Dynamics of Torture

Conroy's book is unreadable to those with PTSD, (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), because the whole book is one big trigger. I recommend, "Torture: A Collection" by Sanford Levinson that is written by different writers both for and against. I do not recommend the book, "Torture: does it make us safer? is it ever OK?: a human rights perspective", because all the essays are all from a narrow point of view of taking the high moral ground.

"Unspeakable acts, ordinary people: the dynamics of torture" by John Conroy, 2000 ISBN: 0679419187 Police brutality & Political persecution.

Sample text

Chapters and selected excerpts

1 Belfast: The Five Techniques

Page 6 "In combination, they induced a state of psychosis, a temporary madness with long-lasting effects."

2 Israel: Night of the Broken Clubs

Page 14 "The captain also suggested that one man should be beaten only in the arms so that he would be able to walk back to the village to get help for the others."

Page 19 "There was continuing frustration with the quality of the clubs, however, since several broke, as they had at Beita, before the job was finished."

3 Chicago: Getting Confessions

Page 23-24 " ... plainclothesmen pointed guns at the head of their twelve-year-old daughter."

4 History and Method

Page 27 "... one of the central aspects of torture, that the class of people whom society accepts as torturable has a tendency to expand."

Page 29 "Certain people and classes were initially exempt: children, the elderly, pregnant women, those exemptions had largely disappeared. Everyone could be tortured."

Page 35 "In his memoir "The Holocaust Kingdom", Alexander Donat tells of how he and his fellow inmates used a portion of the ersatz coffee they were given in the morning to wash ... some prisoners, driven by hunger, abandoned the wash and drank all the liquid. ' This was the first step to the grave,' Donat wrote."

5 Belfast: "No Brutality of Any Kind"

Page 40 "The men were chosen randomly. They were chosen because the army wanted a cross section of people."

Page 43 "[Cyrill] Cunningham ... called such interrogations 'blunt, medieval and extremely inefficient ... singularly stupid and unimaginative.'"

Page 45 " [Lord] Gardiner concluded ... that the procedures were morally unjustifiable, as assault, and a crime."

6 Israel: A Dangerous Report
6 Chicago: "The Pain Stays in Your Head"

Page 82 " ... taken in to custody ... policeman put a plastic bag over his head ... put his finger in a bolt cutter and threaten to cut it off ... taken to the roof of the police station and was told he would be thrown off ... "

7 Torturers

Page 90 "[Bruce Moore-King said] 'That whole boarding school system gears you for the colonial empire mentality'"

Page 98 " ... in his book "Obedience to Authority," [Stanley] Milgram ... wrote, 'one giving a competent public performance, and the other an inner, distressed woman ... "

Page 99 "Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps ... the man who actually dropped Cyclon-B ... was able to justify his behavior on ... only following orders ... "

Page 107 " ... I did it voluntarily, but I was enraged that I had to do it ... the prisoner forced me to do it ... because he wouldn't speak."

Page 113 - 120 "Don Dzagulones, who served as an interrogator with the American Division of the United State Army in Vietnam ... [said] he could not recall a single incident in which torture was used to a positive end ... his testimony later inserted into the Congressional Record of April 6, 1971.' ... make sure we left no marks ... '"

Page 120 Dzagulones believes that responsibility for the torture ... is difficult to assign because the whole society was mentally ill."

Page 128 "The effects of isolation, anxiety, fatigue, lack of sleep, uncomfortable temperatures, and chronic hunger ... lead to serious disturbances ... no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture." [Hinkle & Wolff, "American Medical Associations "Archive of Neurology and Psychiatry"1956]

8 Belfast: Ireland vs. the U.K.

Page 129 "[Dr. Robert] Daly ... the [British] hooding ... would be an advancement in the [North Korean] technique in that they can speed up the process ... "

10 Israel: The Court-Martial
11 Chicago: Informants
12 Victims 169
13 Belfast: Life Sentences
14 Israel: "The Next Step Is to God"
15 Chicago: The Public Is Not Aroused
16 Bystanders

Online resources

The Big Hurt
The Color of "Transparency" Is Black
New Interrogators:
Fear Up Harsh
What would Jack Bauer do?