‘We Were Torturing People For No Reason’
Tony Lagouranis is a 37-year-old bouncer at a bar in Chicago’s Humboldt Park. He is also a former torturer.
That was how he was described in an e-mail promoting a panel discussion, “24: Torture Televised,” hosted by the Center on Law and Security of the New York University School of Law on March 21. He doesn’t shy away from the description.
As a specialist in a military intelligence battalion, Lagouranis interrogated prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Al Asad Airfield and other places in Iraq from January through December 2004.
Coercive techniques, including the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions were employed on the detainees, he says. Prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall in a room in an airplane hanger, he told me in a phone interview.
When he was having problems getting information from a detainee, he recalls, other interrogators said, “Chain him up on the bed frame and then he’ll talk to you.” Lagouranis says he didn’t participate directly in hangings from the frames.
The results of the hangings, shacklings and prolonged stress positions - sometimes for hours - were devastating. “You take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple, at least for a period of time,” Lagouranis told me. “I don’t care what Alberto Gonzales says. That’s torture.”
Lagouranis was on the NYU panel to talk about torture and its role in the Emmy Award-winning television show “24.”
The show’s hero, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), is ruthless in his attempts to extract information about terrorist plots from suspects in “ticking timebomb” situations. The prevailing sentiment of the show, as Jane Mayer wrote in an article about “24″ in the New Yorker is, “Whatever it takes.” Lagouranis met with the show’s creative team in California in November, she wrote. He told them that the grisly plotlines of television shows like “24″ had given soldiers ideas on how to torment prisoners (for example, forcing a prisoner to listen to the sounds of men being tortured in a nearby cell - a method that was proposed, he said, but not carried out during his time in Iraq.
Jack Bauer is, of course, a fictional character. Lagouranis, meanwhile, has seen the suffering of people who have been interrogated in Iraq. The Iraqi prisoners were not electrocuted or attacked with knives, like terrorism suspects in “24.”
Lagouranis is one of the few individuals to have spoken publicly about his experiences as an interrogator who used or saw harsh techniques inflicted on prisoners in the war. (His book, “Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s Dark Journey through Iraq,” co-authored with Allen Mikaelian, will be published in June.)
Lagouranis is hardly the only one familiar with the stories. At least nine individuals have been sentenced to prison for detainee-related offenses at Abu Ghraib. Others may someday face prosecution for alleged crimes and detainee abuse in the Iraq war.
Lagouranis reported the detainee abuses that he witnessed in Iraq and is not a suspect in detainee-related abuses. As he says, he followed military guidelines during interrogations. “The things I participated in were technically legal,” he explains.
Yet there have been repercussions. He suffered from panic attacks after his return to the United States and was placed under army psychiatric care. He received an honorable discharge from the army in July 2005.
Lagouranis studied ancient Greek at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. As he explains in his book, and in our conversations, he is familiar with classical and modern texts about warfare as well as with international law that protects the rights of prisoners of war.
He and other soldiers discussed the Geneva Conventions during military training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, in 2003, before being deployed to Iraq. But it became clear they were not always expected to abide by them, he says.
Some of the soldiers and officers had been influenced by Mark Bowden’s October 2003 article in the Atlantic Monthly, “The Dark Art of Interrogation,” which described techniques that, in the author’s words, are “excruciating for the victim” yet “leave no permanent marks and do no lasting physical harm.”
“It seems to me Bowden was advocating what he calls ‘torture lite,’ ” Lagouranis told me. “That made an impression on a lot of people. The feeling was that what we had been taught about the Geneva Conventions was not going to be followed anymore.”
Things seemed different in Iraq. “I started realizing that most of the prisoners were innocent,” Lagouranis told me. “We were torturing people for no reason. I started getting really angry and really remorseful and by the time I got back I completely broke down.”
At the NYU event, Lagouranis said, “I’m from New York City. I’m college-educated. But you put me in Iraq and told me to torture, and I did it and I regretted it later.”
That is something Lagouranis and others like him will be dealing with for a long time. “I didn’t know I would discover and indulge in my own evil,” he writes in his forthcoming book. “And now that it has surfaced, I fear that it will be my constant companion for the rest of my life.”
