really been going on in Iraq and not that shit they're showing on TV.

[Ms. Clio]

14. Yeah, you haven't been watching the news close enough

Margaret Hasssan's body has not been found, and if she was killed, she was probably shot.

Mutilated Iraq body 'not Hassan'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4059305.stm

But for some reason, beheadings get certain people all riled up, while stories like this just bounce right off:

An attorney representing former detainees says his recent fact-finding mission to Baghdad uncovered dozens of cases of physical and psychological abuse, sexual humiliation, religious desecration and rape in ten US-run prisons throughout occupied Iraq.

The NewStandard spoke with Michigan-based attorney Shereef Akeel, who interviewed some 50 former detainees about their time and treatment in US custody. Part of the legal team behind a class action lawsuit against the firms for their employees’ involvement in prison abuse at US-run facilities in Iraq, the former immigration lawyer found himself traveling to meet face-to-face with the people he is representing in the American court system.

His team has documented abuse dating from July 2003 to as recently as last month, when an Iraqi boy just fifteen years old says his captors at an American facility raped him. “He was told to go on all fours naked and was sodomized from behind,” Akeel conveyed the fifteen year-old’s testimony. “He said they made him dance and he was crying.”

(snip)

During the course of his investigation in Iraq, Akeel said, clear patterns emerged. According to Akeel, testimonials gathered individually from former captives held in US prisons all over Iraq indicate many of the common methods came into use across disparate, geographically distant detention centers.

(snip)

In another account, a doctor first taken to a presidential palace and made to stand there for hours on end, told Akeel that he was then taken to the Abu Ghraib prison where he watched a naked prisoner forced onto the running engine of a Humvee, leaving the man with irreparable burns.

Witnesses also told Akeel the famous Tikrit area stables of Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, now house Iraqi prisoners who are forced to urinate and defecate in the same stalls where they sleep

http://www.world-crisis.com/news/698_0_1_0_M/

[Must_B_Free]

15. The photo of the tattoo guy is very interesting

The orignial caption said he was a detainee who was kept separately because he was a moroccan Jew.

Problems are:
1. He is outside the cell
2. He is wearing a prison guard shirt, not a detainee shirt.

Is that guy actually Roman Krol? one of the guards who was busted?

[Tinoire]

16. Roman Krol rings a bell but I'm not sure from where anymore

All I know is that a lot of testimony concerning the third party nationals inside Abu Ghraib was never pursued and deliberately brushed aside.

SEN. AKAKA: "General Taguba, your report finds that two contractors were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Were either of these contracted personnel supervising soldiers or in a position to direct soldiers to take specific actions?"

GEN. TAGUBA: "Sir, they were not in any way supervising any soldiers, MP or otherwise. However, the guards, those who were involved, looked at them as competent authority as in the manner by which they described them, as the MI or by name or by function."

....


Senator Akaka kept asking for details about the U.S. interrogators trained in foreign-country interrogation techniques but all he got was stone-faced silence and lies.

Then we have Joe Ryan - who was not named in the Taguba report
- who says he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.

I think the picture you're looking at is of "John Israel" ;), the CACI "guy" in the reports who never surfaced.

[Must_B_Free]

21. he was charged with Rivera

Krol was also on CNN once in an interview, he seemed like he was a liar. He said some weird stuff about the torture. There's a thread I made on DU once somewhere. But alas the archive search functions seem to be always be turned off these days.

[gulogulo]

23. "John Israel" certainly did surface

He is an Iraqi Christian living in the US who was hired to go to Iraq as a translator.

http://www.the-signal.com/News/ViewStory.asp?storyID=4755

"From Oct. 14 until earlier this year, Israel was a civilian contractor for Army intelligence at the prison. He is one of four men accused by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba as having been “directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.”
But his wife, Roza Israel, said he had no authority there.
“He’s just a translator,” she said Saturday at her home. “He is not an interrogator. He has no say-so in anything.”
She said the blame is being misdirected.
“If they need to find a scapegoat, it’s not going to be him,” she said. “His job was translating. That’s it.”

...

A neighbor said she knew him as “a computer guy” before October and described him last week as “a very nice man.” She said he wanted to return to Iraq when they last spoke in late April.
“He was really bent on going back. He said, ‘I want to help my people. It’s my duty to try to help them.’ He’s a Christian,” the neighbor said.
Israel was born in Baghdad in 1955. He is a U.S. citizen, said a spokesman for Titan Corp., an intelligence firm that subcontracted the prison translation work to SOS.