Prayerful torturers
Salt Lake attorney and retired brigadier general David Irvine, a former Utah legislator who served in the Army Reserve as a intelligence officer, has an op-ed article in The Salt Lake Tribune that should set off soul searching among the LDS faithful. Irvine frankly denounces the work of four fellow Mormons that set the stage for our national nightmare of so-called "extreme interrogation techniques." Not only did they provide the legal architecture, they provided the "scientific" patina for the plunge into the barbaric business of torture.The LDS community likes to track the achievements of members. Add these rogue patriots to the list:
Deputy White House counsel Timothy Flanigan who explained that waterboarding, mock executions and beatings were acceptable interrogation options.
[It] depends on the facts and circumstances... .'Inhumane' can't be coherently defined.Flanigan told his LDS ward congregation that it was gratifying "to work in a White House where every day was begun with prayer."
Federal Judge Jay Bybee, who as a legal counsel to the White House, wrote the memos that sanctioned torture. Says Irvine:
Bybee issued official legal opinions that redefined the crime of torture to make it all but impossible to commit. Barbarity was not torture unless it created pain equal to death or organ failure. . . . Bybee seems to have been unaware that the United States had prosecuted waterboarding as a war crime after World War II.Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has invited Bybee to testify about his role in torture.
Psychologists James E. Mitchell and John B. Jessen, known to CIA colleagues as the "Mormon Mafia," designed torture techniques that, according to Irvine, "were illegal in the United States and elsewhere in the civilized world."
Mitchell advised that suspects must be treated like dogs in a cage. "It's like an experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he's so diminished, he can't resist." The Mitchell/Jessen methodology . . . involved isolation, sensory deprivation, disorientation, nudity, sexual humiliation, waterboarding, painful stress positions, withholding food and medical treatment, extended sleep deprivation and subjection to temperature extremes.
Irvine quotes Retired Air Force Col. Steve Kleinman, a former pilot escape and survival instructor: I think [Mitchell and Jessen] have caused more harm to American national security than they'll ever understand.
KSL's Doug Wright, whose talk show reaches the Utah heartland, defended U.S. torture techniques yesterday, saying that prisoners at Guantanamo may have endured "tough interrogations," but they received medical and dental treatment. I hope Wright discusses Irvine's article with his listeners.
7 Comments:
The sheep will support these evil men no matter as they all go to the same building on Sundays - yep just like those that steal your retirement while shaking your hand and calling your brother/sister, smiling all the while. Sad and sick people claiming to live the way of Christ
Great piece, as per usual from David Irvine. He thinks and writes well, plus he has big military cred. Irvine is a Utah treasure.
It doesn't matter whether you're LDS or not. What matters is whether you believe in right or wrong. What these people justified in their own minds was plain and simple - wrong.
Nazi leaders and followers came from "good" Catholic and Protestant families. Yet, no condemnation has ever been made of those faiths because of it.
Faith is a good thing; however, behavior is what it is and no amount of faith can justify bad behavior nor should it be used as a shield for those who engage in it.
As a citizen who fully supported the Bush administration (and continues to do so), thus enabling (by vote, among other things) this apparently ‘illegal’ activity (I’m not convinced yet, myself) I demand that I be included as a co-defendant in any future legal proceedings.
What Irvine is not saying about waterboarding as prosecuted as a war crime is that such cases were not the kind done by the Bush Administration. As administered by the Japanese, waterboarding was fatal. That's a big difference.
what's up with the abu grab picture. We prosecuted people for that. It was wrong. It seems you're implying that the mormon mafia enabled that.
The problem is they interrogations and the torture at abu grab are separate. One was condoned by our government the other was not. If these interrogations are a brutal and reprehensible as you say, why not be honest in your reporting, the facts should carry the argument. You don't need to create dishonest associations.
The Mormon leadership should do a better job of controlling it's members. But wait, didn't I just read how it's bad for the Mormon leadership to control it's members. I'm so confused.
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