Tara McKelvey is a senior editor at The American Prospect. This article was distributed by Agence Global.
Torturers are not monsters. If they were Gitmo would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or a hurricane. These are ordinary people–just like your family members and the people you meet every day. The people who think themselves incapable of torture are the first to get caught up in the perverse delight of inflicting pain.
I disagree, some torturers are monsters. The people who subvert the domestic and international laws we are signatories to are at the minimum sick people.
The people that have knowingly broken these laws should be held accountable. With no amnesty or any pardons allowed. We have to try to stop the cycle of evil were gripped in by an out of control administration.
willo:
Nietzsche is not condoning monstrous behavior. What he is saying is that everybody has, among other things, a Freudian sadist inside. We are natural born torturers, every one of us, and we need to recognize this so that we do not delude ourselves into thinking that evil only lives in other people. Already you are beginning to dehumanize “the people who have knowingly etc.” and advocate that they be treated harshly. That is how nice people become monsters.
When we become social animals we learn to sublimate our nastier impulses into constructive channels. The difference between good and bad people is not some God-given state of sanctity or depravity. It is more about the intelligence to recognize both in ourselves. Freud believed that we are redeemed from our dark natures only by the imposition of self control,
that state of civilized restraint from which, as you rightly note, our president has departed. Unfortunately what has been repressed into unconsciousness tends to sneak back into reality in other disguises, such as retributive “justice.” When brutality is legitimized it is surprising how many nice people line up for their black hoods and thumbscrews.
I am reminded of Christopher Browning’s study of the civilian-based “order police” who conducted the first exterminations of Polish Jews after the German invasion. The book is titled “Ordinary Men” and its thesis is that people who commit atrocities are not monsters, but ‘ordinary men” under pressure to commit these acts out of the desire to conform to group expectations. It’s hard to believe that something as banal as “peer pressure” could unleash such suffering on others, but i think Browning makes a strong case. Of course this does not really address the problem of what larger social and cultural contexts create the normalization of torture within these smaller groups charged with carrying it out.
Certainly the dehumanization of Middle Eastern people, such as the way in which we report the deaths of Iraqui civilians, never putting a face to the numbers, and the endless demonization of Islam helps to reduce our moral responsibility toward them. We report every American death, show the grieving families and home towns, but Iraquis are simply abstract numbers.
Solzhentizen in Gulag Archipelago talked about this as well. As a Soviet Army captain on the front lines fighting the Germans, he confessed to the cruelty he submitted some of his men to when they dis-obeyed or were unruly. Perhaps not torture per se, but the context he spoke of it in was unnatural cruelty while under the depredations of the war and life at the front.
When I was in US Army basic training years ago, we all received thorough class instructions on the Geneva Conventions - from the viewpoint of the captive, not from the viewpoint of the captor or would-be torturer.
The Geneva litany went something like this (forgive memory errors due to the passage of time):
“I will never surrender of my own free will.
If taken prisoner, I will give only my name, rank, serial number, date of birth and unit designation. I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners, and my superiors in the chain of command. If necessary, I will insist at all times that I and my fellow prisoners be treated according to our rights under the Geneva Conventions.”
The fact that any American soldier was ever sent to torture anybody in Iraq shows just how quickly decades of established, evolved international human rights law can be subverted the moment policy makers, behind closed doors in high places, start conjuring up superficially clever exceptions to a simple, clear cut rule of law.
Torture is a crime. Period.
And torture remains a crime, even when and if miraculously, miracle-of-miracles in the real world, there is a genuine “ticking time bomb” scenario.
If, in fact, there is proof certain that a ticking bomb will soon go off and murder innocents, and you have proof positive that your evil captive can prevent the atrocity by speaking up, and further certainty still that time is of the absolute essence, then what you have is a defense against later criminal prosecution for committing the criminal act of torture - a recognized common law defense called necessity.
Torture is a crime. Period.
What continues to amaze me is not just that a President who campaigned with loud evangelical promise to restore “moral clarity to the Oval Office” later sank to personally authorizing torture and homoerotic acts of depravity as an institutionalized means to supposedly gather “valuable intelligence.” What is truly even more amazing is the nearly complete silence of the media and the Democratic Party’s leadership about this quintessential “values issue”, even when it is handed up upon a silver platter.
