Tag Archives: abu ghraib

Truth commission? – ‘This is not Latin America!’

Garzón aviva la causa de Guantánamo. El juez desoye al fiscal y apremia a Estados Unidos para que aporte información. Acepta otras tres acusaciones populares (Público.es).

What a tangled web: the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, the Dirty War in Argentina, property scams and political corruption in Marbella, the political violence of Henry Kissinger, the atrocities of Pinochet, the abuses at Guantánamo, and the Bush Six: Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Douglas Feith, William Haynes II, Jay Bybee, and David Addington…

These diverse episodes of history all come together in a dance macabre under the direction of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón.

This may be now slightly old news, but it’s such a complex and ever-changing story that a little history gives it some grounding. Who is Garzón?

Garzón, battle-scarred Spanish judge, has in his time filed charges of genocide against Argentine military officers over the disappearance of Spanish citizens during Argentina’s 1976-1983 ‘Dirty War’, resulting in convictions.

His investigations led to the conviction of a Spanish PSOE minister under Felipe González, as head of the GAL clandestine counter-terrorism organisation (death squads clumsily fighting ETA).

His investigations have also led to the conviction of ETA terrorists.

He investigated the larger-than-life gangster and Marbella property developer-cum-mayor Jesús Gil.

He led investigations into extra judiciary executions during Franco’s regime, and directed the exhumation of unmarked mass graves, one of them believed to have contained the remains of García Lorca.

Along with certain Chileans, Garzón has repeatedly declared his interest in prosecuting Henry Kissinger for his involvement (direction) in setting up Operation Condor, the international intelligence-sharing network (or terror organisation) initiated in the Southern Cone in 1975.

He has investigated Islamic terrorists operating in Spain, as well as major drug traffickers.

He is probably best known as the investigating magistrate who issued the precedent-setting arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (and dear friend of Thatcher’s) in 1998 while he was undergoing treatment in a London hospital.

He has now publicly opened filed criminal charges against officials of the Bush administration.

Spanish court opens investigation of Guantánamo torture allegations (Guardian, 29/04/09).

The Bush Six to Be Indicted (Scott Horton in The Daily Beast)

Spanish Judge Resumes Torture Case Against Six Senior Bush Lawyers (Andy Worthington in HuffPost 08/09/09)

Now, this filing came only a few weeks after Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy called for a thorough investigation, proposing “a truth and reconciliation commission”, which was applauded by hundreds of individuals and organisations, such as Human Rights First.

Similarly, Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq who retired over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, back in June, called ‘for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era policies behind the abuse and controversial interrogations of detainees.’ (CNN, 02/06/09) “Until America can really understand what has happened and look at it objectively and truthfully, we will still continue to be mired in the past,” Sanchez said. “We’ve got to learn the lessons and never go this way again.” (CNN)

The wonderful response of Republican Senator Arlen Specter to Leahy says it all:

“If every administration started to re-examine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it. This is not Latin America.” (CNN Transcripts)

A Truth Commission…

Pinochet and Chile. Argentina. El Salvador. Guatemala. Panama. Peru…

Good grief, these places are full of Hispanics! They’re not like us…

Is this the biggest insult that could be made to a US politician? Kissinger must have felt the same just before the possible criminal charges against him were sidelined by 11th September 2001. It’s one thing to train those mustachioed Latins in the use of torture (see School of the Americas), it’s quite another thing to be likened to one.

Will Eric Holder lead a full investigation into the CIA abuses? Will it go all the way up the chain of command? Will it lead to prosecutions? Why is Obama so reluctant ‘to look back’?

Garzón was unable to extradite Pinochet. Maybe he’ll have better luck this time…

Torture and the medical profession

A soldier is trained to kill. A medical doctor is trained to heal. Whilst a soldier is also trained to engage in peace-time operations such as well-digging, road-building, bridge-building etc. a medic is in no way trained to engage in killing (unless in his/her capacity as a soldier, not a medic).

One can find a slim margin of understanding for soldiers, in combat, who are brutalised by the conflict and in turn brutalise their enemy (or perceived enemy). Such brutality is immoral, unethical and illegal, but does need to be judged in context.

That a doctor – who has solemnly pledged to save life and relieve suffering – should be directly involved in torture, either through designing torture techniques, assessing how far the techniques can be applied, helping restore the victim to some degree of health in order to subject him to torture again, assessing the degree of perceived pain in the victim in order to draft reports declaring that such techniques are not in fact torture, or even healing the victim yet failing to condemn the treatment, is an utter abomination.

Unfortunately, horrifyingly, the involvement of medical professionals in all stages of the ‘enhanced interrogation’ programme, from the original consultation through to interrogation and post-interrogation, has been known about for many years and has been well documented. Unfortunately, it is still not widely discussed or even known.

To begin with, Amnesty International explains in, as always, clear and simple terms, the generic situation of the relationship between the medical profession and torture in a brief 2002 report Doctors and torture.

More closely linked to the War of Terror, there are countless organisations and countless documents attesting to the specific cases of CIA detention facilities over the last 8 years.

Physicians for Human Rights 2 min video Tortured Logic

[kml_flashembed movie=” http://www.youtube.com/v/UITJYQdmfwM” /]

Here follow the documents referred to in the video:

The website When Healers Harm

The Centre for Constitutional Rights report: Current Conditions of Confinement at Guantanamo

Human Rights Watch

There are many other NGO reports, newspaper and journal articles, and testimonies related to this.

There’s something about doctors involved in torture that evokes the most terrifying of reactions. A mindless thug with a truncheon and a stout pair of boots is a horrible concept, but, as horror films have so often exploited, such thugs are usually depicted in the service of evil, not as evil personified. They, however, do their master’s bidding: the wormy weasle in the white coat. Michael Palin’s calm evil at the end of Gilliam’s Brazil. Ben Kingsley as (the alleged) Dr. Miranda in Death and the Maiden.

Ultimately, the grim reality of the presence of medical professionals in the ongoing abuse of detainees is the horrifying evocation of some of the darkest chapters of the 20th Century. Whilst, obviously, nothing comes close to the savagery of Nazi research in the concentration camps and the deepest horror of Dr. Josef Mengele, nevertheless, a number of the reports allege that some medics in these CIA detention facilities have taken eager notes concerning the breaking point of the victims, the threshold of organ failure, the correct procedures to observe for waterboarding, the most effective pain-creating techniques, etc. etc. In short, more than simply not reporting abuse, more than restoring a victim for further abuse, more than advising the best methods, it appears that some medics have attempted to further their knowledge of human suffering and physical endurance through careful monitoring and recording of the abuse.

Somehow, in a twisted irony, it is this clinical scientific face to the torture that is the most chilling. When will we see the result of their findings in a peer-reviewed journal?

Roll on the truth commission.

Torture prohibition as moral absolute

Žižek drives a hard bargain:

In a way, those who refuse to advocate torture outright but still accept it as a legitimate topic of debate are more dangerous than those who explicitly endorse it. Morality is never just a matter of individual conscience. It thrives only if it is sustained by what Hegel called “objective spirit,” the set of unwritten rules that form the background of every individual’s activity, telling us what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

For example, a clear sign of progress in Western society is that one does not need to argue against rape: it is “dogmatically” clear to everyone that rape is wrong. If someone were to advocate the legitimacy of rape, he would appear so ridiculous as to disqualify himself from any further consideration. And the same should hold for torture.

Knight of the Living Dead, NYTimes March 24, 2007

 So we need dogma. That’s all well and good, but where does that position one in relation to the torture advocate who is attempting to propose rational arguments for the use of torture?

‘Sorry – we don’t discuss this.’

‘You’re wrong. End of story.’

‘I’m not listening – LALALALALALALA – I can’t hear you.’

 If torture is a moral absolute, then surely this position would have been arrived at through a process of examination and assessment of the argument, not an a priori conclusion? As such, unless the arguments themselves were flimsy (they’re not), one should still be perfectly able to take on the torture advocate in debate and, without rhetoric or overtly emotive tactics, justify why the moral absolute is indeed a moral absolute.

 Ruth Blakeley, of the University of Kent, in her powerful article ‘Why torture?’, outlines 3 assumptions behind the application of torture by both liberal and authoritarian states: security, stability and legitimacy.

The security model reflects the dominant claims made about torture by authoritarian and liberal states alike – that its function is to obtain intelligence to defeat security threats. The stability model accounts for torture when it is used in authoritarian states, but often sponsored by external liberal elites, as a method to instil fear, to deter potential and actual political opposition among the population. This is intended to help protect the interests of elite groups. The legitimacy model accounts for the ways in which state officials, usually from liberal states, seek, on the one hand, to secure the right to use torture, based on the assignment of specific identities of themselves – as legitimate – and of those against whom they wish to use torture – as illegitimate. On the other hand, claiming the right to use torture is intended to secure those specific identities, which are never fixed. (Blakeley: 374)

 Can there be any justification for any of these assumptions?

1. SECURITY

In conversation the other day with a retired British Army officer who had served in intelligence operations during the Cold War and in Northern Ireland, I asked whether, in to his knowledge, torture has ever been effective in gaining reliable intelligence. ‘Well’, was his response, ‘the Soviets employed psychoactive drugs in order to discombobulate the prisoner, who would often start to babble and would thus betray himself. The British in Northern Ireland [and I’m not sure if he was referring to the army, the police, or secret services] tended to break down a prisoner through sleep deprivation. An interrogation would commence, and when the interrogator tired he would be replaced by another, and so on. Many IRA suspects betrayed the whereabouts of their comrades through this tactic.’

So – is it effective – well, undeniably, intel is gained.
And reliable – well, some of it, I suppose is reliable.

The problems with this, though, are manifold.

If you have the wrong man, then no amount of interrogation (harsh or otherwise) is going to produce valuable intel.

If the man babbles because his brain is fried (either through pain, psychoactive compounds or sleep deprivation), then reliable information is surely going to be shot through with incoherence and thoroughly unreliable info. As such, only years of enquiry or inspired divination will be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.

He’ll also, as is well documented, say whatever he believes the interrogator wants him to say in order to stop the pain. ‘Give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders’ (Jesse Ventura). This, shockingly, was the case of the intel gained from the enhanced interrogation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose admissions were only discredited by the CIA after Bush et. al. cited him in their allegations of the ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein in their justification for invasion.

Furthermore, what are the guarantees that the alleged ‘reliable intel’ gained through torture could not have been gained through more empathetic, less brutal, techniques? The ex army officer explained that, despite evidence to the contrary, the British are still the world’s most accomplished practitioners of the cross-examination style interrogation. He cited a British interrogator during the Cold War, upon whom John le Carré based some of his interrogation sequences, who was the absolute master at examining the suspect, questioning the story, leading the suspect, through brilliant Rumpole-of-the-Bailey-style eloquence and logic, to betray himself.

Without even going into depth about the horrific physical and emotional chronic pain that the torture victim (and the torturer) suffer as a result of torture, and without discussing the wider implications with regard the victim’s family and society at large, it needs to be reinforced that the justification for the use of torture as a means of gaining reliable intelligence is inherently flawed, as no positive case could be taken in isolation of numerous negative cases.

That’s to say – let’s imagine the extreme case in which a suspect gives up information that leads to the annulment of a security risk or the revelation of a terror cell (or some other ‘positive’ outcome). It is impossible to consider this situation in isolation of scores of occasions in which torture was employed with the same aims in which a) the suspect was innocent, b) he gave misleading information such as naming innocents, c) he simply gave information that he believed the interrogators wished for, d) he became unconscious or died, e) as such a steely-nerved evildoer he continued to remain silent, f) and so on and so on…

It would be impossible to assert that torture was used only for the acquisition of reliable intel without also admitting the collateral damage produced from torture where, for the reasons stated, reliable intel was not acquired. Therefore, even in the ‘reliable intel’ argument, we’re dealing with a set of prerequisites almost as improbable as in the ticking-bomb scenario, which I argue against in another post. Furthermore, once you’re using the ‘reliable intel’ as a justification, the outcome invariably will be in order to defuse a potential catastrophe. Therefore, the argument rapidly morphs into the ticking-bomb scenario anyway. Again, so improbable as to be impossible.

Last of all – at this present moment the only people claiming that the techniques have been effective are either right-wing radio nuts like Glen Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, or are the war architects themselves, like Cheney. Following the stratospheric levels of duplicity, secrecy, cover-ups, document shreddings, legal jiggerypokery, crafty memos and sly policies – who in their right mind would believe such a man?

And if you then compare Cheney’s claim that reliable intel was gained, with, for instance, any of the reports by Stafford-Smith, Erik Saar, Philippe Sands, Mahvish Khan, or any of the testimonies by detainees, FBI agents, marines, military guards, military police, translators, interrogators, chaplains, etc. all held at the The Guantánamo Testimonials Project – WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE?

 

2. STABILITY

‘Well,’ said the ex army officer, ‘surely some nations have gained a form of stability through the use and the threat of imprisonment, torture and disappearance. Pinochet remained in power for nearly two decades, Chairman Mao for far longer. But is it a type of stability you want?’

Of course, and this now enters the old philosophical question of law: if the penalty for parking on a double-yellow line were death, would people park on a double-yellow line? If the answer is no, then is it an effective law? If stability (for what it’s worth) is achieved through such brutal measures, does it really constitute stability? I believe not.

 

3. LEGITIMACY

This is the most absurd of all of these assumptions, and is akin to the Orwellian double-speak (and double-think) endemic in the War of Terror. Bombing to bring peace through Operation Enduring Freedom, killing in order to save, destroying in order to preserve, incarcerating without trial, abusing and even killing detainees in order to ‘Defend Freedom, Sir!’

 

To conclude.

At the beginning of my musings on torture, I felt that perhaps if there had been a situation in which reliable intelligence had been gained through torture then there would be a chink in the armour of the torture opponents. We would have to say that ‘ok, so you have shown me a situation in which torture was used as an absolute one-off, and, in this case it proved successful in achieving intel that led to the dismantling of a terror network. However, despite this, I am not prepared to accept the legitimacy of such means, and I still oppose the gathering of intelligence through these means. I am, therefore, prepared to sacrifice that intel so as not to condone torture’.

I now believe that statement to be false, as, simply, such an isolated situation seems to me utterly improbable.

 I believe, therefore, that we don’t need to retreat into dogmatic silence in the defence of a moral absolute. Indeed I would go so far as to suggest that such absence of reasonable and intellectual argument would serve only to allow the proponents of torture to believe they have a valid point. They don’t. Each one of the arguments, I believe, can be successfully and convincingly dismantled.

Rendition, secret detention and the absence of habeas continue wholesale under Obama

Rather than attempt to summarise his article, here is Andy Worthington’s latest piece concerning Bagram: Obama Brings Guantánamo And Rendition To Bagram (And Not The Geneva Conventions)

For those pressed for time, here is Andy’s poignant conclusion:

The upshot of all this is disastrous for those who hoped that President Obama would not only accept, but would positively embrace the opportunity to return to the laws that existed regarding the capture and detention of prisoners, before they were so comprehensively dismissed by the Bush administration. Far from reassuring the world that there are only two acceptable methods for holding people in detention — either as criminal suspects, to be put forward for trials in federal court, or as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions — Obama has chosen instead to continue to operate outside the law, implementing Guantánamo-style tribunals at Bagram, and acknowledging that he wants the US courts to remain excluded because he is using Bagram as a prison for terror suspects “rendered” from around the world.

To gauge quite how disastrous this news is, imagine how former Vice President Dick Cheney is responding to it. Yes, that is indeed a smile playing over the lips of the architect of America’s wholesale flight from the law in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. “I told you so,” he mutters contentedly … 

The ‘ticking bomb scenario’ and its tortured logic

Despite the fact that for more than half a century the argument of the ‘ticking bomb scenario’ has been shown to be ridiculous and utterly contrary to reality, it seems that the very neatness of its twisted logic ensures its perpetuation by those sympathetic to the use of torture. Such neatness, embroiled with a crass yet effective emotive sting, likewise ensures that those who oppose torture are regularly cast as favouring the “rights” of one murderous terrorist over the lives of millions of innocent citizens.

We all know the argument so no need to repeat it here. If not known, the tenets of the scenario are detailed in the document Defusing the Ticking Bomb Scenario. Why we must say No to torture, always, published by the Association for the Prevention of Torture

Opponents of the scenario invariably highlight the immense number of assumptions that need to be made regarding the particular ‘exceptional’ circumstance. Indeed, the sheer quantity of these outlandish predicates are sufficient to destroy the probability of the event ever arising. However, before even attacking its hollow argument, one must first understand that by simply proposing the scenario, the proposer has already opposed a repeatedly endorsed consensual prohibition, has therefore opted out of a moral absolute. Could we, therefore, expect an exceptional circumstance wherein genocide is permissible, wherein slavery is permissible? Or, as Žižek suggests, could we expect an exceptional circumstance wherein rape is permissible?

As for the actual assumptions of the argument, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, in the document cited above, outlines their monstrously unrealistic nature:

The ticking bomb is based on a number of assumptions, some of which may be hidden or only implied when it is first presented. These hidden assumptions should be exposed. For instance, the ticking bomb scenario typically supposes certainty, or near certainty, as to all of the following:

  1. A specific planned attack is known to exist.
  2. The attack will happen within a very short time (it is “imminent”).
  3. The attack will kill a large number of people.
  4. The person in custody is a perpetrator of the attack.
  5. The person has information that will prevent the attack.
  6. Torturing the person will obtain the information in time to prevent the attack.
  7. No other means exist that might get the information in time.
  8. No other action could be taken to avoid the harm.

The scenario also assumes:

  1. The motive of the torturer is to get information, with the genuine intention of saving lives, and nothing more.
  2. It is an isolated situation, not often to be repeated.

The document continues to expose the dangerous fallacies and improbability in each one of the assumptions.

The problem, as I see it, is that this argument works extremely well in a chat-show, rapid interview, scaremongering, media environment where people are firstly not given time or space to work through their arguments, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, are cowed into not being labelled a terrorist-sympathiser, a liberal pansy, a traitor to the nation, etc.

Furthermore, the scenario is presented as a two-path predicament akin to the philosophical ‘trolley problem’ – i.e. you’ve two alternatives and you must make choose one: do you a) torture the captive or b) not torture and allow hundreds/thousands/millions to die.

Such a predicament can arise in reality. About ten years ago I read Nicholas Montserrat’s harrowing novel set in the 2nd World War about the Atlantic convoys, The Cruel Sea. The skipper of a Royal Navy corvette, attempting to manoeuvre his ship towards survivors from a torpedoed convoy vessel, is compelled to drop a depth charge into the oily waters right amidst the swimmers, because he believes the U-boat is still present and its destruction would obviously save other vessels of the fleet. Although the account is fictional, it does not seem too far-fetched.

It is similarly alleged that Churchill’s government had cracked the German code and knew of the imminent bombing of Coventry but did not alert the city so as not to reveal to the Germans that they had cracked the code. Again, I believe this allegation is contested, but it shows a probable, if not genuine, predicament.

The ‘ticking bomb scenario’ is unlike this split-path argument, as so many wholly improbable predicates need to be satisfied before the final two choices are presented. Furthermore, owing to moral opposition of the concept of torture, the putative subject would have chosen other paths even if certain of those prerequisites had obtained, and thus the final decision point would never have been reached.

Lastly, let’s not overlook the fact that even were the improbable event to arise, one would have to ask ‘who does the torture?’ Obviously one wouldn’t want an amateur doing the job, nor would one want some testosterone-filled policeman handpicked for his excellent treatment of the G20 protestors. One would want a competent, calm and experienced torturer who is best qualified to get the results and save the multitude. How would such a person gain his knowledge? Would he (or she) have to attend the CIA School of the Americas? Would it be theory-based training only, or could they gain some practise in the field?

And so on…

From whatever way you look at it, it is a logically bankrupt argument in addition to its moral and ethical bankruptcy.

Yet for its covert, aggressive and distorted logic, it will continue to be wheeled out before a docile audience in the service of any system that has been caught adding a turn to the thumbscrews…

The War of Images

Baudrillard, as would be expected, addresses the concept of image in the War of Terror in the article War Porn.

“The worst is that it all becomes a parody of violence, a parody of the war itself, pornography becoming the ultimate form of the abjection of war which is unable to be simply war, to be simply about killing, and instead turns itself into a grotesque infantile reality-show, in a desperate simulacrum of power.”

Brilliantly, he addresses the Abu Ghraib images:

“Truth but not veracity: it does not help to know whether the images are true or false. From now on and forever we will be uncertain about these images. Only their impact counts in the way in which they are immersed in the war. There is no longer the need for “embedded” journalists because soldiers themselves are immersed in the image – thanks to digital technology, the images are definitively integrated into the war. They don¹t represent it anymore; they involve neither distance, nor perception, nor judgment. They no longer belong to the order of representation, nor of information in a strict sense. And, suddenly, the question whether it is necessary to produce, reproduce, broadcast, or prohibit them, or even the “essential” question of how to know if they are true or false, is “irrelevant”.

Of the infamous photo of the hooded prisoner with electrodes on his outstretched arms, Baudrillard comments:

This masquerade crowns the ignominy of the war – until this travesty, it was present in this most ferocious image (the most ferocious for America), because it was most ghostly and most “reversible”: the prisoner threatened with electrocution and, completely hooded, like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, crucified by its ilk. It is really America that has electrocuted itself. (War Porn)

 AbuGhraib

 It is worth considering this image in greater depth.

Baudrillard notes that the man is hooded like the KKK, and then crucified by them.

If the image evokes the KKK, is it the horror of them – the violence and racism – or some sense of justice? For the hood is not just the KKK – it is also the burka. The repeated rhetoric, used to justify the war on the Taliban in Afghanistan, is that the Muslim man imprisons the woman. Here, therefore, the liberators pull the burka over the brutalising man. Are the KKK hood and the burka now somehow interrelated in racial tones of supposed justice? And what of the crucifiction? Unlike Christ on the cross, this man is faceless and dressed in black. His crucifiction is thus a mockery, a travesty. He cannot look to the heavens or cast his light on his followers. He is darkness swallowed up by darkness.

My feeling, therefore, in tune with Baudrillard’s, is that these images provided more than simple moral outrage – they provided a degree of titillation shot through with a sense, somehow, of justice. The US soldiers or MPs at Abu Ghraib, in addition to venting their own (homoerotic) sexual fantasies upon the male prisoners, and in addition to constructing very carefully the precise form of sexual humiliation that would most disgust the prisoners, in this particular image, they have created their own particular, culturally and religiously-bound form of punishment. A dark-skinned non-Christian wife-beater is ironically hooded in a KKK mask that doubles as a burka, placed in public view on a soap-box, and is then crucified.

Millions of Iraqi children starved during the US embargo. Thousands of Iraqis dead in bombardment. The only news that really was any news were the images of Abu Ghraib. Is it because these images embodied greater meaning than simple photos of dead children?

They torture children, don’t they?

Perhaps David Icke is right. Perhaps world leaders are reptiles with the ability to shape-shift to appear human. Sometimes they don’t do a good job at the disguise.

If rendition, abuse, incarceration without trial, torture, murder, and all the other horrors of the War of Terror elicit neither excuses nor apologies from the war architects, then surely the knowledge that children as young as 8 have been routinely detained, abused (often sodomised) and even murdered (and we’re not talking about the death of children from bombs – something that happens in any conflict), at the hands of US military and CIA, would cause someone in power to offer even the mildest of condemnation. Alas no. Politics trumps essential humanity on every count.

If the British government demands that writers visiting a shool to read to a large group are required to obtain a Criminal Records Check prove that they are not paedophiles (see Guardian July ’09 – the essential argument being, again, guilty until proven innocent), and if the same government is demanding that its own politicians carry out a similar ridiculous vetting process (but I bet they claim the £64 on expenses) (see Guardian July ’09), then how can it possibly be that someone like Milliband issues no criticism or condemnation of the wholesale abuse and murder of hundreds of children? Milliband’s repeated poe-faced defence of witholding information (‘classified intel’) on the grounds that it would be a threat to national security is an insult to his own cabinet, to his government, and to the people of the UK.

Unless, of course, he is a lizard. In which case such human attributes as compassion, remorse, and forgiveness are simply alien concepts.

Am I reduced to this most fantastic of ideas as a means of reconciling myself to the utter brutality of this long and costly conflict?

“President Jimmy Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon “have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse.” In “Our Endangered Values” Carter said that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons “107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old.” And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody.” (President Carter: Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush Thepeoplesvoice.org)

” Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.” (Seymour Hersh Thepeoplesvoice.org)

The following is all copied from the article quoted above in Thepeoplesvoice.

— Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, “suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation” and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of “random” arrests “not based on any legal text.”

— Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, “[I saw] two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and [a U.S. soldier] was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners.”

— Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw “hundreds” of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, “They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.” He said he heard her whimpering daily.

— Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy “who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.” Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.

— German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of “Report Mainz” quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists “poured water” over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, “smeared him with mud” and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.

— Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British “The Guardian” that “Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons…Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the “Guardian” he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.

— Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army’s Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.

— Human Rights Watch (HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.

— IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners’ Association for Justice(PAJ), stating that five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army “showed signs of torture all over their bodies,” such as “cigarette burns over their legs,” she said.

— One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep, according to the “Catholic Worker.” (Thepeoplesvoice.org)

Follow this link to TRUTHOUT.ORG, for a long extract from Henry A. Giroux’s forthcoming book, “Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror,” to be published by Paradigm Publishers.

Today (Aug 27th) in the Times, an article about Mohammed Jawad – ‘I was 12 when I was arrested and sent to Guantanamo’

The horror, the horror

Much has been written about the infamous pics that came out a number of years ago now of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Little more can be said, unless it be said in a court, in helping to convict those high up the chain of command.

Nevertheless, there is one aspect of the images that strikes me as radically different from any other unpleasant images that one might see (Auschwitz victims, earthquake victims, etc.) and that we are fairly innoculised to since our early years… It is the twisted and macabre holiday-snap aspect to the pics.

The girl (I don’t think it’s Lynndie England) smiling over a corpse has the cheerful, innocent, smiling, demeanour of someone posing in front of the Eiffel Tower. She is quite pretty – she might even be with a friend and stops you in the street asks you kindly to take the picture of them with Big Ben in the background. Or perhaps one of those smiley photos of someone who’s just ordered their first regional dish in a restaurant – a paella in Spain – a haggis in Scotland – a pint of ale in England – thumbs up! Send it back to Mom.

The only images that in any compare are the horrifying and gruesome images of lynchings in the Southern States in the early 20th Century. Men in hats and loose suits and women in smart frocks standing casually and quite happily beside a hanged African American – his neck twisted evilly. A group of smiling fellas posing before a charred and still smoking corpse. Is that the Abu Ghraib ancestor?

The sheer horror of the photos is compounded by the gleeful and lighthearted poses – a warped collision of darkness and light – a twisting of meaning. We understand war photos, as we’ve seen them before. We understand holiday snaps. Can we understand them together?

Hopefully not.