Summary of torture warning
I blogged earlier the Washington Post story about warnings that the "harsh interrogation techniques" were torture and produced unreliable information. Here’s the ThinkProgress summary by Faiz Shakir:
In a July 2002 document uncovered by the Washington Post, the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency warned that the Bush administration’s interrogation program was “torture” and that it would produce “unreliable information.” JPRA is the military agency that ran the program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), “which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.” JPRA warned in the 2002 document:
The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel.
Update: The Aug. 1, 2002 Bybee torture memo addressed to CIA legal counsel John Rizzo makes reference to the JPRA. "Your on-site psychologists have also indicated that JPRA has likewise not reported any significant long-term mental health consequences from the use of the waterboard." Did Bybee know that JPRA viewed such techniques as torture?
