The True Story Behind Psychology’s Role in Torture

I have thought about this for a couple of days before I posted it. This is something I have wondered about, yet had known there had to be a reason for.

How did Bush & Company find the psychologists and the know how to reverse engineer the SERE program into the Torture program they have been using? This has been bothering me. Well I stumbled onto something that answered the question and it really bothers me.

I always said that no matter where the chips fell they should be picked up and punished along with everyone. Is this possibly why there is a hesitancy on the part of Congress to move forward with hearings?

I am talking about a very senior Senator, Democratic Hawaiian who is responsible. Yes, you know who I mean, just from saying that. Daniel Inouye and his staff helped the Bush administration find the group who would set up the Torture for them.

Yes, that is a hard charge, but it comes from none other than the American Physcologicol Association. They have released a series of articles outlining their findings of internal investigations which show this.

From one which I read dated June 16th, (told you I had been thinking about this a few days) Brant Welch writes this:

A seventeen-year-old boy is locked in an interrogation cell in Guantanamo. He breaks down crying and says he wants his family. The interrogator senses the boy is psychologically vulnerable and consults with a psychologist. The psychologist has evaluated the boy prior to the questioning and says, “Tell him his family has forgotten him.” The psychologist also prescribes “linguistic isolation” (not letting him have contact with anyone who speaks his language.) The boy attempts suicide a few weeks later. On the eve of the boy’s trial, the psychologist apparently fearing her testimony will only further implicate her, indicates she will plead the Fifth Amendment if she is called to the stand. The trial is postponed, leaving the boy in further limbo.
The military psychologist is merely a foot soldier in psychology’s participation in torture. It goes much deeper. We now know that psychologists helped design and implement significant segments of George Bush’s torture program. Despite their credo, “Above all, do no harm,” two psychologists developed instruments of psychological torture. They “reversed engineered” psychological principles. They used the very therapeutic interventions psychologists use to ameliorate psychological suffering, but “reversed” their direction to create psychological distress and instability. If one’s reality sense is threatened, a good therapist validates and supports it as appropriate. In reverse engineering, the environment is deliberately made more confusing and the victim’s trust in his own perceptions is intentionally undermined. In extreme form, this can ultimately drive a person to insanity from which some never come back. These were the types of techniques that were used on the seventeen-year-old detainee and others.

That was really chilling for me, because it says the so called doctor was a woman and I really have a hard time with a woman being this cruel. But then I have a hard time with any woman being cruel, especially to a child, and a 17 year old is still a child. To knowingly try to drive a child to the brink of insanity is just beyond belief to me.

But there is more.

Military psychologists also colluded with the Justice Department to help CIA operatives circumvent the legal prohibitions against torture. Under the Justice Department definition of torture, if a detainee was sent to a psychologist for a mental health evaluation prior to interrogation it was per se evidence that the interrogator had no legal intent to torture the detainee because the referral “demonstrated concern” for the welfare of the detainee.
Most remarkably of all, this whole process occurred under a protective “ethical” seal from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychologists’ largest national organization. The APA governance repeatedly rejected calls from its membership for APA to join other health organizations in declaring participation in Bush detention center interrogations unethical.
Most psychologists are appalled at what the APA has done, and many, like me, have resigned from the APA. But the true story behind APA’s involvement with torture has not been fully told.
I have had ample opportunity to observe both the inner workings of the APA and the personalities and organizational vicissitudes that have affected it over the last two decades. For most of the twenty-year period from 1983 to 2003, I either worked inside the APA central office as the first Executive Director of the APA Practice Directorate, or I served in various governance positions, including Chair of the APA Board of Professional Affairs and member of the APA Council of Representatives. Since leaving APA I have maintained a keen interest in the organization.
The transformation of APA, in the past decade, from a historically liberal organization to an authoritarian one that actively assists in torture has been an astonishing process. As with many usurpations of democratic liberal values, the transformation was accomplished by a surprisingly small number of people. APA is an invaluable case study in the psychological manipulations that influence our governmental and non-governmental institutions.
To explain APA’s behavior two questions have to be answered. First, how did the APA develop the connections with the military that fostered the shameful role it has played in torture? Second, why did the APA governance not join other health professions in prohibiting participation in the Bush Administration’s “enhanced interrogations,” as APA’s rank and file members were demanding?

