Torture as National Policy

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http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/33184/

 

 

Torture as National Policy

 

By Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com. Posted March 9, 2006.

 

From Guantánamo to Iraq, the vicious abuse of prisoners by the U.S.

military is business as usual

 

They told him, " We are going to cut your head off and send you to hell. "

 

Ali Abbas, a former detainee from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, was

filling me in on the horrors he endured at the hands of American

soldiers, contractors, and CIA operatives while inside the infamous

prison.

 

It was May of 2004 when I documented his testimony in my hotel in

Baghdad. " We will take you to Guantánamo, " he said one female soldier

told him after he was detained by U.S. forces on September 13, 2003.

" Our aim is to put you in hell so you'll tell the truth. These are our

orders -- to turn your life into hell. " And they did. He was tortured

in Abu Ghraib less than half a year after the occupation of Iraq began.

 

While the publication of the first Abu Ghraib photos in April 2004

opened the floodgates for former Iraqi detainees to speak out about

their treatment at the hands of occupation forces, this wasn't the

first I'd heard of torture in Iraq. A case I'd documented even before

then was that of 57 year-old Sadiq Zoman. He was held for one month by

U.S. forces before being dropped off in a coma at the general hospital

in Tikrit. The medical report that came with his comatose body,

written by U.S. Army medic Lt. Col. Michael Hodges, listed the reasons

for Zoman's state as heat stroke and heart attack. That medical

report, however, failed to mention anything about the physical trauma

evident on Zomans' body --- the electrical point burns on the soles of

his feet and on his genitals, the fact that the back of his head had

been bashed in with a blunt instrument, or the lash marks up and down

his body.

 

Such tales -- and they were rife in Baghdad before the news of Abu

Ghraib reached the world -- were just the tip of the iceberg; and

stories of torture similar to those I heard from Iraqi detainees

during my very first trip to Iraq, back in November 2003, are still

being told, because such treatment is ongoing.

 

Institutionalizing torture: Abu Ghraib

 

While President Bush has regularly claimed -- as with reporters in

Panama last November -- that " we do not torture, " Janis Karpinski, the

U.S. Brigadier General whose 800th Military Police Brigade was in

charge of 17 prison facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib back in

2003, begs to differ. She knows that we do torture and she believes

that the President himself is most likely implicated in the decision

to embed torture in basic war-on-terror policy.

 

While testifying this January 21 in New York City at the International

Commission of Inquiry on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush

Administration, Karpinski told us: " General [Ricardo] Sanchez

[commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq] himself signed the

eight-page memorandum authorizing literally a laundry list of harsher

techniques in interrogations to include specific use of dogs and

muzzled dogs with his specific permission. "

 

All this, as she reminded us, came after Major General Geoffrey

Miller, who had been " specifically selected by the Secretary of

Defense to go to Guantánamo Bay and run the interrogations operation, "

was dispatched to Iraq by the Bush administration to " work with the

military intelligence personnel to teach them new and improved

interrogation techniques. "

 

Karpinski met Miller on his tour of American prison facilities in Iraq

in the fall of 2003. Miller, as she related in her testimony, told

her, " It is my opinion that you are treating the prisoners too well.

At Guantánamo Bay, the prisoners know that we are in charge and they

know that from the very beginning. You have to treat the prisoners

like dogs. And if they think or feel any differently you have

effectively lost control of the interrogation. "

 

Miller went on to tell Karpinksi in reference to Abu Ghraib, " We're

going to Gitmo-ize the operation. "

 

When she later asked for an explanation, Karpinski was told that the

military police guarding the prisons were following the orders in a

memorandum approving " harsher interrogation techniques, " and,

according to Karpinski, " signed by the Secretary of Defense, Don

Rumsfeld. "

 

That one-page memorandum " authorized sleep deprivation, stress

positions, meal disruption --serving their meals late, not serving a

meal. Leaving the lights on all night while playing loud music,

issuing insults or criticism of their religion, their culture, their

beliefs. " In the left-hand margin, alongside the list of interrogation

techniques to be applied, Rumsfeld had personally written, " Make sure

this happens!! " Karpinski emphasized the fact that Rumsfeld had used

two exclamation points.

