Torture For Money

by digby

There was a fascinating article in the New York Times last week about the torture regime, highlighting the architects of the techniques, two psychologists named Mitchell and Jessen, about whom I’ve written before. The story wasn’t all that new, obviously; Jane Mayer had written about them extensively in The Dark Side. But the story about their “consulting business” and the money they made teaching torture techniques was new to me and lent it another layer of moral corruption.

However, it appears it isn’t the whole story by a long shot. In a three part series over at FDL, Jeffrey Kaye delves into who hired Mitchell and Jessen, a question elided in the NY Times article. And naturally the answer is that it was a result of even more corruption.

Part I
Part II
Part III to come today.

One of the things that still remains to be sorted out about the GWOT period is the extent to which corruption drove military policy. The amount of money that was spent, with no accountability is staggering. And how much the profit motive guided policy is a question that should be asked. Whatever happened to the idea of a new Truman Commission? Or would is looking in the rear view mirror and playing the blame game too?

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