Ape Mind Transcripts

Waterboarding might be an excruciating procedure with deep roots in the history of torture, but for the C.I.A.’s Office of Medical Services, recordkeeping for each session of near-drowning was critical. “In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented,” said medical guidelines prepared for the interrogators in December 2004.

The required records, the medical supervisors said, included “how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.”

The New York Times has an article detailing how carefully the CIA doled out its torture (with guidance from the White House, of course).

“The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about. Because he’s acting like a little Hitler,” said Tom Eisenhower, a World War II veteran. “I’d take a gun to Washington if enough of you would go with me.”

As Think Progress reports, a concerned voter at a Town Hall meeting in Iowa with Senator Chuck Grassley speaks his mind on trying to kill the President. Just imagine the outrage if someone had said this about Bush.

No word is given on Grassley’s response.

Woman Yells Heil Hitler To Jewish Man at Las Vegas Town Hall

Involves yelling “Heil Hitler” at an Israeli man praising his country’s healthcare system, then making crying baby noises when he becomes outraged.

Carrying a gun to a political meeting is an obscenity. Anyone who does it, even if they are within their legal rights, should be ashamed. Our founders fought a revolution (and, yes, took up arms) to build a society where political disputes are not settled through force or intimidation–and that’s the only purpose of bringing a weapon to a political discussion: to intimidate.

Rick Perlstein has a Washington Post Q&A in which he does an excellent job explaining (and contextualizing) the recent wave of rightwing anger and misconduct. Perlstein is a notable political author, known for his books “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America” and “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.”

One thing to note: there’s a marked coherence gap between the left-wing and right-wing questions, and it does not favor the latter.

Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror — powerful elites — find reason to stoke and exploit that fear.

Historian Rick Perlstein has a great op/ed in Washington Post on the long, illucid history of right-wing nuttiness. A political historian, Perlstein has written comprehensively about the formation of the modern conservative movement. His newest book, “Nixonland,” is supposed to be great.

The New York Times has a damning profile of two psychologists/war criminals who served as architects for the Bush administration’s torture regime.

The fruits of their work:

By the end of March, when agency operatives captured Abu Zubaydah, initially described as Al Qaeda’s No. 3, the Mitchell-Jessen interrogation plan was ready. At a secret C.I.A. jail in Thailand, as reported in prior news accounts, two F.B.I agents used conventional rapport-building methods to draw vital information from Mr. Zubaydah. Then the C.I.A. team, including Dr. Mitchell, arrived.

With the backing of agency headquarters, Dr. Mitchell ordered Mr. Zubaydah stripped, exposed to cold and blasted with rock music to prevent sleep. Not only the F.B.I. agents but also C.I.A. officers at the scene were uneasy about the harsh treatment. Among those questioning the use of physical pressure, according to one official present, were the Thailand station chief, the officer overseeing the jail, atop interrogator and a top agency psychologist.

…

In late July 2002, Dr. Jessen joined his partner in Thailand. On Aug. 1, the Justice Department completed a formal legal opinion authorizing the SERE methods, and the psychologists turned up the pressure. Over about two weeks, Mr. Zubaydah was confined in a box, slammed into the wall and waterboarded 83 times.

The brutal treatment stopped only after Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen themselves decided that Mr. Zubaydah had no more information to give up. Higher-ups from headquarters arrived and watched one more waterboarding before agreeing that the treatment could stop, according to a Justice Department legal opinion.