 

When asked how far up the chain of command responsibility for the

torture orders for Abu Ghraib went, Karpinski said, " The Secretary of

Defense would not have authorized without the approval of the Vice

President. "

 

Karpinski does not believe that the many investigations into Abu

Ghraib have gotten to the truth about who is responsible for the

torture and abuse because " they have all been directed and kept under

the control of the Department of Defense. Secretary Rumsfeld was

directing the course of each one of those separate investigations.

There was no impartiality whatsoever. "

 

Does she believe the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib has stopped?

 

" I have no reason to believe that it has. I believe that cameras

are no longer allowed anywhere near a cellblock. But why should I

believe it's stopped? We still have the captain from the 82nd airborne

division [who] returned and had a diary, a log of when he was

instructed, what he was instructed, where he was instructed, and who

instructed him. To go out and treat the prisoners harshly, to set them

up for effective interrogation, and that was recently as May of 2005. "

 

Karpinski was referring to Captain Ian Fishback, one of three American

soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Forward Operating Base

Mercury near Fallujah who personally witnessed the torture of Iraqi

prisoners and came forward to give testimony to human rights

organizations about the crimes committed.

 

Karpinski, who was made the scapegoat for the atrocities which

occurred at Abu Ghraib, went public as a whistle-blower, and retired

with a demotion in rank after serving a quarter of a century in the

Army. General Sanchez, on the other hand, was transferred to Germany

where he is continuing his tenure as commander of the V Corps.

However, he was reportedly relieved of his role and not promoted to a

fourth star due to the fact that the Abu Ghraib scandal first broke

during his watch.

 

But Abu Ghraib was -- and remains -- only a symptom of a much deeper

problem.

 

The Guantánamo treatment

 

" Since the start of the war on terror, the intelligence community, led

by the CIA, has revived the use of torture, making it Washington's

weapon of choice, " writes Alfred McCoy in his new book, A Question of

Torture.

 

When the infamous Abu Ghraib photo of the prisoner on a box draped in

black, head covered with a sack, arms outstretched with electrical

wires attached to his fingers, was made public, it had a deeper

resonance for McCoy than simply documenting a war crime of the present

moment.

 

" In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of CIA

torture, " McCoy told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview. " It's

very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are

extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple

fundamental techniques " that, as his book makes vividly clear, the CIA

pioneered in breakthrough research on torture, funded to the tune of

billions of dollars in the 1950s.

 

In his book, he adds: " The photographs from Iraq illustrate standard

interrogation practice inside the global gulag of secret CIA prisons

that have operated, on executive authority, since the start of the war

on terror. "

 

Rather than placing blame merely on the handful of guards in Abu

Ghraib who were reprimanded (and in a few cases jailed) for their

crimes against humanity, McCoy believes that they -- and the

interrogators there -- were simply " following orders " and, like

Karpinski, considers that " responsibility for their actions lies

higher, much higher, up the chain of command. "

 

When I interviewed Ali Abbas in Iraq, his descriptions from Abu Ghraib

bore a remarkable similarity to those given by detainees released from

the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and from the little

noticed American mini-gulag in Afghanistan.

 

" They shit on us, used dogs against us, used electricity and starved

us, " he told me. " They cut my hair into strips like an Indian. They

shaved my mustache, put a plate in my hand, and made me go beg from

the prisoners, as if I was a beggar. "

 

Lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York in a

statement on the detention experiences of three men they represent who

were held in both Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay reveal, for example,

similarly over-the-top treatment. And such treatment long preceded

anything recorded at Abu Ghraib. Starvation rations were common and,

in Sherbegan Prison in Afghanistan in December, 2001, one of the

detainees, Shafiq Rasul, described the situation as follows: " We all

had body and hair lice. We got dysentery and the toilets were

disgusting. It was just a hole in the ground with shit everywhere. The

whole prison stank of shit and unwashed bodies. "

 

He would not be allowed to wash for at least six weeks. He would be

transferred to a U.S. base in Kandahar and endure a " forced cavity

search " while he was hooded, then go on to suffer countless beatings.