The emphasis is mine. First the italics because I thought you should see that this is important, they engineered this to try to be legal. I am not going to say it was legal because I truly don't think it was. I don't care how many attorney's they had say it was or write memo's. NO I am not an attorney either. But, just writing a memo doesn't make something legal.

The next part in bold, I wanted you to see because I think it is important to note that NOT all of the Psychologists believe in this nonsense. As you can see. These were as is the case of the so called "few bad apples" in the military. Because I don't believe that all of the members of the CIA, members of the military, or even all of the members of the Bush Administration, (choke) believed in this or participated in this.

But, lets get to the meat of the article. The APA-military connection This is a long section but it is too important to leave any of it out. This makes the connection between The Senator from Hawaii and the BushCo.

One source of APA’s military connections is obvious to anyone who has worked at APA over the last twenty-five years. Strangely, it has been overlooked by the media. Since the early 1980’s, APA has had a unique relationship with Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye’s office. Inouye was an honored WWII veteran, a Japanese American who himself was a medical volunteer in the midst of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He entered office in 1962. For much of the ’70s, he was Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Later he became, and is currently, the chair of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which, of course, makes up the largest chunk of federal discretionary spending and is why economists often split discretionary government funding into defense spending versus “everything else.” This appropriations committee covers not only all of the armed forces but the CIA as well. Put succinctly, Inouye controls the military purse strings, and is very influential with military brass.
One of Inouye’s administrative assistants, psychologist Patrick Deleon, has long been active in the APA and served a term in 2000 as APA president. For significant periods of time DeLeon has literally directed APA staff on federal policy matters and has dominated the APA governance on political matters. For over twenty-five years, relationships between the APA and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been strongly encouraged and closely coordinated by DeLeon.
Inouye himself has served as an apologist for the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (”Gitmo”) since the inception of the War on Terror. In a press briefing at the U.S. State Department, held shortly after his trip to Gitmo in February of 2002, Inouye affirmed Rumsfeld’s propagandist vision of the site, and then remarked: “Watching our men and women treat these detainees was rather impressive. They would go out of their way to be considerate. …”
From what we know now, that is true, but not in the benevolent way Inouye implied. Inouye’s comments bore a chilling similarity to Barbara Bush’s famous comments about the alleged good fortune of Katrina victims, in the Houston Astrodome. The detainees, he said, are being treated “in some ways better than we treat our people.” (R. Burns, Associated Press, 2002). And he compared the Guantanamo climate to Hawaii’s. (It is “somewhat warmer.”)
More significantly, it was Inouye who recently stripped the funding needed for closing Gitmo from a supplemental appropriations bill. This “Inouye Amendment,” threw a stick in the spokes of any U.S. movement away from the worst of global war on terror policies. In announcing the funding cut, Inouye’s press release was a remarkable illustration of Orwellian “newspeak,” ostensibly supporting the very opposite of what he was doing:

“But let me be clear. We need to close the Guantanamo prison. Yes, it is a fine facility. I, too, have visited the site. Yes, the detainees are being well cared for. Our servicemen and servicewomen are doing great work. But the fact of the matter is Guantanamo is a symbol of the wrongdoings which have occurred, and we must eliminate that connection.” (Inouye, Press Release May 20, 2009).

