Jason Leopold, lead investigative reporter of Truthout and author of News Junkie, discusses the FOIA-revealed “torture manual” that influenced John Yoo’s infamous torture memo; how the Bush administration, keen to go to war with Iraq, intentionally devised an interrogation program to produce false information that linked Iraq and al-Qaeda; the difference between SERE training for US military personnel (in safe, non-hostile environments) and the “enhanced interrogations” of unprotected prisoners; and how detainees were physically and psychologically broken down into a state of “learned helplessness,” where they would tell an interrogator anything he wanted to hear.
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