When he was later transferred to Guantánamo Bay, he would witness the

" Guantánamo haircut " where men would either have their heads shaved

completely or have a cross shaved into their head in order to insult

their faith. Denial of medical care and long stays in solitary

confinement, along with sleep deprivation tactics, were the norm.

 

Other forms of treatment included:

 

* Gratuitous violence: Prisoners would be punched, kicked, and

slammed to the ground.

 

* Exposure to the elements: Prisoners were locked in cage-like

structures located in hangers with no heating.

 

* Denial of nourishment.

 

* Denial of religious rights including purposeful desecration of

the Quran.

 

* The use of dogs to threaten prisoners.

 

And keep in mind, this was the norm. The extreme we know from the

recorded deaths of at least 98 prisoners in American hands in these years.

 

Outsourcing torture

 

Extraordinary renditions -- the kidnapping of terror suspects and

their transport to countries willing to torture them for the Bush

administration -- have been the rage (for the CIA) in Europe in recent

years and have enraged European publics. But far less is often known

about what happens to those kidnappees on the other end of the

process. Craig Murray, however, knows more than most of us. He was the

British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, a time when that

country's strong man, Islam Karimov, was described by Condoleezza

Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld as an " important ally " of

George Bush in his war on terror. Murray was dismissed by the British

government in October 2004 when he made public his findings on

extraordinary renditions to Uzbekistan and the torture by Uzbek

security personnel of those rendered into their hands by the CIA.

 

Murray describes Karimov as having longstanding ties with Bush. These

seem to have begun in 1997 when Bush was still governor of Texas. He

then met with Uzbek Ambassador Sadyk Safaev, a meeting (for which

there is documented evidence) organized by Ken Lay, CEO of Enron, in

order to enlist the governor in brokering a two billion-dollar gas

deal between the corporation and that oil-rich country. Karimov, says

Murray, " was a guest in the White House in 2002. It's very easy to

find photos of George Bush shaking Karimov's hand. " Secretary of

Defense Donald Rumsfeld was, he added, " particularly chummy with

Karimov " back then and, at the time, the administration was making use

of the Karshi-Khanabad air base, also known as K2, in that country.

 

Murray is not alone in considering Karimov one of the most vicious

dictators on the planet, a man personally responsible for the death of

thousands. The ambassador helped uncover evidence of one detainee who

" had had his fingernails extracted, he had been severely beaten,

particularly about the face, and he died of immersion in boiling

liquid. And it was immersion, rather than splashing, because there is

a clear tide mark around the upper torso and arms, which gives you

some idea of the level of brutality of this regime. "

 

While not certain that detainees who had been rendered were boiled

alive, about extraordinary rendition Murray said, " There is no doubt

that George Bush and Condoleezza Rice have been lying through their

teeth about extraordinary rendition for some time. " As he put it, " The

United States, as a matter of policy, is willing to accept

intelligence got by torture by foreign agencies. I can give direct

firsthand evidence of that and back it up with documents. "

 

When asked why he decided to go public with his information, Murray

replied, " I think it's just what any decent person would do. I mean,

when you come across people being boiled and their fingernails pulled

out or having their children raped in front of them, you just can't go

along with it and sleep at night. "

 

The U.S. vacated the K2 base as the result of political fallout from

the massacre of over 600 demonstrators by Karimov's security forces in

May 2005. Karimov has since moved back under Russian protection.

