Tracing Torture
Here is a brief excerpt from testimony that claims the authorization to use torture in Iraq came from pretty high up. Read the whole article at TomDispatch.com and Truthout.org.
“Tracing the Trail of Torture: Embedding Torture as Policy From Guantanamo to Iraq,” by Dahr Jamail
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 Guantanamo 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 Guantanamo 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.
6 thoughts on “Tracing Torture”
I just loved how the Der Rovesmaraschall noise machine attempted to denirate this woman-who managed to be good enough for a General’s rank in spite of all the terrible things “revealed” about her!
t is pretty clear that while she may have had a lot of rank in Iraq, she didn’t have a whole lot of authority.
Are people really socked at news that the US tortures people in captivity?
I would have thought people would have expected that as a given. Also how does an interrigator get information from a suspect if they can only question him.
I’m assuming the the suspect would have been given suitable anti-interrigation training.
I think it is rather nieve (sp?) to think that the US would be all peaches and cream whislt interrogating.
Yup. We’re shocked – because we’re breaking our own laws as well as important international agreements. There were reasons for those laws. Moreover, torture does not give accurate information in any case. People will say anything to make it stop. The Geneva conventions and other laws have benefits to everyone, and they set an outer limit to what is allowed against another human being.
If people want to rethink that, there needs to be a public debate in the US. Let’s hear the arguments again if we’re going to change our laws and agreements. Instead, what we see is secrecy and law-breaking as well as pretty good evidence that our democracy is broken. Our standards are meant to be high. We’re supposed to be the good guys. If you look into the whole history of this, you will see exactly what has happened.
Now you more than likely know that I am a staunch US basher but I find myself un-nervingly alligning myself with the US administration over this one.
I in no way condone the actions of the US administration actions regarding the torture of prisoners in thier care but war is a pretty dirty, messy business.
As the US has declared war on just about everyone and everything at the moment you would have to expect that this sort of thing would be going on and I am shocked that the American people would be so shocked about it.
What does that say about me then? Do I mayby have more of an open mind? Or am I just jaded from too much watching 24 and reading too much conspiracy latrature?
I love 24, but the American hero-father who is also a willing torturer and murderer isn’t a real person. It’s pretend.
Many Americans are not shocked by it at all. But I’m not alone. There is a history to this issue, and I think if you read up on how the Geneva conventions got started, you’ll start to see why it is shocking. It’s also a slap in the face to our men and women in the military – it says we don’t care how they are treated either. It took a lot of hard work to get those agreements and laws in place – now it means nothing?
Then consider the issue of sending prisoners of war into other countries, where they don’t even have to consider those laws. They should – but they don’t “have to.”
Our own judicial system here, our own Constitution (which these people are sworn to uphold) is being eroded as well. One of the strengths of our system has always been held to be its insistance on human rights. For people, even American citizens, to be held without charge or trial is something like a blasphemy, and can only be done with an awful lot of secrecy, bending of the law, and hatred.
I’ve heard (although I haven’t researched it) that Gitmo and Abu Graib are being closed. There must be some acknowldgement then. But I don’t think it will stop. It’s like the national surveillance program, or the terrorism training camp we have here – they just pop up later under another name once the heat is off.
Yes, war is a nasty business, but the Geneva conventions at least delinate whether the boundaries _should_ be. When they are transgressed, it has to be addressed as a problem. Without them, all human rights and dignity are gone – for anyone. How can the US dare to speak to other countries on human rights while this hypocrisy is happening?
And, as I mentioned, there is the pragmatic answer. Torture simply doesn’t yield accurate information. Do you really think that anyone could be persuaded to share anything valuable after they have been tortured – after a mother watches her son raped in front of her, why would she ever believe that she would be treated fairly? And people who have been rounded up – on grounds such as wearing a kind of watch that might be a signal of terrorist membership, or who have been “sold” to the US whether or not they have any information or are guilty of any crime – and held for a few years – no longer have anything of value to know, if they ever did.
I’m not arguing with you. Though I do believe we both believe the same thing, just from different viewpoints.
Your looking at it from a legal view and your constitutional standpoint is to be commended. I believe what you said there would make you, in my forign eyes inway, a perfect American Patriot.
I’m looking at it from an outsiders point of view and also as an Australians point of view. Us Aussies are a wierd mob. We have an instant mistrust of anything official, probably stems from the fact that as of just over 200 years ago, we were a penal colony. With this mental psyche I suppose we all come to the conslusion that torture does indeed go on and is more than likely practiced by the Americans but also by our own people here. Getting bashed by th cops is something that is discussed with muc merriment down the pub.
Probably just the way we are, most of us are even too apathetic to care.
Hope that clears up any mis-understandings.