Andrew Phelps <target@batstar.net>

Psychologists for Social Responsibility Blog

comment #3 on The “Ethical Interrogation:”  Michael Gelles and the al-Qahtani Interrogation

8:37AM PST 12/10/2009

This blog points out that Gelles did not adopt the SERE "learned helplessness" approach to interrogation torture. Instead it appears he has applied the prevailing alternative to the "wholesale" torture approach championed by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their confederates in power. That is the traditional "national security culture" approach of "torture as little as possible." Because of the then-dominant 'culture' of "wholesale" torture he has accommodated the "first do no harm" transgression system, and only "tortured liberally."

What this blog is missing is an explanation of the culture and psychology under which Gelles operated and which has now become again the dominant tendency within national security thought and practice. It won't do, in that regard, simply to vilify this faithful agent [?] of an immoral "alternative practice." What is needed is a critique that goes to the social engineering "torture as little as possible" approach - to its 'culture' and, yes, its psychology.