But W said it was okay, because those people have no souls, right?

Yeah, I'm sure that attitude wasn't reflected down the line, not at all.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:04 PM by Christopher Davis

Anybody want to bet me a bottle of decent hootch that somewhere in this story, there’s at least one person and possibly more who attended the School of the Americas?

Brrrr!

No, ma'am, not even a box of Almaden's cheapest white.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:18 PM by Mark Wise

No bet from me either....

Posted May 3, 2004 6:19 PM by Tom Whitmore

Re TNH's penultimate paragraph:

I've seen the nervous smirk of someone who's doing something they know is not exactly acceptable, but they're enjoying it anyhow and intend keeping a private record -- like B&D participants.

I've seen the focussed half-smile of someone who's doing something they firmly believe is correct --like KKK lynchings of 60 years ago.

I've seen the slap-happy grin of someone who's just clowning around, doing things that carry no moral or ethical baggage -- like putting a baby bonnet on a kitten, or letting your toddler apply lipstick all over your face.

The soldier photos remind me of the last one: having fun, with no belief of any wrongdoing at all.

That scares me. A lot.

$0.02

Posted May 3, 2004 6:28 PM by FranW

It'll be interesting to see what this does, if anything, to public perception of Kerry and his Vietnam-era protests.

The right wing has been saying that Kerry lied, that American troops didn't do the sort of things he says they did.

Now, we get graphic evidence of today's professional, volunteer army engaging in detestable conduct, mistreating bound prisoners.

It may make people more likely to accept Kerry's VVAW accusations as having been well-founded, and his protests as having been justified.

So that might be a small, slightly tarnished silver lining.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:31 PM by Jon H

The soldier photos remind me of the last one: having fun, with no belief of any wrongdoing at all.

I agree with you and Teresa here -- these look like people who were doing what they were told and are completely sure that it's okay. They weren't even a little afraid of getting busted -- more like "Hey Mom! Check out the goofy shit I get ordered to do for my country!" I'm reading facial expressions here, so I could be absolutely wrong, but that's what it looks like.

I am so humiliated and ashamed that our army is doing this -- I have a cousin in Baghdad now, and people are going to be trying even harder to kill him because we are doing these horrible things. I don't know what to do to make it stop, except to give every dime I can scrape together to left-wing political causes, and that feels completely ineffective.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:38 PM by LizardBreath

Being able to be a good person depends on not lying to yourself.

It's not a positive guarantee; you can be rigorously self-honest and a lousy human being.

But if you actively lie to yourself, you can't be a good person. You might not do anything very awful, if the lying is mostly of omission and the stresses of your life are small, and no one ever asks any kind of courage than the physical from you; your wrongs will be small curdled wrongs, to keep the edifice of preference un-toppled in your mind.

This entire war, this entire Presidency, pretty much the entire modern Republican Party, are predicated on lying to yourself about almost every issue of any moral substance. Prescriptive morality, demanding ignorance of result and a name of good divorced between the thing called and the thing done; a desire to beat and break the world, until it submits and obeys.

It disconnects cause from effect; it dissolves all sense of consequence, setting the determined will ahead of empirical result.

It breeds monsters, fierce and unashamed.

The four hundred year effort, to connect the naked will to a personal responsibility for the consequential result -- a thing of present doings, not the eventual justice of God -- is undone, and left to do again.

It is not a good thing, if it comes in time that a stranger does it.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:43 PM by Graydon

Of all the repellent things about this, one that's struck me most strongly is the apparent need for reporters to explain in painstaking, condescending detail how this kind of degradation is humiliating -- to Arabs. Even in the Seymour Hersh article:

Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.

Gee golly, you don't say! Because if I, a modern American woman, were to be stripped and blindfolded and sexually abused by male guards, why, I wouldn't mind a bit!

I know that some of the 'explaining' is just designed to make Americans understand how bad it is, but it comes across as if not liking to be threatened with rape and death were a quaint cultural quirk, along the lines of an obscure dietary restriction.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:44 PM by cija

Anybody want to bet me a bottle of decent hootch that somewhere in this story, there's at least one person and possibly more who attended the School of the Americas?

I have a rather weak chain of inference that lends support to the idea that you would win that bet.

Up until a few days ago Joe Ryan, a military interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, had an online diary (Google cache of Joe Ryan's Iraq Diary). In his April 13, 2004 entry he mentions:

"'Wild' Bill Armstrong is one of our interrogators. He and I are both in the Force Protection section. Bill is married with five kids and a devout Christian, father, and husband. He arrived here two weeks before I did. Bill knows interrogation and reporting doctrine better than anyone here. Of course it was his career in the army and now he teaches at the school house in Arizona when he is not over here playing in the sand."

As several other bloggers have surmised (Orcinus, etc.), the "school house in Arizona" at which 'Wild' Bill Armstrong, a career Army interrogator, teaches is most likely Fort Huachuca. A search on google reveals that Fort Huachuca was involved in the development of the course materials for the School of the Americas.

These connections are, of course, stretched well beyond what you would need to win your bet, but they're still an interesting set of connections.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:53 PM by Richard Parker

Jon H wrote,

"It may make people more likely to accept Kerry's VVAW accusations as having been well-founded, and his protests as having been justified."

Ha, ha, ha. I have not heard ONE WORD pinning -any- responsibility whatsoever in the media reporting on this, much less blame, on Hubris Boy or any of his associates. Responsibility, that bunch of gormless shirker chickenhawks?

I'm sort of surprised the news media showed Sen. Lautenberg [spelling ]] calling Cheney a chickenhawk and giving the evidence for it, in Congress. Hooray for Lautenberg.

Where oh WHERE is Teddy, he's one of the few Democrats who seems to have a clue about scrapping -effectively- politically. Most of them seem to be being so utterly ineffectual and unwilling to call lying slimeballs spreading misinformation and spinning black into white, lying weasel slime. Politeness doesn't WORK against slimely lying weasels with rabies. Massive retaliation and fumigation does....

I mean, the current slimespin is "Did Kerry toss his medals." He threw the ribbons for the medals... Big -deal- about the ribbons, people lose -them- all the time, they fall off shirts, etc. Someone who was there next to Kerry gave an account on NPR, he said that others were hurling items, Kerry sort of tossed his amidst others who were throwing items, and that there was were heavy metal metals involved thrown or tosses by Kerry. But that's not what the rest of the news media said, they have been making this Really Bid Deal out of this.

Nobody's tarring Bush and Cheney with putting Saddam's generals back in charge in Iraq -- someone who was high up in the Republican Guard, the special bully boy and torture keep-em-terrorized and downtrodden arm of the Iraqi military??!! And now comes the backpedalling, "Oh now, we're not REALLY putting him in charge with Fallujah, there's this other Iraqi former general we're looking at to put in charge [they gave a name], but we haven't vetted -him- yet, either, so even though that former Republican Guard fellow has appointed people and has been doing organizing and settup up policing and arming men and giving them authority to control the streets, he's not -really- in charage and we're going to do some rearrangements....

Hubris Boy and his associates make some of the worst drek fantasy out start looking realistic, regarding economic policies, civil rights attitudes, environment attitudes, foreign policy, and military organization and initiatives and operations.

Bush is an incompetent disgusting caricature of a Dark Lord. He wouldn't pass muster as one in most bad fantasy, he's -that- incompetent and insufferably obnoxious and myopic.

Posted May 3, 2004 6:59 PM by Paula Lieberman

I don't think we need to invoke the School of the Americas to explain this ratbastardry.

It's the kind of sick shit that jocks endulge in, in high school and frat houses.

Someone just professionalized it.

If the investigation and cleaning house doesn't include the contractors, then the boil will only be half lanced.

* * *
". . . it’s now impossible for us to win this war."

Indeed. We've utterly screwed the pooch. The neocon pipe-dream of a Middle East full of peaceful^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H compliant democracies is spiraling in flaming.

The question is, how long will the losing be dragged out?

And will we learn anything from it?

Posted May 3, 2004 7:09 PM by Stefan Jones

Paula writes: "Ha, ha, ha. I have not heard ONE WORD pinning -any- responsibility whatsoever in the media reporting on this, much less blame, on Hubris Boy or any of his associates. Responsibility, that bunch of gormless shirker chickenhawks?"

