the pro-torture military psychologist on NPR's All Things Considered

[G_j]

is a monster,
I found the interview very disturbing!

:puke:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103787285

Ex-Military Psychologist Defends Harsh Tactics

by Alix Spiegel

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET


U.S. soldiers walk by an airfield at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2008. AP


All Things Considered, May 4, 2009 · In early 1990, around 15 military psychologists met in a small conference room at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Though the psychologists worked in different communities across the country, their job was basically the same. They helped torture people.

More specifically, they helped members of the U.S. military inoculate themselves to torture by subjecting them to torture techniques. They spent their days hitting and insulting, isolating and water-boarding, all with the hope that by exposing soldiers to these terrible experiences they might prepare them — physically and psychologically — for capture. The work was a part of a larger training program for military members called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE.

Two of the men who were in that room, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, are the psychologists who originally proposed applying the harsh tactics used in SERE training to detainees held by the United States government. Because of this they are almost universally vilified. Many think of them as people whose work has greatly tarnished the image of America.

But Bryce Lefever, a former SERE psychologist who first met Mitchell and Jessen at the 1990 meeting, does not see them this way. Lefever went on to serve as a military psychologist at the detention center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and he is one of the few psychologists involved in this community who has come forward in the wake of the revelations about harsh interrogation tactics to defend the work of the mental health professionals.

..more..

[EFerrari]

1. Did you get a name? n/t

[G_j]

2. Bryce Lefever

just added a link

[mrdmk]

3. Why is it 9-11, 9-11, 9-11? This is such a load...

Because a group of idiots had our defenses down, we needed to change. If we needed to change because of a terrorist attack, then the terrorist have won. End of story!

[Tesha]

4. I was especially impressed with all the counterbalancing points-of-view that NPR provided...

to contrast this fellow's eight minutes or so of unabashed
claims that torture is good, useful, and that he would do
it all/support it all again.

Tesha

[Tesha]

5. (Duplicate post removed by author)