Baltimore Sun: U.S. practices at Abu Ghraib barred in '80s

It looks like the Bush* habit of bringing back RayGun era villains includes their preferred torture training practices...


U.S. practices at Abu Ghraib barred in '80s
Interrogators now taught psychological methods

By Mark Matthews
Sun National Staff
Originally published May 11, 2004
WASHINGTON - The abuse of prisoners in Iraq shows a pattern of harsh, coercive U.S. interrogation practices that were supposed to have ended with the Cold War.

From the 1960s into the 1980s, the United States trained its interrogators - or taught its Cold War allies - to exploit dread, nakedness, solitary confinement, sensory deprivation and other coercive measures to break a prisoner's will.

None of these practices is now officially sanctioned by the Army, and training at the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., gives prominent attention to the practices allowed or forbidden by the Geneva Conventions.

But the investigation of conditions at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, reports by human rights groups, and accounts by soldiers and prisoners reveal striking similarities to the discredited practices of past decades.

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