I'm not asking for a miracle, which is what that would require.

But the events at Abu Ghraib, to some extent, take Kerry's Vietnam protests off the table. Which is good, because it's been one of their few rhetorical weapons against him.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:18 PM by Jon H

It makes me dizzy and nauseous every time I look at those pictures - and I'm not a weak-kneed Nelly, either. It makes me *physically* ill - not so much the torture itself, but the smiles on the soldier's faces! Those awful, happy, aren't-we-great GRINS! Sick,sick,sick - I feel dirty for my country. I feel as though I ought to go to Baghdad and apologize to every person I meet - I'm sorry, I was against the war, but clearly I didn't do enough to stop it, and now look what we've done.

And the military says, "They weren't trained in the Geneva Conventions", and gives them *reprimands*? They need to go to prison, and be dishonorably discharged. Whoever ordered it needs the same. Anyone who looked the other way or was willfully unaware needs to be discharged. Examples need to be made of these people. Not to "win hearts and minds" - it's time to admit that that's all over, there's nothing that can be done. We have become Saddam in this. But the most stringent punishments need to be meted out because there is *no* place for this behavior anywhere.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:30 PM by cyclopatra

What the glee in the pictures tells me is that everybody who could possibly have walked into that room at random knew about this--I'm guessing that would include command. The photo takers aren't afraid at all. It's daylight. It's a big room. It's torture. There's so little attempt to hide that it seems like they figure they'd get praised if somebody walked in. And with a group of prisoners, wouldn't that take a lot of people to arrange? With more who'd notice?

I think Teresa's right about it being taught. I'll just put this out there: are hoods really standard prison issue? Or are they are standard torture issue?

Also, if this was just done by the guys on the lower rungs I think it would mimic popular movies. Most bullies I know just don't think what these pictures show.

I'm not taking your bet, Teresa; but the bottle of hooch is a good idea.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:33 PM by ElizabethVomMarlo

As a Yank ex-pat, I seem to spend all my time apologising for America. I've run out of excuses, though. So I've started telling people I'm from Southern Canada.

I am so very deeply ashamed of my country.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:34 PM by FranW

Googling tip: The School of the Americas was closed in Dec 2000 and reopened in Jan 2001 as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. That Guardian article acroymifies it as “WHISC”, but the school’s own website uses “WHINSEC”.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:42 PM by Avram

FranW --

I really wish you wouldn't do that. It creates a pattern of assumptions that gets people who are from Southern Ontario beat up when the travel.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:43 PM by Graydon

Forcing prisoners to sexually abuse each other is something I've read about before as a tactic of professional torturers. They make family members and friends do it sometimes, to give them memories they won't be able to live with.

I can see ordinary young Americans deciding on their own to beat or rape prisoners. But that particular type of sexual abuse, making men do it to each other, seems less like spontaneous cruelty and more like School of the Americas coaching to me too. So does the idea of hooking a man up to wires and making him stand on a box.

The only difference I see between us and Saddam Hussein now that our own rape rooms and torture chambers have been exposed is one of quantity rather than quality. Oh, and we haven't used chemical weapons on the Kurds. There's something to be proud of.

And sorry as I feel for the tortured Iraqis, most of whom probably hadn't done anything whatsoever but be in Iraq when it was invaded, I feel even worse over the fact that people I love and maybe I may die some day because of this, because the number of people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to get revenge on America has just gone through the roof.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:49 PM by Rachel Brown

Graydon: Your point is well taken, but FranW didn't say Southern Ontario, she said Southern Canada. As in, oh, Maine...

Posted May 3, 2004 7:54 PM by Sylvia Li

FranW: So I've started telling people I'm from Southern Canada.

Graydon: I really wish you wouldn't do that. It creates a pattern of assumptions that gets people who are from Southern Ontario beat up when the travel.

I don't know which of these comments is more offensive.

Although the first may be a bitter joke, there are of course plenty of Americans who claim to be Canadians abroad, and I think that actually doing it is not cute and is, furthermore, wrong. If, that is, you consider contributing to a worldwide perception that decent Americans are harder and harder these days to be a problem. It's cowardly and indefensible unless perhaps you believe your life to be in immediate danger.

Graydon - what do you think FranW is doing abroad that would make people want to beat up her supposed compatriots? Or was that a joke too?

Posted May 3, 2004 7:56 PM by cija

This, combined with the new discriminatory laws passed in Michigan and Virginia, sickens me.

Why is my country doing this to itself?
"Liberty and justice for all" has not always been true--slavery, women's rights, the Japanese internment camps during WWII, and still isn't a reality. But for the past 200 years we were at least trying (in our own sometimes painful and befuddled way) to bring that reality into being.

I feel like we're being faced with a challenge to personal responsibility as a country--and we're not only not passing, but we're strenuously denying the validity and applicablity of the test.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:56 PM by Cassandra Phillips-Sears

The perps of the highest rank got severe reprimands already, so they're trying to cover up the CIA involvement already. Which only Americans will buy.

Eventually, they'll admit the involvement and pin it on Valerie Plame.

Posted May 3, 2004 7:59 PM by Kevin Hayden

Graydon -- So far, every Kiwi has realised I'm joking, and asked if Southern Canada extends right to Florida. I tell them it's limited to a single square meter of Michigan -- the chair in my Mom's living room where I tend to sit when visiting there.

But hey -- are you trying to say I am so horrible and unacceptable and obnoxious that I taint true Canadians by association? :-)

Posted May 3, 2004 8:02 PM by FranW

Sylvia --

The folks I know who actually have been beaten up or pursued for allegedly lying about being Americans are from Southern Ontario, and the two locales conflated in my head. 'the' for 'they' is just being a moron, instead of suffering from reference slip; Mea Culpa.

And anyway, the advisors to George IV made us give Maine back, after the War of 1812; gave the King of the Belgians a headache and everything, drawing lines on the map.

Posted May 3, 2004 8:05 PM by Graydon

I have some dobuts about SoA in this -- not that they haven't taught things this bad. But this smells more of For Huachuca in Arisona than Fort Benning. SoA (by whatever name it goes now) really is aimed at transferring military knowledge to Latin American officers and NCO's. But that is not necessarily where the knowlege is developed, and few US military officers are ever students there.

No, I think we should look to the US Army Inelligence Center and School, as well as the SpecOps and CIA folks that have been training with the Israelis. I have already read some passing comments on the similaries between what went on in this facility and what goes on in West Bank interrogation centers. If you want to consider the apocalypse for a few minuites, imagine what will happen if one of those contractors turns out to be an Israeli citizen . . .

Posted May 3, 2004 8:12 PM by Claude Muncey

On the miracle of Iraqi unity in the siege of Fallujah
("We are Sunni and Shiite brothers..."):

Bush always told us he was
"a uniter, not a divider."

Posted May 3, 2004 8:51 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Ginmar (the female fan in the Army over in Iraq who is on LJ) has made some interesting comments on this in her LiveJournal. The Army was apparently reporting about this situation in the Army Times a number of months ago, and she read about it when she was last back in the U.S., it was that far back. I may be misremembering, but I thought she also makes some comments about the people involved being trained by and/or under orders by people in "interrogation," not regular troops and certainly not regular reservists. Give her a read.

Posted May 3, 2004 8:51 PM by Nancy Hanger

Teresa, those opening lines really said it, for me. It's not often that I feel any shame in being an American - I can be and often am appalled by things done by the government or various sections of society at large, but usually I think "that's a ghastly error, and every community makes some, and time will deal with this as well". But this hit me deeply. It seems to me a particularly direct betrayal of what I regard as the essence of the American experiment, and I wish there were something I could do to make amends. I can and do contribute to groups that are lobbying in ways I regard as worthwhile and to groups helping the victims of various injustices and deprivations, but...it just doesn't feel like enough, today.

Posted May 3, 2004 9:05 PM by Bruce Baugh

So this was supposed to be the critical war to pacify the Middle East.

If it was so bloody important to Bush's strategy to stop terror, why was it done on the cheap?