 

Nevertheless, Murray is convinced that the U.S. continues to rendition

people to other grim and willing regimes around the globe to be tortured.

 

In addition to the degradation and inhumanity involved in torture,

which afflicts those meting it out as well as those on the receiving

end, both intelligence officials and law enforcement personnel believe

that information obtained by torture is almost invariably useless. In

addition, torture policies, seldom kept secret for long, invariably

produce outrage and opposition on a large scale.

 

Here, for instance, is a typical response a rebel in Fallujah offered

a colleague of mine in Iraq in January 2005:

 

" We are fighting in Fallujah first because we are defending our

religion. Because they desecrate our Holy Quran. They put the Quran in

the sewage. They rape our women. They rape them in Abu Ghraib. The

raiding, the burning, the detentions, the evictions, the killing it is

continuous, everyday and night. These are the reasons we resist the

Americans. "

 

" George Bush is the law "

 

Testimony from Afghan prisons and Guantánamo, the photos and video

from Abu Ghraib, evidence of extraordinary renditions to the far

corners of the planet -- all of this doesn't even encompass the full

reach of Bush administration torture policies or the degree to which

they have been set in motion at the highest levels of the American

government. But what simply can't be clearer is this: horrific methods

of torture have been used regularly against detainees in U.S. custody

in countries around the globe, while an American President, Vice

President and Secretary of Defense, among others, openly advocated

policies that, until recently, would have been considered torture in

any democratic country. In the meantime, the Bush Administration has

twisted the law just enough to allow authorities to potentially pick

up more or less anyone they desire at any time they want to be held

wherever the government decides for as long as its officials desire

with no access to lawyer or trial -- and now, for the first time, the

possibility has arisen, at least in the military trials in Guantánamo,

that testimony obtained by torture will be admissible.

 

All of this can also be seen as part of a desperate attempt by a

failing superpower to ratchet up the use of force in the service of

subjugation, as has happened time and time again in the past.

 

In A Question of Torture, McCoy quotes one CIA analyst, whose

expertise was in the now long-departed Soviet Empire, this way: " When

feelings of insecurity develop within those holding power, they become

increasingly suspicious and put great pressures upon the secret police

to obtain arrests and confessions. At such times police officials are

inclined to condone anything which produces a speedy 'confession,' and

brutality may become widespread. "

 

Testifying at the same commission of inquiry as Karpinski, Michael

Ratner, once head of the National Lawyers' Guild, now president of the

Center for Constitutional Rights and an expert on international human

rights law, caught the essence of our present situation:

 

Let there be no doubt this administration is engaged in massive

violations of the law. Torture is an international crime. What [George

Bush] has done is basically lay the plan for what has to be called a

coup-d'état in America. [His Presidential Signing Statement attached

to the McCain anti-torture amendment] makes three points … First,

speaking as the President, my authority as commander in chief allows

me to do whatever I think is necessary in the war on terror including

use torture. Second, the Commander in Chief cannot be checked by

Congress. Third, the Commander in Chief cannot be checked by the

courts. In other words … George Bush is the law.

 

Torture is usually defined as " infliction of severe physical pain as a

means of punishment or coercion, " or as " excruciating physical or

mental pain, agony. " No civilized society can accept laws which

justify the use of torture. So it's not surprising that Ali Abbas was

astonished to discover Americans willing to inflict such humiliating

and inhumane treatment on him while he was in their custody in Abu

Ghraib. " They cannot be human beings and do these things, " was the way

he put it. He concluded: " This, what happened to me, could happen to

anybody in Iraq. "

 

Unfortunately, what happened to him can now conceivably happen to

anyone, anywhere in the world, according to George Bush.

 

One of the last things Abbas said as our interview ended was: " Saddam

Hussein was a cruel enemy to us. Once I made it to Abu Ghraib though,

I wished I had been killed by him rather than being alive with the

Americans. Even now, after this journey of torture and suffering, what

else can I think? "

 

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who reports from Iraq.