DeLeon’s connection with Inouye is not by any means the only APA connection with defense interests. In 1951 the military established The Human Resource Research Organization (HumRRO) to develop techniques for “psychological warfare.” HumRRO was run by psychologist Dr. Meredith Crawford who spent ten years as APA treasurer and was deeply involved in APA activities for three decades. Crawford’s former student, Raymond Fowler, became Chief Executive Officer of APA in 1989 and stayed in that position until 2003. Today, fifty-five percent of HumRRO’s budget comes from the military.
As CEO, Fowler hired his two most important lieutenants from HumRRO, Chief Financial Officer, Charles “Jack” McKay, and in-house attorney, James McHugh. Both men have now, after lengthy APA tenures, left the APA and returned to HumRRO in very senior roles. McHugh is Chairman of the HumRRO Board of Trustees and McKay is Vice-Chairman and Treasurer. The current President of HumRRO, psychologist William Strickland, has been an outspoken supporter of APA’s policies on the torture issue. He served on the APA Council of Representatives throughout the APA deliberations on torture.
Whether and how the longstanding relationships and frequent circulation of key personnel between APA and HumRRO positions have shaped APA’s involvement with the military is unclear, but given recent events, it certainly warrants more careful scrutiny than it has received from psychologists. In fact, I do not believe many psychologists are even aware of these relationships.
Regardless of HumRRO’s role, however, as psychologists, most APA governance members have little Washington political experience. For them, Patrick DeLeon, because of his connection with Inouye, is perceived as a canny psychology politician and political force on Capitol Hill. Regardless of the accuracy of that perception, I have no reason to think DeLeon is a corrupt or evil person. Instead, from my perspective, the most interesting aspect of DeLeon has always been his apparent preoccupation with issues of status for psychologists, irrespective of the issues’ actual significance either for psychologists or the public.
DeLeon wanted to make sure a psychologist, not just physicians, for example, would be eligible to fill this or that position in the Veteran’s Administration, and he campaigned for years for VA psychologists to receive a minuscule pay increase when they became board certified. On the whole, I found these matters harmless and of at least some marginal benefit to people. Using funding from the Department of Defense he has also launched a campaign for psychologists to be given legal rights to prescribe psychiatric medications.
The torture issue is, of course, quite different. Viewed through the eyes of DeLeon’s adherents, psychology’s new found role as architects of a central component of the war on terror was a tremendous “victory” for the field of psychology. That it involved torture was peripheral, obscured by the headiness of being involved in high-level, important, clandestine government affairs. In discussions about APA’s role in the interrogations, a senior member of the APA governance described himself as “addicted” to the television show 24. Now he had his own reality TV show.
DeLeon’s influence in the APA and with many individual psychologists, especially those from Hawaii, came in very handy for Inouye in his efforts to support the Department of Defense. When the military needed a mental health professional to help implement its interrogation procedures, and the other professions subsequently refused to comply, the military had a friend in Senator Inouye’s office, one that could reap the political dividends of seeds sown by DeLeon over many years.While we are only now uncovering the names of the individuals who participated most directly in the interrogations, I think a surprising number of them will turn out to be people brought into the military through Inouye’s office, many by DeLeon himself.

Smoking gun anyone? Sure looks like it connects all the dots. It is very disturbing. This is a war veteran from WWII, someone who should have been aware of all the ramifacations of Torture and what it does to people and what happens to the people who practice it. He was alive and there for the trials after WWII, after Korea, after Viet Nam. Saw what happened to everyone who was involved and he helped in this way. I can't understand it.

There is a lot more. But, rather than post it all here I will let you go read it for yourself. The blog is called Psyche, Science, and Society and his post is called Welch: Torture, Psychology, and Daniel Inouye, there is another part of this that can be read under the title of APA board makes major statement on Torture, it is also a must read about this.

This now starts to make sense and opens my eyes about how and why the APA got involved in the Torture program. How doctors could do this, could stand by and forget their basic motto of "First Do No Harm" is beyond me. How a woman, a mother could stand by or be involved and do this is beyond me. I can't imagine inflicting pain, physical, mental to the point of death or insanity on anyone.

To me that shows that there is something really wrong with you. It is easy for some to sit here and say yeah, they could do it or they don't see anything wrong with it, but to actually be the one with the hand on the hot iron, so to speak. That is something completely different.

Let me know what you think of this. Do you think this may be why Congress isn't pushing harder on these hearings and investigations? They are really afraid of where the chips are going to fall?

Finally Torture Architects and Psychologists are Fired

According to ABC news blotter post the two psychologists and architects who helped develop the program of torture for the CIA, and were paid very well for their time doing it, were fired finally.

I say what took so long. If the program of torture stopped in 2004 or so, why were we still paying these guys up till 2009? And at the stunning rate of $1,000 a day. EACH. Yes, that's right, I didn't stutter on that one.

According to the story, the phone number has been disconnected and the address listed for the offices of these guys is now empty. They have also refused to be interviewed and have issued no statements.

Their names are Dr. James Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen, and also according to the "Blotter":

Their firings came during a purge by CIA Director Leon Panetta of all contractors involved in the interrogation program. In early April, Panetta told CIA employees that contractors involved in the interrogation program and secret prisons were being "promptly terminated."

-snip-

The company had at least 120 employees as of 2007, according to a recent Senate investigation. One former military psychologist tells ABC News that Mitchell & Jessen charged the CIA roughly $500,000 a year for their services. It was this source's understanding that the money was largely tax-free and did not include expenses, which the agency also paid for.

