It’s Official: US Abuse at Gitmo

November 30, 2004

While the images of U.S. solid­ers tor­tur­ing iraqi pris­on­ers at Al Grahib Prison in Badg­dad have been broad­cast around the world, US offi­cials have fre­quent­ly reas­sured us that con­di­tions at the U.S. deten­tion camp in Guan­ta­mano Bay, Cuba, were accept­able and in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tion’s rules for treat­ment of pris­on­ers. As proof the Pen­ta­gon and Bush Admin­is­tra­tion have fre­quent­ly cit­ed the fact that the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reg­u­lar­ly inspects prison con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano. They for­got to tell us what they’ve seen.
A con­fi­den­tial report pre­pared by the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross this sum­mer found that con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano Bay were “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” Strong words from a cau­tious inter­na­tion­al body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made avail­able to the pub­lic but instead pre­sent­ed to the accused gov­ern­ment, in the hope that they will cor­rect their prac­tices. In pred­i­ca­ble fash­ion, the Bush Admin­stra­tion pri­vate­ly denied any wrong­do­ing and kept the IRC find­ings secret. In a dis­play of incred­i­ble audac­i­ty it then defend­ed itself _from oth­er accu­sa­tions of torture_ by cit­ing the IRC’s pres­ence at Guan­tanamo, con­ve­nient­ly omit­ting the IRC’s strongly-worded crit­i­cisms. Amaz­ing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its find­ings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recent­ly inter­viewed British pris­on­ers who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guan­tanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one reg­u­lar pro­ce­dure was mak­ing unco­op­er­a­tive pris­on­ers strip to their under­wear, hav­ing them sit in a chair while shack­led hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forc­ing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loud­speak­ers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to max­i­mum levels.
It’s not nee­dles under fin­ger­nails or elec­trodes to the pri­vates, but it is indeed “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” While it was hard to believe these pris­on­ers’ sto­ries when they were first pub­lished a few months ago, they become much more cred­i­ble in light of the IRC conclusions.
We still don’t know about what’s hap­pen­ing in the camp. The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has the pow­er, not to men­tion the duty, to imme­di­ate­ly release Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reports. But the Unit­ed States has cho­sen to sup­press the report. No tor­tur­ing gov­ern­ment has ever admit­ted to its actions. Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self denied wrong­do­ing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for tor­ture. We rely on bod­ies like the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross to keep us honest.
There are those who defend tor­ture by appeal­ing to our fears, many of which are indeed ground­ed in real­i­ty. We’re at war, the ene­my insur­gents are play­ing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions when he sent air­lin­ers into the World Trade Cen­ter. Very true. But the Unit­ed States has a mis­sion. I believe in the ide­al­is­tic notion that we should be a bea­con to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world com­mu­ni­ty to join us. We haven’t been doing that late­ly. Yes it’s eas­i­er to fol­low the lead of some­one like Sad­dam Hus­sein and just tor­ture any­one we sus­pect of plot­ting against us. But do we real­ly want him as our role model?

Exporting Prison Abuse to the World?

May 8, 2004

An arti­cle on “abuse of pris­on­ers in the U.S.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/national/08PRIS.html?hp in the _NY Times_ shows that Lane McCot­ter, the man who over­saw the reopen­ing of the Abu Ghraib prison in iraq, was forced to resign a U.S. prison post “after an inmate died while shack­led to a restrain­ing chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suf­fered from schiz­o­phre­nia, was kept naked the whole time.” It was Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Ashcroft who hand-picked the offi­cials who went to iraq.
As an Amer­i­can I’m ashamed but not ter­ri­bly sur­prised to see what hap­pened in the U.S.-run pris­ons in iraq. Mil­i­taries are insti­tu­tions designed to com­mand with force and only civil­ian over­sight will ulti­mate­ly keep any mil­i­tary insi­tu­tion free from this sort of abuse. The “Red Cross had warned of pris­on­er mistreatment”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20040508/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_prisoner_abuse but was large­ly ignored. Abu Ghraib is in the news in part because of a leaked Pen­ta­gon report, yet it’s only after CBS News aired the pic­tures and the New York­er quot­ed parts of the reports and turned it into a scan­dal that Pres­i­dent Bush or Defense Sec­re­tary Rums­feld admit­ted to the prob­lems and gave their half-hearted apologies.
_This is not to say all sol­diers are abu­sive or all prison guards are abusive_. Most sol­diers and most guards are good, decent peo­ple, serv­ing out of call to duty and (often) because of eco­nom­ic neces­si­ties. But when the sys­tem is pri­va­tized and kept secret, we allow for cor­rup­tion that put even the good peo­ple in posi­tions where they are pres­sured to do wrong.
It is pre­cise­ly because the Pen­ta­gon instinc­tive­ly keeps reports like the one on the abuse con­di­tions inside the Abu Ghraib prison secret that con­di­tions are allowed to get this bad. That prison, along with the one at Guan­tanamo Bay remain large­ly off-limits to inter­na­tion­al law. It was prob­a­bly only a few Amer­i­cans that gave the orders for the abuse but it was many more who fol­lowed and many many more – all of us in one way or anoth­er – who have gave the go-ahead with our inat­ten­tion to issues of jus­tice in prisons.