Since there's been ample dissembling from the administration on the matter, I draw the conclusion that it wasn't critical, and to have done the manner properly I suspect it would had cost even more, requiring Bush to print money (well, ask the Fed to increase the money supply) and the resulting inflation would had killed the recovery.

But hey, if it was necessary to save America, Democracy, and Christian Civilization (I'm using Cramer's expansive definition of Christian Civ here,) what's a 'bout of stagflation compared to everything else at stake? Or they could had asked for a one time wealth tax to pay for the war.

Their economic policy lives in a separate silo from their war policy. Strange. Even FDR, back in the neolithic, integrated the two.

In the future, we'll scoff at the Neocons the same way we laugh at Kennedy's Best and Brightest, well, as long as they don't get us all killed.

Posted May 3, 2004 9:27 PM by Bill Humphries

What gets me is the idiocy of it all. They took *photos*? They were smiling and laughing? How could anyone think this was a joke?

Oh, and Irony or ironies, the name of one of the civilian contractors accused of being involved is named John Israel.

here's a link to an article quoting him

Mr. Israel, the report found, "denied ever having seen interrogation processes in violation" of Army standards, "which is contrary to several witness statements." .

Posted May 3, 2004 9:50 PM by Josh Jasper

On 4/29, my reaction to the Abu Ghraib torture photos was that the US should raze Abu Ghraib and pave over where it stood. That place is such a symbol, only a stake through its heart will do.

Scorpio
Eccentricity

Posted May 3, 2004 9:50 PM by Scorpio

Thanks to Teresa, & the others who've put work into both getting down such facts as you can, and those who have cogent comments.

Cogent comment is beyond me right now, beyond recalling an earlier warning, "It'll all end in tears."

Posted May 3, 2004 9:56 PM by Epacris

As I've mentioned at Patrick's blog, someone who should be invited to come comment here writes as House_Draven at LiveJournal. Jenn was trained at Ft. Huachuca (aka, the intelligence school) and worked intelligence first for the Army and then for the CIA. Within certain parameters, I suspect she could shed some interesting light here. She's been having a health flareup in the last few weeks, so hasn't been as up on this news as most, but if someone dropped her a line and asked her to raise her head and come on over here, I think she would.

Posted May 3, 2004 10:08 PM by Nancy Hanger

While Smash and Stryker (sounds like a line from a Zucker Bros. movie) are spot on, this little gem dribbled from the orifice of one of Smash's readers:

To reject a tactic because of morality in war is sensless. War equates to killing others the least moral act we should be able to imagine. Denying torture has a place in war is to deny interrogation as useful to ultimate goals.

Tho stripping em naked and taking pictures of them looks more like hell week in college. Sure these bozos should get smacked, but torture has it's place in logical warfare.

Posted by: IXLNXS at May 3, 2004 05:15 PM

Posted May 3, 2004 10:37 PM by Josh Jasper

Christopher Davis: can you cite that "no souls" comment, or were you being sarcastic?

Posted May 3, 2004 10:41 PM by Peter A. Harkins

Peter A Harkins:

yes, Bush really said it.

"We've got to be strong and resolute and determined. We will never show weakness in the face of these people who have no soul, who have no conscience, who care less about the life of a man or a woman or a child."

Here's a link:

http://www.lies.com/blog/archives/001602.html

Posted May 3, 2004 11:10 PM by Bob Oldendorf

Josh,

For all that I often resemble a bleeding heart liberal, I don't really disagree with the idea that nearly any tactic is possible to justify. Probably not in this case, but not never. To illustrate with an extreme: Consider having in custody a person who knows the location of a nuclear bomb that's been secreted in an American city. If there weren't any better ways of obtaining the needed information, could you refuse to do the deed?

Posted May 4, 2004 12:21 AM by sidhebaap

Consider having in custody a person who knows the location of a nuclear bomb that's been secreted in an American city. If there weren't any better ways of obtaining the needed information, could you refuse to do the deed?

Oh, lord, that bullshit again.

Listen up: One of the big reasons that you don't use torture to get information is this: You don't get good information. Suppose there really was a bomb, and suppose you really had the guy who knew where it was, and suppose you went to work on him with pliers and a soldering iron to make him talk. You know what you'd get? Worthless sounds. He'd tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. He'd say anything, just to make you stop. The information you'd get would be bogus.

But suppose you got the wrong guy? He'd tell you where that bomb was too. He'd confess. Everyone confesses. He'd name his accomplices. And they'd all confess, which would corroborate his confession.

It wouldn't stop that bomb, though, would it?

Leave aside the morality, leave aside the legality, there's your practical reason why you don't torture. It's useless.

=============

I notice in Hersh's article that "contractors" are mentioned pretty frequently. That called to mind a comment that Teresa quoted about a month ago: "Contract mercenaries are the guys you use to do the stuff the regular military refuses to do..."

Posted May 4, 2004 12:37 AM by James D. Macdonald

ElizabethVomMarlo: "I'll just put this out there: are hoods really standard prison issue? Or are they are standard torture issue?"

I recall reading somewhere that they're actually sandbags.

Posted May 4, 2004 12:53 AM by andrew morton

Stefan, I disagree about this being "the kind of sick shit that jocks endulge in, in high school and frat houses." What the British troops were doing -- beating the snot out of some helpless guy in the back of a moving truck, pissing on him, and throwing him off while the truck's in motion -- is within the usual range of asshole behavior. Heck, I've known guys who did stuff like that. (Didn't like them; just knew them.)

The stuff at Abu Ghraib is weirder, far more stylized. It's sophisticated. It's not what you'd come up with if you'd never tortured people before and were having to make it all up as you went along. I mean, all those identical hoods? That's weird.

The people in the pictures don't have the kind of transgressive bravado you see in a bunch of guys who're beating up some poor goat. They're grinning. They're kind of nerdy. Some of them are girls. That is seriously wrong for simple primate bad behavior. Something else is going on there.

Cija, Fran and Graydon aren't being offensive.

Claude, I expect you're right. There are styles in torture.

Bill, I've been thinking since before it started that they did the war on the cheap because they weren't serious about it. I know that sounds weird. I think they regarded it as a mechanism for the accomplishment of certain other things.

Josh Jasper, they took photos because they were Americans, far from home, and goofing around. I don't think it was a matter of them being so depraved that they thought it was a good idea to take jolly pictures of them torturing prisoners. I think they weren't thinking about it in those terms. Thus my belief that this wasn't just a local upwelling of garden-variety original sin.

Jim, thanks for remembering that one. I thought it was a very apposite comment at the time, and it's even more so now.

Posted May 4, 2004 1:30 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

America needs to get serious about the Abu Ghraib situation, not simply in condemning it--that's too easy, since almost no one's going to come out publicly in FAVOR of torture or abuse as an instrument of policy--but in backing up words with action. Unfortunately, few Americans are actually in a position to do much more than voice an opinion on the matter. What the rest of us can do, though, is make our opposition to the Abu Ghraib atrocities known to those people who have some power to exert. I'm talking about one of the simplest of American civic acts after voting--getting in touch with one's elected representatives, either by e-mail, phone call, or faxing. (Snail mail won't work as well for this purpose as it used to, given the anthrax scare a while back.)

If you call your senator's local office, for instance, I would advise against laying blame for the situation on any political faction. (That goes double if the senator actually DOES lean toward the saber-rattling persuasion.) Instead, you might simply bring up the Abu Ghraib atrocities (the recent ones, the ones commited BY Americans) and ask what the senator is doing about the situation beyond condemning it. For instance, is he or she calling for an investigation to make sure nothing like this is going on elsewhere in Iraq, or for reforms in the armed forces or intelligence services to ensure that nothing like this happens again?

I phoned my senators' and congressman's offices this morning with just those questions. Spoke with underlings (one poor girl in my congressman's local office hadn't even about the torture/abuse--"Torture BY Americans?") and left voice-mail messages with a couple of the senators' staff. While I didn't get an answer to speak of, and didn't expect to, it was at least a start at letting these people know that at least one of their constituents was concerned about the situation, and that they themselves have the power to affect the situation.