This is just part of the legacy of the Bush/Cheney Mis-Administration. So lets see, $500,000 a year for 8 years, let me do some math here.. That looks like $4,000,000 tax free. Plus expenses, of which I am sure there were many. Look at that again.. That is 4 MILLION Dollars.. But, for what they did, which was stand around and tell people what to do, how to torture people. I would say that was good money. Especially when you take into consideration that they didn't even know what they were doing.

In April, ABC News reported that neither Mitchell nor Jessen, both former military psychologists, who were part of a military training program that taught U.S. soldiers how to withstand harsh interrogation techniques, had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before they were hired by the CIA. The two, and later with additional employees, however, recommended so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman, a former colleague of both Mitchell and Jessen and an expert interrogator, told ABC News that the two knew virtually nothing about conducting interrogations.

"They went to two individuals who had no interrogation experience," said Col. Kleinman. "They are not interrogators."

I, for one am glad these two are off the government payroll, but I have to ask one question.

What the hell took so damn long?

In 2004 Seymour Hersh Told a Story, But No One Listened

Now, everyone is clambering about it and blaming Pres. Obama for not releasing the pictures. They seem to think he is wrong, but do not want to take the blame for covering up the story they refused to cover 5 years ago.

I tried to ask Jake Tapper today about it on Twitter, but he refused to even answer me. Mark Knoller same thing. They were too busy yelling at Robert Gibbs for telling them not to believe everything they read in the British tabloid papers.

However the story is out there about some of the pictures that are purported to show the rape of children and women being among the ones that Pres. Obama decided not to release.

These were referenced in an interview that Seymour Hersh did on July 15, 2004 while speaking with the ACLU. Some of what he said was recorded but the recordings are not linkable now.

This is a partial transcript from BoingBoing as follows:

" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Then there was this from Geraldine Sealey @ Salon who wrote this:

After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon's custody more horrific than anything made public so far. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. (...)
Notes from a similar speech Hersh gave in Chicago in June were posted on Brad DeLong's blog. Rick Pearlstein, who watched the speech, wrote: "[Hersh] said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."

There are several questions here: Has Hersh actually seen the video he described to the ACLU, and why hasn't he written about it yet? Will he be forced to elaborate in more public venues now that these two speeches are getting so much attention, at least in the blogosphere? And who else has seen the video, if it exists -- will journalists see and report on it? did senators see these images when they had their closed-door sessions with the Abu Ghraib evidence? -- and what is being done about it?

One of the things referenced was the Taguba Report. Also that is the name of the retired officer who is quoted in the Telegraph article that Gibbs is dissing today. Here are some of the things they are quoting, still from 2004.

This makes me think there is something to the story, which I stated right at the time I thought may be the reason Pres. Obama decided NOT to release the pictures. At the time he stated he was going to, he was being told that there was nothing in those pictures, then he saw them, and he found out what was really there.

After seeing them, he realized he couldn't let them out as long as there are military in harms way, as long as he is still trying to heal what BushCo has screwed up so royally. Yeah, I know all the arguments. Get them out so everyone can see them, but I am sorry, why inflame tensions any more than needed?

Here is what they point out about this report, "What most of us have seen of the report are excerpts from the 50-page summary. In fact, there are well over 6,000 pages in the report itself, including statements by and interviews with witnesses. Among them, testimony from an Iraqi prisoner that would appear to substantiate Seymour Hersh's claims that boys were sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Maj. Gen. Taguba evidently found these statements credible -- they supported statements from interviews with soldiers and other witnesses."

Yes, 6,000 pages in the reports and the summary that people have seen is condensed version of 50 pages. Here is where it gets nasty in backing up what Hersh claimed.

At the end of this post are links to digital copies of two documents from the Taguba report, hosted on the Washington Post website. Is it possible that they document the exact incidents to which Hersh referred? Excerpt from statement provided by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, Detainee #151108, on January 18 2004:

I saw [name deleted] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15 - 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name deleted] who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid's ass. I couldn't see the face of the kid because his face wasn't in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures. [name deleted], I think he is [deleted] because of his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual (gay). And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.
Another testimony alleging abuse of minors from a statement provided by Thaar Salman Dawod, Detainee #150427, on January 17, 2004:
I saw lots of people getting naked for a few days getting punished in the first days of Ramadan. They came with two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and Grainer was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures from top and bottom and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners. The prisoners, two of them, were young. I don't know their names.

That's exactly what Seymour Hersh stated in his story to the ACLU, so why didn't this get picked up? Why was there not more coverage of this and why were the so called media not all over it during the summer of 2004?


