Tracing Torture

New York University historian Greg Grandin knows a lot about Latin America, and the events in Iraq have led him to write a book, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. The book details the United States development of systematic terrorism via a triad of 1) death squads, 2) disappearances, and 3) torture. Here terrorism is not some extremist group setting off a bomb. Here it refers to the carefully crafted system for repressing the entire populations of a dozen Latin American countries.

The first successful CIA coup (Operation Ajax) overthrowing democratically elected leadership occurred in Iran in 1953 and installed the Shah. The next year, the CIA overthrew Guatamala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz (operation PBSUCCESS) after the government tried to expropriate large tracts of land owned by the United Fruit Company, a U.S.-based banana merchant (Chiquita Banana).

Citing the fear of communism, the US played a heavy hand in Latin America, the CIA training and establishing death squads that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians. The continent created a term, desaparecido - "disappeared" to refer to those who simply vanished. US helicopters flown by US operatives transported bodies off the coast and dumped them into the Pacific. According to Grandin, the real US sponsorship of death squads started in 1962 in Colombia. US General William Yarborough advised the Colombian government to set up an irregular unit to "execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents."

Yarborough left behind a "virtual blueprint" for creating military-directed death squads. The use of death squads would become part of the effort to "counter-terror."

The irony.

Turning to Vietnam, death-squad executions (the Phoenix Program) "neutralized" more than 80,000 Vietnamese between 1968 and 1972. The idea was to terrorize the population into submission. The U.S. Information Service in Saigon provided thousands of copies of a flyer printed with a ghostly looking eye. The "terror squads" then deposited that eye on the corpses of those they murdered. The technique was called "phrasing the threat."

During late 60s early 70s in both Vietnam and Latin America, Washington wanted to professionalize the security infrastructure into a network capable of gathering, analyzing, sharing, and acting on information in a quick and efficient manner, supplying phones, teletype machines, radios, cars, guns, ammunition, surveillance equipment, explosives, cattle prods, cameras, typewriters, carbon paper, and filing cabinets, while instructing its apprentices in the latest riot control, record keeping, surveillance, and mass-arrest techniques.

The US backed coups in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, institutionalizing death squads across the continent. The CIA backed Chilean Dictator Pinochet (Operation Condor) to orchestrate an international campaign of terror and murder.

Consider the possibility that we are the terrorists. A Pentagon "torture manual" describes at length "coercive" procedures using information gathered from CIA-commissioned mind control and electric-shock experiments. In today's war on terror, "torture memos" parse the difference between "pain" and "severe pain," "psychological harm" and "lasting psychological harm," these manuals went to great lengths to regulate the application of suffering. "The threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain," one handbook read.

US police advisor Dan Mitrione states, "You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more."

In Latin American, Mitrione taught by demonstration, reportedly torturing to death a number of homeless people kidnapped off the streets of Montevideo. "We must control our tempers in any case," he said. "You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist."

The United States of America has cancer.

For this post the links are extremely important, especially the one about Mitrione.

Bill O'Reilly is a complete moron, as is the Congressman from Missouri who described the experience of waterboarding as comparable to learning the back stroke. Torture is an inherent lie and not about obtaining information. As John McCain, someone familiar with the subject has stated, it does not work for extracting reliable information. Torture me enough, and I'll tell you I'm Santa Claus. Torture is about terror. Torture is about destroying people and spreading the fear of being destroyed.

Update: Thanks to John for providing a link to a Huffington Post piece reminding us that some of the information Colin Powell used to link Iraq to terrorism was obtained by torture.

Of course the CIA destroyed those tapes. Not to worry, Eggplant assures us that we don't torture.