For me, the next steps are to call those offices AGAIN, and to recruit as many people on the local level to do the same. I also plan to call the White House, as well as others in Congress who ought to share this concern. (I'm starting with Senators Kerry, McCain and H. R. Clinton.) I don't know how much good this can do, but at least it can't hurt, and as long as I keep doing it (and trying to get others to do so) it serves as a test of my own resolve to see that there are no more Abu Ghraibs. (That sounds like I'm doing this so as to feel noble. Rather, I'm doing it so I don't feel ignoble.)

If you're an American, you're heartsick/angry/upset about the atrocities, and you haven't yet contacted your representatives about this, why not?

Posted May 4, 2004 1:52 AM by Rob Tomshany

The other thing you can do is to make buttons, tshirts, bumper stickers, etc that say Torture is Terrorism and put them absolutely everywhere you can.

That's a true statement, and the very short version of what the present administration has to answer for.

Given their prior rhetoric, they're going to squirm like blazes, but the quicker they can be compelled to answer that, the better.

Posted May 4, 2004 2:05 AM by Graydon

My stomach hurts and my heart aches. There is nothing I can do directly about this. But there are things I can do indirectly. I am donating money to Democratic candidates. I am trying (with less than complete success) to participate in the electoral process. (See that story in my blog http://marykay.typepad.com/gallimaufry) Next Saturday I'm going to spend all afternoon participating in a voter registration drive. Don't get paralyzed; get mad; do something, anything.

MKK

Posted May 4, 2004 2:07 AM by Mary Kay

Teresa - I accept that I am easily offended by not very offensive things, and anyway I was bothered by what are really extremely minor points considering the context of the thread. I would only continue to be bothered by Fran's remark if I didn't realize it was a joke, and I do, now, so I've stopped.

I overreact to the whole Americans pretending to be Canadians thing - even though I have no idea how many people, if any, really do it - because either I, as an American, share some small part of responsibility for my nation's outrages, in which case I shouldn't hide from it, or else as an individual I'm not representative of my nationality, in which case I shouldn't be ashamed to admit to it. Or both.

Posted May 4, 2004 2:41 AM by cija

Learned behaviour, yes. Teresa, one thing all doctors involved in treating torture survivors say is how amazingly similar tecniques are, across all borders, and down to the details. Torture is taught, yes. There's a red thread running through all the bad places. One starts in Nazi Germany and goes to South America, for example. And in Genoa, in 2001, people were told to stand in the exact same position employed in the "five tecniques" in Northern Ireland.

It's a contagion, it's not an isolated incident. In Genoa people said "ours? our police, our carabinieri? Torturing teenage kids?". But it's there. Unless you take positive steps to eliminte it, and those start from your own prisons, it's there. Ready to rear its ugly head abroad, or in times of political unrest. Or against the helpless, for example the immigrants, people nobody is likely to care about. And it's there because it's learned, in places like Somalia, Afghanistan, or the prisons - the worse guys in Genoa were reportedly the special prison guards charged with putting down prison revolts.

Of course people will bring it home. But they also brought it from home, and learned it from somebody who learned it from somebody else, and to make time to teach, you need encouragment from above, at minimum at the level of turning a blind eye.

Posted May 4, 2004 3:12 AM by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

And another thing. Teresa, you probably know that I'm not a great fan of flags, of any nationality. But you are wrong in taking down yours because of this incident, just like people are wrong in being ashamed of being Americans abroad. Flying a flag does not mean, should not mean, that you think your country is the best. It should mean that you take responsability for it. You - or perhaps Patrick - once said that your favourite hymn was _America The Beutiful_ because of its emphasis on the never-ending fight to bring justice and fairness to the land. That is not the meaning the flag can have in Europe, for long and painful historical reasons - but maybe we can claim our new European flag to mean that. But that is what I always took it to mean for you: this is my place, and as ugly as it is sometimes, I'm not ceasing the fight to better it.

Torture is not something specifically American, and this incident is only the latest in a long chain of American involvement with it. We all know about South America, after all. Torture is unfortunately a human trait, and the fight against it is a fight for the human spirit. Feeling shame is natural - sometimes you feel ashamed of being human when you see or hear about this kind of things. But it doesn't taint a flag. It wasn't pure before, and I always believed you raised it in knowledge and defiance of that taint, and to help get it off.

The best people I knew were Americans. And I'm tired of having to counter popular perceptions about Americans here, that they are stupid, ignorant, right-wing nuts, religious bigots. I welcome the help from decent people abroad. And as for feeling embarassed by our goverment, why, it's not as many people can throw stones around here, right?

Posted May 4, 2004 3:36 AM by Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

sidhebaap
For all that I often resemble a bleeding heart liberal, I don't really disagree with the idea that nearly any tactic is possible to justify. Probably not in this case, but not never. To illustrate with an extreme: Consider having in custody a person who knows the location of a nuclear bomb that's been secreted in an American city. If there weren't any better ways of obtaining the needed information, could you refuse to do the deed?

I could.

It's an interesting, and telling, point that the Israelis recently, with a lot of help from the head of the Army (or perhaps their Army Intel) did away with the ticking bomb rationale. They found that more and more people, at greater and greater removes, were being whacked because they could lead to someone who knew about a ticking bomb.

But here is why I'd refuse. In the scenario you give, it won't work. Unless the bomb is going to go off a long time from now, all the guy has to do is 1: hold out until it goes off or 2: tell a good lie, and trust that the situation won't be resolved until it goes off (a healthy lead, into the area the bomb is would be the best at this, the assumption would be he told the truth and the EOD guys either failed to find it, or to defuse it.

But then I happen to think that doing evil, with good intentions is a filthy sin, and might not be one I can get absolution for, certainly I can't if there is no afterlife. In that case I have to be able to look in the mirror every morning and move the razor up and down, not sideways.

Terry

Posted May 4, 2004 4:43 AM by Terry Karney

Fort Huachuca: I've taught there. It has a lot of schools, and Proponent (the part of USAICS which builds courses) does/has put together things for SOA, and its successor. But the odds that Armstrong worked at any of those is slim.

If he has but the one intel MOS, he is not likely to have taught at anyplace other than the Basic Interrogator course, or the Strategic Debriefer course.

In any event the schoolhouse for SOA, and its successor is at Ft. Benning.

I think (my personal opinion, and you'll see it a lot) the problem is from Gitmo, and much of that is from 1: the fucked up status we have created for the people there, and 2: the CIA types who helped devise some of the techniques in use there (and what I've heard from friends who were there is that it's bad, bad in ways yuo don't imagine, but not as bad as Abu Ghraib... but I can see where the things at Abu Ghraib could evolve from those).

As for ginmar's comments, She I think she is mistaken. From the timeline she gave I think she is recalling four MPs in a camp, further south, who were charged back in February. They were not from Abu Ghraib. Which is a pity, though I take heart that this was being investigated before the news broke.

Regarding the flag, don't take it down... furl it, with large ties (glue 'em down in case someone wants to, "help," you.). Show that the Colors are in disgrace.

The only positive thing I can say about this is that a daer friend, who is decidedly anti-Kerry said today, "God I wish I didn't despise Kerry so much."

I guess that will have to do for my still, small, voice.

Terry

Posted May 4, 2004 5:23 AM by Terry Karney

Claude:

I have already read some passing comments on the similaries between what went on in this facility and what goes on in West Bank interrogation centers.

Cite, please.

No, really. I mean, I wouldn't be that surprised if you could come up with a cite -- I am well aware that my government and representatives thereof have done bad things to Palestinians -- but until you can actually show me pictures of a naked pyramid of Palestinian prisoners with grinning Iraeli guards, I'd appreciate it if you shut up.

Posted May 4, 2004 6:22 AM by Naomi Libicki

I feel as though I'm picking at a scab.

Teresa: How many guys are we going to be bringing home who’ve added behavior like that to their personal strategic arsenal? That’s one of the problems you get when you let your troops misbehave overseas: they come home knowing how to do things no one should know how to do.

I ranted about this last November. I guess I'll repost it here.

"I thought the folks in charge were clueless when I was in Iraq (don't get me started on how V Corps managed EPWs during the shooting war), but as I look at what is being bruited about in the national fora, I ponder the shortest sentence in the Bible, "Jesus wept."

I'm a soldier. I don't talk about what that means much, mostly because it is a needful job, but dirty.

In a nutshell what I do is kill people.

To quote Shakespeare, "I could be bounded up in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

But I manage to avoid those bad dreams (as to most of the rest of my fellows) because I am bounded by more than that nutshell (rules are not the enemy... they are tools).

I have things like the Geneva Conventions and I have accepted a wealth of tradition, some of which must go back to the very first armies... one of those traditions is that non-combatants are spared (in the early days non-combatant was a bit more vague a concept, but those who were such got off more lightly than those who weren't, but I digress).

Which is why when I see things like this http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/04BROO.html my bile rises and I want to scream.

"Try to put yourself in the mind of the killer, or of the guy with the plastic bag. You are part of Saddam's vast apparatus of rape squads, torture teams and mass-grave fillers. Every time you walk down the street, people tremble in fear. Everything else in society is arbitrary, but you are absolute. When you kill, your craving for power and significance is sated. You are infused with the joy of domination....

What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence.

Somehow, over the next six months, until the Iraqis are capable of their own defense, the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror, the crucial turning point where either we will crush the terrorists' spirit or they will crush ours.

The president will have to remind us that we live in a fallen world, that we have to take morally hazardous action if we are to defeat the killers who confront us. It is our responsibility to not walk away. It is our responsibility to recognize the dark realities of human nature, while still preserving our idealistic faith in a better Middle East."

DAVID BROOKS
November 4, 2003

So, to eradicate the last holdouts of the evil aspects of Hussein's Iraq we have to (for just a little while) replace them with our boys, doing similar work.

After all this is not going to be done with the niceties of Stateside Police Procedures, "...the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably, there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause."

It sounds like the guy in the bank saying, "Don't make me shoot these people, if you do the blood is on your hands."

But it won't be, it will be on the hands of the troops who are convinced to commit them. It may not get to My Lai as policy, but how will we decide the practical aspects of the brutality? I don't think we'll resort to summary decapitation, but we've already engaged in hostage taking (a COL left a note that a man's family was being held, pending his turning himself in... a violation of the Geneva Conventions).

Will it stop there? I doubt it. Israel did away with the rational of, "the ticking bomb" when dealing with Palestinians because they all became people who could be justifiably, "coerced."

And the Israeli Army says that such tactics are bad policy, they cause the troubles they are used to cure (Valium does that, one of the listed side effects is anxiety, but I digress).

What dreams will we foist on those who become not merely bound in that nutshell, but trapped?"

*******

What saddens me, what makes me think the protestations of Bush, et al, are hollow forms, meant to placate those who want to look the other way is that none of them condemned Brooks when he advocated doing what was done at Abu Ghraib, and more besides.

"Jesus wept," and I'm not sleeping so well.

Terry

Posted May 4, 2004 7:03 AM by Terry Karney

Graydon:

It occurs to me to wonder whether your acquaintances were pursued and beaten by people opposed to America, for being Americans, or by people in favor of America, for denying they were Americans.

The distinction is an important one for people who may be deciding what to say about their nationality while travelling.

Posted May 4, 2004 7:21 AM by Naomi Libicki

re David Brooks

Oh dear lord. I can't stand the man, and either I didn't read it or blanked it out.

No wonder he's being so suspiciously quiet about it these days.

And William Safire is still declaring that things are getting better...
"The great majority of Iraqis are glad that Saddam is overthrown. We and the U.N. are giving them democracy's moment, but courageous Iraqis must come forward to seize it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/opinion/03SAFI.html

They really do live in some kind of AU.

Y'all know there have been a lot of suicides, both over there, and among returning veterans, a lot higher than there should be statistically?

I'm going to quote General Butler, decorated Marine Corps veteran of WWI, writing in the run-up to WWII here - a good counter to the argument that men were tougher back then, not like the softies today who are all about phony psyche disorders like PTSD:

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

Posted May 4, 2004 7:53 AM by bellatrys

Learned behaviour, yes. Teresa, one thing all doctors involved in treating torture survivors say is how amazingly similar tecniques are, across all borders, and down to the details. Torture is taught, yes. There's a red thread running through all the bad places.

I read an article once (can't remember where, sorry) about torture in the Occupied Territories. It talked about Palestinian intelligence officers using the very same methods of torture that had been inflicted on them by Israeli interrogators. One of these Palestinian officers, it said, would shout at prisoners in Hebrew, because for him Hebrew was the language of power and Arabic the language of powerlessness.

Posted May 4, 2004 9:43 AM by David

Naomi --

I really have no idea.

Me, it pisses off because it's a claim that Canadians are better people, and I think that's one of those massively dangerous stupidities.

Posted May 4, 2004 10:06 AM by Graydon

I do not believe that you can fight a counter-insurgency war without torture. Counter-insurgency is all about intelligence, and since guerrillas don't use radios much, that means human intelligence. Guerrillas and their supporters don't volunteer information. Therefore it has to be extracted by interrogation.

Meanwhile, counter-insurgency is all about killing people who are not in uniforms, and being prepared to kill them even if they aren't really enemies (because if you wait, they will possibly kill you). Therefore soldiers develop a hair-trigger attitude along with a violently hostile attitude to the local population.

Put the two together and you get the conclusion that the best way to get intelligence is to hurt the local population, either via collective punishment or via detention without trial followed by torture.

So far as I can see, this is why counter-insurgency war so seldom succeeds; indeed, it can only succeed when the insurgents are not supported by a large portion of the population. I may be wrong, but I suspect that a large proportion of Iraqis are tacitly or actively in support of the resistance there, and that the proportion of active supporters is growing.

Therefore it is unlikely that you will either get out of this mess, or clean it up.

Posted May 4, 2004 10:24 AM by MFB

'As a Yank ex-pat, I seem to spend all my time apologising for America.'
as someone who never had american citizenship, but lived there for over twenty years and as a consequence has an american accent i'm personally pretty tired of having to, or being expected to, apologise.

By the way i swear that guy with the gloves is the most all-american good time hick I've ever seen, i could just picture him grinning outside a gas station in nevada.

Posted May 4, 2004 10:58 AM by bryan

MFB, please see Terry Karney's posts over on Electrolite.

At minimum, the substitution of the word "interrogate" for "torture" is inaccurate and inappropriate.

Posted May 4, 2004 11:56 AM by Jill Smith

I do not believe that you can fight a counter-insurgency war without torture.

I believe that we not only can, we must.

Take that teenager who was allegedly raped: Do you think that his brothers, his uncles, his father, his cousins, don't know about it? Do you think for one second that they are now big supporters of the US occupation? Forget raising up a hundred bin Ladens. How about raising up a thousand Tim McVeighs.

If the mission is "hearts and minds," we have to be flawless.

We can't claim the moral high ground while actually occupying the moral swamp. The people on the ground, the guys in the insurgency, will know what's going on.

Remember, it was supposed to be about weapons of mass destruction. Then there weren't any. It was supposed to be about links to al Qaeda. There weren't any (though there might be now -- smooth move, Georgie).

So now it's about creating such a shining light of prosperity and freedom and democracy in the middle east that everyone else around in other countries in the region will say, "Wow! We want to be like those guys!"

If that's the mission, would someone explain to me how this particular set of actions has gotten us closer to the objective?

Of course, if the mission is "Make Halliburton rich," well, Mission Accomplished.

Posted May 4, 2004 12:05 PM by James D. Macdonald

There's a particular irony in this story breaking the day after Bush claimed that Saddam's vile practices had been abolished, that Iraqis were now free of the daily fear of being abducted and abused. I don't wish any of this to have been done; but it having been done, I can hope the nemesis visited on his hubris will have a suitably (shock-and-)awesome effect.

Posted May 4, 2004 12:08 PM by CHip

I haven't read all the posts yet, so forgive if anybody else has already posted about this, but today I was listening to NPR at work, and they were interviewing people in New York about the abuses. Most of the people were appropriately horrified that such behaviour had occured, but one woman said that considering the state of their country and their behaviour (I assume she was referring to the Iraqis) that they deserved it.

I was...appalled at her callousness and shortsightedness. Fortunately, her attitude seems to be among the minority.

I also couldn't help recalling several incidents within the United States though, regarding the rape allegations within the Armed Forces, and the way the military tried to shove it under the rug until the press reached critical mass. I think we need to go a lot further back than the chain of command to discourage such behaviour in the future. If military academies are often a hotbed of abusive behaviour as indicated by those incidents, I can't help being Not Surprised by such news. It's not just the war--although I'm sure that it's not helping--but an established pattern of Looking The Other Way.

The other incident this reminded me of was last year's story about the Mepham High football team--planned and deliberate sexual and physical humiliation.

Posted May 4, 2004 12:12 PM by PiscusFiche

Howdy,

bellatrys writes: 'And William Safire is still declaring that things are getting better...
"The great majority of Iraqis are glad that Saddam is overthrown. We and the U.N. are giving them democracy's moment, but courageous Iraqis must come forward to seize it."'

All the courageous Iraqis who stepped forward to seize democracy's moment were killed in 1991, when the first Bush encouraged them to Rise Up Against Saddam and then abandoned them to get massacred by the hundreds, if not thousands. None of the talking heads who blather about how Iraqis have to "take control of their own destiny" seems to remember this inconvenient fact.

-- Ed

Posted May 4, 2004 12:21 PM by Edward Liu

I cannot respond rationally to this whole crisis. I've tried. My irrational responses run to:

1) I want a species transplant. I hate humans.

2) I want those smiling soldiers court-martialed, and upon conviction, turned over to the Iraqi government to do as they see fit. There should be an Iraqi government by then, right? Or they could just be tried under Iraqi law. Or Sha'ria.

3) Actually, I just want them to be turned over to a mob. In Fallujah.

This is entirely the result of Bush Administration policy. They hired the guys who instructed these guys. They shorted the troop strength, then they shorted the troop pay. That leads me to the last irrational response:

4) I wish I believed in Hell so that people like them (the grinning torturers; the "contract interrogators" who instructed them; the Army Intelligence guys, if any, who gave them a "whatever it takes" order; the Bush Administration, especially Rumsfeld) could burn, and burn and burn.

I suspect that might be some comfort - can't be sure, I've never believed in Hell. Right now, I got nuthin'.

Posted May 4, 2004 12:33 PM by Xopher

Theresa:

"they took photos because they were Americans, far from home, and goofing around. "

That was part of my point. The CIA we've come to expect through shows like Alias, or in print, is sophisticated. This situation was created in part by contractors, and in part by inept soldiers with poor supervision.

I've read testimony from Vietnam about torture, and I do know that the US operations in Southeast Asia involved heroin trading with private armies. The movie "Air America" wasn't a fake. One of my high school professors worked for them.

Snapping pictures just seems even more inept than things were back then. It looks like a total breakdown of (and I twitch at writing this ) the expected professionalism and secrecy surrounding this sort of action. While I'm glad it's been discovered, it creeps me out that our intelligence services have been replaced by inept contractors.

MFB:

"I do not believe that you can fight a counter-insurgency war without torture. Counter-insurgency is all about intelligence, and since guerrillas don't use radios much, that means human intelligence. Guerrillas and their supporters don't volunteer information. Therefore it has to be extracted by interrogation. "

Well, the USA signed a treaty saying we wouldn't. I don't care if we need the information to achieve an objective. Torture is wrong, and we don't do it.

Anna Feruglio Dal Dan:

The best people I knew were Americans. And I'm tired of having to counter popular perceptions about Americans here, that they are stupid, ignorant, right-wing nuts, religious bigots. I welcome the help from decent people abroad. And as for feeling embarassed by our government, why, it's not as many people can throw stones around here, right?

When I lived there, Singapore wasn't in the habit of sticking it's nose into other nations businesses by propping up US favourable opposition parties. The US, on the other hand, did exactly that while I was living there. They funded (bribed) a local politician in order to get a voice in Parliament.

The US has a constant double standard in international politics. I've been watching it for over half my life.

Posted May 4, 2004 1:10 PM by Josh Jasper

The other incident this reminded me of was last year's story about the Mepham High football team--planned and deliberate sexual and physical humiliation.

You said it reminded you, not that it was similar, but there are important distinctions, as you probably realize. The Mepham perps didn't actually intend any serious harm to the victims. Initiatory humiliation, even mild (special sense of 'mild' meaning 'no permanent harm') sexual abuse, have been part of join-the-gang stuff for men for a very long time. (No, I don't approve or even condone.)

The Abu Ghraib tortures were not this kind. They were the kind of thing done to people who are not regarded as fully human. It's closer to the concentration camp stuff. Don't be fooled by the superficial resemblance. You don't want to cripple members of your own football team; the perps in the current case don't care at all.

Also, the abuses in the Mepham High football team had been going on for years (it went farther than it had previously; the kids who came forward were still bleeding after several days, and even then didn't want to reveal what had happened). That means the perps had likely been victims themselves. No such history mitigates in the current case.

But - idea! - that'd be a suitable punishment, wouldn't it: pose them as they posed the victims, and put the pictures on the internet. Nah. Inadequate (because unlike the victims, they'd know that the current wouldn't go on, for example). Also, we don't do that, because we're Americans - oops, I mean...

Posted May 4, 2004 1:18 PM by Xopher

Theresa, I wish I could believe that these people were both trained and ordered to do these things. Granted, that only gives them the right to use the Nuremburg defense, but I'd feel a little less sick about the whole thing.

When I look at those pictures, I see the same behavior as was used on the Native Americans, the Jews in Nazi Germany, the women in the Magdalene laundries, even the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Those people were not trained to torture or to humiliate, they were just given absolute power over another person. In cases where the person in power felt superior in some way to their captives, the descent to the unspeakable occurs more quickly, and with more devastating results on both captive and captor.

Glimpses like these into what people are capable of in these situations just makes me weep for our species.

In short, I agree with Xopher, I want a species transplant.

Posted May 4, 2004 1:25 PM by Lara Beaton

PiscusFische --

There are two very basic primate constructions of power -- "I can fuck anyone I want" and "I can hit anyone I want".

These are an inadequate basis for a complex social structure; they can and do support simple band structures, but anything more complex (and thus more capable) than that needs future-considering rules. (aka a sense of consequence.) Once you get a complex social structure, it can do so much more than the band structure that the band structures get suppressed, in favour of competing forms of complex social organization that allow exapation of the hardwired support for the band structures we all have in our brains.

Any social structure which has selection biases for willingness to engage in aggression applied directly to others -- police, military combat units, contact sports teams -- is at constant risk of shedding the expensive, future considering complexity in favour of the direct experience of power. The complexity doesn't provide direct benefits, the aggression hormones act to turn off your sense of consequence, and the experience of power is desirable. Plus, at the scale where the aggression is directly applied, you're in a social structure that's small enough that the primate band rules are more than sufficient to organize and maintain it.

The social fixes for this are ritualization -- sportsmanship, the laws of war, the traditions of the regiment, "proper procedure", etc. -- and the approval of higher status individuals for conforming to the sense-of-consequence higher complexity social rules.

If the higher status individuals support the direct experience of power (because they're clueless turnips), or if the ritualization has been abandoned (how to spot a very bad social movement, rule 1 -- it wants to erase all social ritual), you get the direct pursuit of the direct experience of power. (Most sports team and institutional abuse and rape scandals work this way.)

What's going on in Iraq looks much more like offering the direct experience of power as a reward for exercising it, presumably because the higher status individuals responsible for the situation are actively against any form of social organization more complex than direct personal submission band structures and are trying to exact personal submission from entire countries, tens and hundreds of millions of people.

Posted May 4, 2004 1:39 PM by Graydon

I'm not trying to be flip here, but we know that real criminals are influenced by the depiction of criminals on film and television.

Did the US torturers watch

24
on television?

Do they think that they're working for CTU, and trying to emulate agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) who (in the first year alone) had to race the clock to handle both a presidential candidate assassination plot and his daughter's kidnapping, while dealing with a mole inside the agency? Aren't there moles inside both US and UK forces, leaking photos?

Does G.W. Bush think that he's a white David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert)? Is Condoleeza Rice as slippery as Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke)?

I'm really not joking.

Just as "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." valorized Cold War espionage as hip and 1960s cool, so does 24 and other current shows (MI-5; Threat Matrix) valorize Bush-era global adventurism.

The public is gleefully absorbing drama based on situation ethics, ends-justify-the-means, we're the only hyperpower macho swagger.

I've heard that a majority of Americans polled say that it's okay for cops to smash down the door and enter any home where drug dealers are suspected to operate, without warrants. Ashcroft's taken that damn-the-Bill-of-Right attitude and run with it.

I'm not saying that "truth is stanger than fiction." I'm saying that our fiction affects our present. Othewrwise, why would we bother with Science Fiction?

Posted May 4, 2004 1:51 PM by Jonathan Valorize Post

Graydon's point about the gloves is more evidence to me of higher-up involvement rather than high-school bullying.

But to my main point. I called my Sentor's office today and found out some information that I thought you all might like to know. This particular senator (Bond from MO) staffs his phones with real experienced staffers, not interns. I asked what the senator was doing (or intended to do) about the torture of Iraqis by Americans.

The staffer told me that it was a department of defense matter, that the military was doing the investigating and punishing. He added that the senator hadn't made any statements yet.

I said I'd read in the paper that so far all they'd done was an administrative rebuke. I asked him if he'd seen the pictures; he said yes. I told him a rebuke wasn't enough, and what was the senator going to do if that's all the military did. He said that the senator hasn't said, but that if congress decided the military actions taken were insufficient, they would have to examine it by committee, and that the senate majority leader would have to become involved. But that right now, it was being dealt with by the military. Would I like the senator to tell me if he makes a statement. I said yes.

Then I said, okay, that's for the soldiers. What about the contractors? There was a long pause. The contractors? I said, yes, according to the articles I read some of the torturers implicated were US citizen contractors. He didn't seem very happy that I asked that (not angry, but wary), but he clearly knew about them because he told me that as contractors they were not bound by the Geneva Convention. He said they would have to be to bound by the US Constitution, but that it wouldn't apply.

I said the Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment" right, and isn't that what this is? He agreed. But, he said, the contractors would have performed these acts against Iraqis, not US citizens, so the Constitution wouldn't apply. It only applies to US Citizens he said.

I asked what the Senator was going to do about the contractors--was he going to try to get contractors forever banned from war? The staffer said he didn't know. I asked him to please ask the senator then.

Then I said, didn't we go into Iraq to wage the war on terror, and isn't it in part because Saddam was torturing people? And he said yes, that's why we went. And I said, well, isn't torturing people terrorism? And there was this long pause, and he said yes.

So I said when I saw the pictures, I wanted to cry. And I said, did you want to cry when you saw them? There was a long, long pause. Over thirty seconds.

He said, let me take your name and address, I'll bring your concerns to the senator and have him respond.

I'll let you know if he does.

Posted May 4, 2004 2:00 PM by ElizabethVomMarlo

I was in the rheumatologist's waiting room today when CNN carried Rumsfeld's little dance. He said "The system works! The system works!" and then went on to talk about how the torture was investigated and the people responsible were punished. I don't even think that's an example of how the investigation and punishment system should work -- those soldiers should go to jail -- but the system is *certainly* not working when we have torture occurring to start with.

On the other hand, humans have always committed torture. I'd like to think as Americans that we're above that, but we're not, we've never been. In the same way that we wage war, we torture. Maybe the Singularity will change that, but in the meantime we must be vigilant, honest, just, and merciful.

Posted May 4, 2004 4:05 PM by Marilee

The use of military contractors brings up another thought. Most of these contractors are former service personnel themselves, yes? Some of them - I hope most of them - served well and were honorably discharged. But some were probably kicked out of the service for not making the grade, one way or another: incompetence, bad behavior, what have you. And now we're hiring these people, and paying them gobs of money, to do the work we should be having regular personnel do? This sounds too unpleasantly close to Dilbertesque corporate America to be remotely funny.

Posted May 4, 2004 4:11 PM by Eric Sadoyama

I want Hubris Boy's own words choking in his throat. But he'll never admit he bears any responsibility for atrocities in Iraq, even though the position of President of the USA which a bigoted Supreme Court [Impeach Scalia! He refuses to recuse himself from judging Cheney's actions, even though he got on hunting trips with Cheney with the bill for the weekend footed by Cheney. What other judge in the USA would NOT recuse himself of herself in such a case?!] appointed him to and which brings with it the position of Commander in Chief of the US military. He's at the top of the chains of command of the Military Police and Military Intelligence AND the Defense Contract Adminstration S[omething or other] which gave the contracts to CACI and Titan and the others supplying civilian "advisors" involved in the operations of the prisons the atrocities have occurred at.

He'll always pin the blame on someone else and deny any responsibility, deny his actions and words in any way, shape, or form, have accountability for ANYTHING unpalatable.

Meanwhile, those who hold Teddy in contempt for Chappaquiddick, ought to take a closer look at Laura Bush....

And on yet another topic, same-sex marriage is approaching here in Massachusetts. Oh WOW does that ever tick off Bush and his buddies. It's States Rights all the way except where the state constitutions and/or the voters support things that Bush and his rabies-ridden associates don't approve of, such as medical marijuana, and same-sex marriage. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the area is out campaigning about how same sex marriage is a threat to civilization and heterosexual marriage... Me, I think it's wonderful that same sex marriages are going to start here in a couple weeks. All those May wedding, and all the business for wedding receptions, photographers, hostelries, the economy around here can use the boost, and the people marrying, most of them deserve the public recognition and celebration of them celebrating their partnerships. [most because there are ALWAY going to be people marrying for really bad/stupid/inappropriate reasons, who really should have refrained from that particular marriage. I don't care if they're heterosexual, homosexual, black, white, green, Hispanic background, Euro background, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Jewish.... there are some people whose marriages ar -mistakes- they would have been a lot better off never having made that particular mistake!]

Posted May 4, 2004 4:16 PM by Paula Lieberman

"Consider having in custody a person who knows the location of a nuclear bomb that's been secreted in an American city. If there weren't any better ways of obtaining the needed information, could you refuse to do the deed?"

This sort of scenario was widely, publicly debated in the aftermath of 9/11. Some otherwise good and decent people were unwilling to rule out torture. You see the result . . .

Posted May 4, 2004 5:31 PM by rea

Xopher: I brought Mepham up in response to those who didn't feel that high school bullying could reach to the level of this system of degradation and abuse. I do, really, sometimes wonder how much those young men intended--I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know what the results of pushing a pinecone into somebody's rectum are. I find it amazing that people say, "Oh, they didn't intend any REAL harm." That may be true--but that indicates to me that at this point they have a scary lack of human compassion and reasonable limits.

BTW, I'm not necessarily arguing with you or Graydon--I think we might be approaching the same point from different sides. Mepham and the Air Force Academy rapes were the first two things that popped into my head though, and I felt that as a mirror to our cultures general attitudes, they predicated the actions in Iraq by our soldiers.

Aside: I heard EVEN more justification for the "we must torture to get information" stance on NPR today. Wish I could remember what one of the other guests said in rebuttal. (More to report--I found it interesting, but as I was at work and half-distracted, I can't quote it properly.)

Posted May 4, 2004 5:43 PM by PiscusFiche

PF: Clearly the anatomy part of Mepham High's curriculum needs an upgrade...

Posted May 4, 2004 6:08 PM by Xopher

Paula Lieberman wrote, "He's at the top of the chains of command of the Military Police and Military Intelligence AND the Defense Contract Adminstration S[omething or other] which gave the contracts to CACI and Titan and the others supplying civilian "advisors" involved in the operations of the prisons the atrocities have occurred at."

I'd also argue that by the continuous use of the word "evil" to describe the opponent he's created a climate which, in the minds of the soldiers, justified the torture.

Posted May 4, 2004 6:12 PM by Linkmeister

It just keeps getting better....

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- A Canadian civilian says in a lawsuit that he was tortured by U.S. troops in Iraq and saw Iraqi prisoners suffer even worse mistreatment, the latest allegations of human rights abuses to surface against coalition soldiers.

Portland lawyer Thomas Nelson said he filed the suit with the U.S. Army Claims Office on April 30 on behalf of Hossam Shaltout, 57, of Los Angeles. Shaltout claims he was beaten after being taken to the Camp Bucca detention center shortly after the launch of the U.S.-led invasion.

"I saw Iraqis tortured more than I was. They did unspeakable things to Iraqis," Shaltout said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/05/04/prisoner.abuse.lawsuit.ap/index.html

Posted May 4, 2004 7:00 PM by James D. Macdonald

I'm reading the Taguba Report and I'm only halfway through. It's sickening. It details chronic abuses that were longstanding and not even then. A lot of it is in jargon, semi-translucent to me, but what I comprehend of it is enough to make one start retching all over again. We were running a banana republic stockade there, like something out of a novel where the American hero gets tossed in for things he didn't do...

Here's some exerpts which are particularly telling in light of the fact that 240 people suddenly were let go today:

"24. The screening, processing, and release of detainees who should not be in custody takes too long and contributes to the overcrowding and unrest in the detention facilities."

"33. The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees “ghost detainees.” On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law. (Annex 53)"

"24. The screening, processing, and release of detainees who should not be in custody takes too long and contributes to the overcrowding and unrest in the detention facilities. There are currently three separate release mechanisms in the theater-wide internment operations. First, the apprehending unit can release a detainee if there is a determination that their continued detention is not warranted. Secondly, a criminal detainee can be released after it has been determined that the detainee has no intelligence value, and that their release would not be detrimental to society. BG Karpinski had signature authority to release detainees in this second category. Lastly, detainees accused of committing “Crimes Against the Coalition,” who are held throughout the separate facilities in the CJTF-7 AOR, can be released upon a determination that they are of no intelligence value and no longer pose a significant threat to Coalition Forces. The release process for this category of detainee is a screening by the local US Forces Magistrate Cell and a review by a Detainee Release Board consisting of BG Karpinski, COL Marc Warren, SJA, CJTF-7, and MG Barbara Fast, C-2, CJTF-7. MG Fast is the “Detainee Release Authority” for detainees being held for committing crimes against the coalition. According to BG Karpinski, this category of detainee makes up more than 60% of the total detainee population, and is the fastest growing category. However, MG Fast, according to BG Karpinski, routinely denied the board’s recommendations to release detainees in this category who were no longer deemed a threat and clearly met the requirements for release. According to BG Karpinski, the extremely slow and ineffective release process has significantly contributed to the overcrowding of the facilities. (ANNEXES 40, 45, and 46)

25. After Action Reviews (AARs) are not routinely being conducted after an escape or other serious incident. No lessons learned seem to have been disseminated to subordinate units to enable corrective action at the lowest level. The Investigation Team requested copies of AARs, and none were provided. (Multiple Witness Statements)"

So for them to say they were understaffed seem to be only part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that nobody even cared. Karpinski asked for things, complained that she wasn't being given adequate assistance - and that was where it stopped, in a place where escapes happened, riots happened, they didnt' even know how many prisoners they had or where they were at any given time, and after being told repeatedly that they had to post the Geneva Conventions in English and Arabic, still hadn't bothered to do so. I mean, not that it would have made a difference, except to add yet another layer of Waugh-like irony to the situation, but how hard would it have been to find and print out a copy of the Conventions and mount them?

It's like an amateur-hour version of Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghreib.

Posted May 4, 2004 8:48 PM by bellatrys

There's just too much ugly to count. This, for instance:

CPT Leo Merck, Commander, 870th MP Company

* Court-Martial Charges Preferred, for Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and Unauthorized Use of Government Computer in that he was alleged to have taken nude pictures of his female Soldiers without their knowledge; Trial date to be announced.

Posted May 4, 2004 8:57 PM by Jonquil

Oh. I can't say what I would say because it would merit disemvowelling. I've just gotten up to here:

"16. BG Karpinski also implied during her testimony that the criminal abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) might have been caused by the ultimate disposition of the detainee abuse cases that originally occurred at Camp Bucca in May 2003. She stated that “about the same time those incidents were taking place out of Baghdad Central, the decisions were made to give the guilty people at Bucca plea bargains. So, the system communicated to the soldiers, the worst that’s gonna happen is, you’re gonna go home.” I think it important to point out that almost every witness testified that the serious criminal abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) occurred in late October and early November 2003. The photographs and statements clearly support that the abuses occurred during this time period. The Bucca cases were set for trial in January 2004 and were not finally disposed of until 29 December 2003. There is entirely no evidence that the decision of numerous MP personnel to intentionally abuse detainees at Abu Ghrabid (BCCF) was influenced in any respect by the Camp Bucca cases. (ANNEXES 25, 26, and 45) "

What they're saying is, Karpinski thought her troops were inspired to think that they could beat people and get away with it because they'd seen other soldiers beat people and get away with it, - and in fact have it serve as a way to get home - and the report is saying no, that can't be true, because the chronology doesn't work.

And the "just following orders" defense is still fashionable in Maryland, at least.

Since Pvt. Lynndie England appeared in the now-infamous photos, her picture has been removed from the Wall of Honor at Wal-Mart.

Her close friend says she’s innocent. “They were doing what higher-up expected of them, told them to do, and told them not to question it,” said Destiny Goin.

It sounds from this like they might have been making prisoners clean up unexploded ordinance at Camp Bucca. I'm hoping I'm wrong, and that there was just (I know) a cluster bomb mixed in with ordinary garbage as they were policing the area.

However, the end of the article is interesting, what with this hometown girl saying,

Asked what she thought of President Bush, she explained that she could get in trouble with the military if she were to answer.

"I am looking forward to the presidential election," she said.

OTOH, this aptly named blogger is complaining that the Fallujans didn't put up a fight so we weren't allowed to go in and obliterate them...

A tiny bit of explanation for people wondering what those letters after the paragraph numbers are all about:

Those are the classifications of the paragraphs. In a classified document, every paragraph has to be labeled as to its individual classification. The entire document is classified at the level of the highest paragraph classification. (U) is Unclassified. That is, you can tell anyone, print it in the paper, whatever. (S/NF) means Secret, No Foreign. That is, it's Secret (release of this information to people who don't have a secret clearance and need to know could cause serious damage to the security of the United States) and no foreign nationals can be given this information even if they have a secret clearance and a need to know.

Posted May 4, 2004 9:36 PM by James D. Macdonald

Josh Jasper:

While I'm glad it's been discovered, it creeps me out that our intelligence services have been replaced by inept contractors.

Yeah, I feel the same way about our entire government, actually.

I've been trying to cut down on news/blog reading (interferes with actual work) and now this happens. I had actually thought that there was nothing more that the Bush Administration could screw up worse than they already had. And now -- words fail me.

My wife says she still gets the feeling they're hiding something. My answer is, what could they possibly still be hiding? How could it be worse than the destruction of the Constitution, the willful embrace of death camps and torture, the use of 500 lb bombs to take out snipers in Fallujah, and so on?

The bright side: my wife is a Hungarian citizen. As of Saturday, I have the right to live and work anywhere in the European Union. When we got married (in 1989) I told her Hungary would join the Union, and I told her under no circumstances should she get US citizenship. And damn if I wasn't right. I didn't expect to feel good about having an escape route, though. (And yeah, the kids have two passports, and that makes me feel very good.)

And yet -- I still love this country. Heck, my wife loves this country, and she has more reason not to (it's hard to love the US after dealing with the INS, trust me on this one.) The American people are good people. Easily manipulated, willfully ignorant, jingoistic, recidivist racists -- but good people.

That's why it pisses me off that they (we) just keep screwing up. And not fricking admitting it, like if we all just close our eyes and think happy thoughts, it won't have happened.

And no, I don't tell anybody I'm Canadian when I'm in Europe. I just keep telling people how pissed I am that morons have stolen my government, and they all understand completely.

Posted May 4, 2004 9:54 PM by Michael

James McDonald:

(S/NF) means Secret, No Foreign.

How come MSNBC can print it, then? Or is the secret stuff in the Annexes they refer to?

Posted May 4, 2004 10:12 PM by Michael

Okay, I'm punchdrunk with trying to process all this in real time and trying to figure out how, how how to make myself heard (I had several bad experiences with our intelligence services back when this all started, and then after