And there's this snip from a CBS interview with "leash girl" Pfc. Lynndie England, the guard seen grinning and pointing at Iraqi prisoners in the infamous photos:
When England was asked if there were other things that happened at Abu Ghraib, things that were not photographed, she said, "Yes." When asked if there were worse things that happened, she said "Yes," but would not elaborate.
Link to first PDF, Link to second PDF. (Thank you, Mark)

Yet, they say this isn't torture. This is acceptable because of what al-Qaeda has done to us. Excuse me, they just kill us for the most part that I have ever seen. One of the things everyone likes to point out is how they seem to prefer, if that's the word you would use, the decapitation of our people. Well, I think I would rather have that, at least it would be quick and done, rather than to be beaten, raped, waterboarded, starved, slapped, hung by my arms, kept in a small box, or had bugs put on me as we have done to the Iraqis and others we tortured.

Here is a link to the story from CNN world, where they reported the story. Why they put it in the world section instead of the front page is beyond me. It should have been front page news. Come on people. This is stupid. We covered up the rape of children and the murder of detainees.

There are more places where the story of these abuses are out there, but it is mostly blogs where they are posted. There was very little coverage if any in the main stream news media.

Today there is another piece in Salon which is linking some of the cables which were sent from Iraq to CIA headquarters in 2002 and may show the story of waterboarding and torture of Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaida operative who was, according to government reports, subjected to the near-drowning, if that's what you want to call it, at least 83 times in August 2002.

There are more and more pieces to this puzzle coming out every day. Will we ever have the entire story? Who knows. Will we ever see trials and convictions? Again, who knows. I certainly hope so.

Pres. Obama said in his speech that he thought we had the framework in place to do it. Do we have the will in this country? That's another question.

Former Clinton Attorney Says: Cheney is Daring Us to Indict Him

This is what I think too. I have been saying this is why he is out there, he thinks no one will ever charge him with a crime and he is just daring someone to do it.

A few of us were talking about it on The Facebook the other day. Why was Cheney running his mouth?

Well, Lanny Davis, former Special Counsel to the President for Bill Clinton, stepped up and says the same thing now. Raw Story has a synopsis of a story he did in the Washington Times.

I missed it when it was in the Washington Times. But here is what Raw Story had to say.

“I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.”

Davis continues, “But … I have changed my mind about the need to indict former Vice President Dick Cheney for complicity in illegal torture.”

His insistence on putting himself on multiple TV programs and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, has changed my mind. Not only that - he went on to attack Mr. Obama as weakening the United States in the war on terrorism because Mr. Obama immediately announced that torture would no longer be allowed.

Dem’s fighting words. They are also, in my view, reckless and irresponsible. They seem to be laying down a marker that in case, God forbid, there is a terrorist attack, Mr. Cheney can be the first to blame it on Mr. Obama’s policies and say, “I told you so.”

Even more, they seem to be an in-your-face dare by Mr. Cheney to the U.S. criminal justice system: “I am Dick Cheney, I approved violations of the law in the name of the war on terror, and what are you going to do about it?”

It reminds me of Gary Hart’s reaction in the early days of his 1988 presidential campaign to the rumors of his womanizing. Mr. Hart denied the charge - and then dared the media to catch him. Well, they took him up on his dare (specifically, the Miami Herald did). And they caught him - at least in a compromising situation that led to his withdrawal from the campaign.

So as to Mr. Cheney: I think it is time to take him up on his implicit dare and indict him for violating the 1994 federal law against torture.

Good, maybe if enough of these people start coming forward and speaking out, AG Holder will step up and get his "A Game" on and either appoint a Special Prosecutor or I think better yet, get all the information together and take it to the UN and hand it over to the World Court.

I truly think that would be the best course of action for our country. It would take the politics out of it. But it would help us heal and would stop the who did what to whom.

We don't need Congress to investigate it, we already know it happened, we know it was ordered from the top. We had a bi-partisan Senate commission who stated this already, and that should be enough to move on to the next stage.

All it takes is the will of the people and of AG Holder to move it the next step. That's where we are lacking.

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.

That's the problem. I have heard from people who tell me it's because the terrorists don't live in a certain country. They flew planes into buildings. They did terrible things to people and don't deserve better treatment.

My argument to all of these is simple. We went to war in Germany and France because England asked us to. Yes, we had and have our own country, but we weren't fighting for our country. Not technically. We didn't fly planes into buildings, but we dropped huge bombs into and onto their buildings and killed enough civilians to make up for it. Look what we did to them. You don't know what those bombs are doing because you don't see it. That's just in Europe.

