Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.On the bright side, I'm sure these two will be in for a harsh rebuke when the Justice Department decides to only look at low level operatives in the upcoming "comprehensive torture probe". Still this is yet another crushing blow to the belief that the Bush Administration was an evil bunch of Machiavellian plotters, unleashing their brilliantly diabolical plans onto an unsuspecting nation. It turns out they were just cheapskate sadists on a tight time schedule and they proceeded with their colossally reckless notions in the laziest and ham-handed way possible. They were allowed to succeed because of the general lazy cowardice and general incompetence of their supposed overseers in Congress.
They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.
But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.
Ouch, I'm going to need to sit down. It's always hard to come to grips with the fact that what you thought was a higher class of evil, turns out to be dime store evil mixed in with garden variety stupidity. Talk amongst yourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment