We Torture

I mentioned in the last post that an investigation into prisoner abuse at Guantanamo - this one necessitated by a Marine Sergeant overhearing guards bragging about beating detainees - was a total whitewash.

In an affidavit filed to the Pentagon's inspector general, Cerveny — a member of a detainee's legal defense team — said a group of more than five men who identified themselves as guards had recounted hitting prisoners. The conversation allegedly took place at a bar inside the base.
"The evidence did not support any of the allegations of mistreatment or harassment," the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in southeastern Cuba, said in a statement.

Investigators conducted 20 interviews with "suspects and witnesses," the Southern Command said. Bassett did not interview any detainees, said Jose Ruiz, a Miami-based command spokesman.

"He talked to all the parties he felt he needed to get information about the allegations that were made," Ruiz said by telephone from Miami.

So here's how the legal system appears to work in the military:

There's an allegation that guards beat detainees.

You ask the guards, "Well, didja?"

They say, "Nope."

You say "Good enough for me!"

I can't believe that the military is still trying to maintain this fiction that there has been no systematic prisoner abuse during the war on terror. How many revelations do we need? If Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Abu Omar, Khalid el-Masri, Maher Arar, rendition, etc. weren't enough, here's another from an interrogator in Falluja.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong.

While I was appalled by the conduct of my friends and colleagues, I lacked the courage to challenge the status quo. That was a failure of character and in many ways made me complicit in what went on. I'm ashamed of that failure, but as time passes, and as the memories of what I saw in Iraq continue to infect my every thought, I'm becoming more ashamed of my silence.

This was policy. It was obviously policy and it remains policy, evidenced by the fact that the US refused to join an international treaty forbidding governments to hold prisoners in secret detention. And it's to our undying shame as a nation. We've lost our humanity while frightened by the threat of attack, and we've seen the value of terrorizing and use it for our own purposes. It fills me with disgust that my tax dollars have been used to perpetuate this abomination and blight on our souls.