Now, lets talk Japan. They attacked us at Pearl Harbor, they flew planes into ships, buildings, dropped bombs on everything they could and shot at anything that moved. The Japanese were very original in there treatment of prisoners, by original I mean they had a way that was never seen before and probably not seen since.

Most WWII veterans won't talk about what they saw that the Japanese did to the Prisoners they held and were glad they were killed. Bataan Death March anyone?
Some were freed and the scars, both mental and physical, they carry never left them.

Even the POW's held by the German's, after they were freed, had problems in life, which is understandable. And their treatment was nothing compared to what their friends in the Pacific Theater went through.

Yes, Cheney is daring us to do something.. so.. let's do something... sign a petition, write an email to AG Holder and ask him to charge Cheney. Do Something!

Why aren't the Media Talking about the Murders?

There were murders committed, so why are the media not talking about that?

No, they would rather talk about what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it. How ignorant. As Bob Cesca says.. Loud Voices and Shiny Objects.. the media sees things like Nancy Pelosi and grabs it..

Human Rights Investigator, Attorney John Sifton was on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman talking about the murders and torture deaths of at least 100 detainees and prisoners during the reign of terror of the Bush Mis-Administration.

Here is the conversation they had.



He has also written an article and posted it in The Daily Beast. Gee, wonder why Tina Brown didn't mention it on her weekly walk through with the Joke and Mika. Tina goes on there and they kissy, kissy every few days.. but she never challenges anything Joke says.

You can find, John Sifton's article, under the heading The Bush Administration Homicides.

• An estimated 100 detainees have died during interrogations, some who were clearly tortured to death.
• The Bush Justice Department failed to investigate and prosecute alleged murders even when the CIA inspector general referred a case.
• Sifton’s request for specific information on cases was rebuffed by the Bush Justice Department, though it was “familiar with the cases.”
• Attorney General Eric Holder must now decide whether to investigate and prosecute homicides, not just cases of torture.

That's just the headlines of the article. There is a lot more. Quite an interesting read and I would say a must read.

These are the things I think we should be talking about. Pictures that may or may not need to come out, why do we need to see more? Haven't we seen enough already?

We know what they look like, just investigate. Why do we need to see them, just get your letters off to congress and get these things investigated and get the charges filed. I don't need to see another picture to know what was done.

Pres. Obama Speaks About the Delay of Release of Photos

Pres. Obama talked about the release of the photos, just before he left for Phoenix.

Notice one line of what he said. I will highlight it.. I think it is very important.

[*] OBAMA: Now, let me also say a few words about an issue that I know you asked Robert Gibbs about quite a bit today, and that’s my decision to argue against the release of additional detainee photos.

Understand these photos are associated with closed investigations of the alleged abuse of detainees in our ongoing war effort. And I want to emphasize that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib. But they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army Manual; that’s precisely why they were investigated and, I might add, investigated long before I took office. And, where appropriate, sanctions have been applied.

In other words, this is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed or sought to justify inappropriate action. Rather, it has gone through the appropriate and regular processes. And the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.

It’s therefore my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.

Moreover, I fear the publication of these photos may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee abuse.

And, obviously, the thing that is most important in my mind is making sure that we are abiding by the Army Manual and that we are swiftly investigating any -- any instances in which individuals have not acted appropriately and that they are appropriately sanctioned. That’s my aim, and I do not believe that the release of these photos at this time would further that goal.

Now, let me be clear: I am concerned about how the release of these photos would be -- would impact on the safety of our troops. I have made it very clear to all who are within the chain of command, however, of the United States Armed Forces that the abuse of detainees in our custody is prohibited and will not be tolerated.

I have repeated that since I’ve been in office. Secretary Gates understands that. Admiral Mullen understands that. And that has been communicated across the chain of command.

Any abuse of detainees is unacceptable. It is against our values. It endangers our security. It will not be tolerated.

All right? Thank you very much, everybody

Notice that line I put in bold. This is what he said "future investigations of detainee abuse". I heard that and I went whoa.. that's what I am talking about. He isn't ruling anything out as so many have been thinking.. right there he stated very clearly.

We have to do this. In order to get this country back on track and back on the road to recovery completely we have to have investigations and prosecutions. We have a statement from our President now, saying there was going to be further investigations, so we have to just hold him to it.