iraqi Prisoner Abuse and the Simulacra of Leadership

May 4, 2004

The Gut­less Paci­fist talks about the abuse of iraqi pris­on­ers and asks How high up does it go?
bq. There are many trou­bling polit­i­cal issues com­ing out of both the reports of abuse in iraq and ear­li­er reports of abuse at Guan­tanamo Bay (which are look­ing increas­ing­ly accu­rate). But what is even more trou­bling to me is the larg­er moral issue that each of us who are Amer­i­cans may be in part respon­si­ble for these atroc­i­ties. For it is we who have allowed a cul­ture of death and vio­lence to develop.
Mean­while, a report on the abus­es by “Maj. Gen. Anto­nio M. Taguba”:http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/ is chill­ing in its detail­ing of phys­i­cal and psy­cholo­gial tor­ture report­ed­ly tak­ing place at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.
Joshua Mic­ah Mar­shal­l’s “Talk­ing Points Memo”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002909 is keep­ing close tabs on devel­op­ments and reac­tions in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing the President’s:
bq. The dis­as­ters now fac­ing the coun­try in iraq — some in slow motion, oth­ers by quick vio­lence — aren’t just hap­pen­ing on the pres­i­den­t’s watch. They are hap­pen­ing in a real sense, real­ly in the deep­est sense, because of him — because of his atten­tion to the sim­u­lacra of lead­er­ship rather than the real thing, which is more dif­fi­cult and demand­ing, both per­son­al­ly and morally.
Don’t miss Mar­shal­l’s thought­ful com­par­i­son of “Pres­i­dent Bush to a bad C.E.O.”:http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002906.
The oth­er essen­tial read­ing on all this is Sey­mour Her­sh’s “New York­er arti­cle on the tor­ture at Abu Ghraib”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/.

Collaring the Peacniks in Iowa

February 11, 2004

It’s get­ting “scary in Amerikkka when they start round­ing up peaceniks in Iowa”:www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/national/10PROT.html
bq. To hear the anti­war pro­test­ers describe it, their forum at a local uni­ver­si­ty last fall was like so many oth­ers they had held over the years. They talked about the non­vi­o­lent philoso­phies of Mahat­ma Gand­hi and the Rev. Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., they said, and how best to con­vey their feel­ings about iraq into acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. But last week, sub­poe­nas began arriv­ing seek­ing details about the forum’s spon­sor — its lead­er­ship list, its annu­al reports, its office loca­tion –and the event itself.
Mild-mannered pro­test­ers wear­ing 1980s-style Guatemalan cloth­ing, talk­ing about Gand­hi and climb­ing the fences of Nation­al Guard bases are not a threat to state of Iowa. But this kind of strong-arm tac­tic is a clear threat free speech and a clear act of intim­i­da­tion to those who might join the peace move­ment. How sad. Unfor­tu­nate­ly I know lots of peo­ple who are already afraid to speak out to loud­ly – this will silence at least some of them.
Of course, it’s hard to get too worked up about Iowa sub­poe­nas, when much more seri­ous civ­il rights vio­la­tions have been going on since the start of the Afghanistan War. The “pris­on­ers of war” down in the Amer­i­can base at “Guan­tanamo Bay have been held with­out charge or tri­al for two years now”:http://web.amnesty.org/pages/guantanamobay-index-eng.