How could Jim Lehrer of NPR moderate a whole 1/12 hour Presidential debate on nothing but foreign affairs and national security policy between John Kerry and George Bush in the 2004 campaign, and the Geneva Conventions and Abu Ghraib were never mentioned? Not one single word about it. You can look it up.
Mr. Lagouranis deserves our nation’s thanks for speaking out where so many priests, pundits, and politicians fear to tread. He also deserves our support as he works through the harsh transition reconciling the military duties he felt compelled to perform, and returning to civilian life with some measure of personal sanity restored.
I shudder to imagine how many others who have served in the Bush administration’s worldwide rendition/torture gulag are quietly rotating back to the homeland, and slipping into slots inside our stateside police and corrections’ systems with similar Iraq/GWOT experiences in their job resumes, but with no transition counseling. It is those folks - the ones readjusting but secure in the belief that torture has now become acceptable behavior in the brave new world of American empire - that we really need to worry about.
I remember when researching the Nuremberg trials how these monstrous crimes were committed by people who didn’t seem particularly evil. Aside from real sadists who just need an opportunity, it seems like getting regular people to do terrible things requires some circumstances they perhaps aren’t prepared for, like a custom of obedience, fear of punishment, the slow slide of gradually doing worse things, comparison to people doing even worse things, maybe a sense of peer group, but not unusual amounts of evil.
What should scare us is that regular people can do these things with the right leaders creating the circumstances. What we should address is the people in charge, Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and Rumsfeld show unusually little empathy and an ease with cruelty. Three of these war criminals are still there.
Adolph Eichmann conclusively proves Nietzche’s point. The difference between the best and the worst of us is too often a question of environmental conditioning rather than anything genetic.
Tony Lagouranis, Janis Karpinski, and Sam Provance are special because despite being firmly ensconced in “the system” they resisted the temptation to go along to get along and spoke the truth to and about power.
I believe that torturers are monsters. However, I also believe that those torturers believe that they have the okay to do this from the higher ups. What the pro-torture people don;t get is that torture doesn’t work. If Hitler had gone into the USSR an an anti-Communist liberator, he could have won. Our humane treatment of POWs in WWII and Korea paid off hansomely.
Two things come to my mind here. Clarence Darrow said “There’s only one thing about the death penalty. If you love the idea of killing someone you’re for it, if you hate the ida of killing someone you’re against it” and I think that applies to torture. And Kahlil Gibran wrote of Crime and Punishment in The Prophet, “So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all… And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone”. It is not right for us to judge others and rank them according to our “moral values”. What we are responsible for is to protect each other - all of us - and most especially everyone who is too young to protect themselves. When we do that, we will be living in a very different world. Meanwhile, Alice Miller wrote that even one enlightened witness can change a child’s life, and we can all be enlightened witnesses, speaking up when we see wrongdoing.
indictments ?
It has been proven in an experiment in 1971 that ordinary people when put into a position of complete dominance over others will in a very short period of time, if not restrained by over-sight, revert to cruelty and torture.
The experiment was to last 2 weeks, it’s lasted just 36 hours before it was cancelled due to the degree of violence the “guards” exhibited.
Not only is no over-sight given those in the position of dominance now, they are being encouraged, from our so-called leaders, to use tactics that by any civilized standards are not only illegal but immoral.
Yes, “torturers” end up being average people who just followed orders. However, it is fitting these people suffer the rest of their lives for what they have done. There is no excuse for such savagery.
TONY..re:” Were Were Torturing People For No Reason”
There is NO REASON to Torture People FOR ANY REASON.
Please read the Salem Witch Trials, and the history of torture in religious trials in Massachusetts.Read the torture trials in Europe in the middle ages…read Catholic history.People will confess to anything under torture.
TORTURE is anything that causes pain of any sort.
A bouncer!!!!You are in the wrong job.
Find a job that does kind things for other people.Feed the poor, take care of lost animals, garden, learn to cook,learn to be kind and perhaps have yourself tortured so you know what it is.
I think there is a lot you did not learn in college.I fear you and fear for you.
It is in our belief that any of us is better than or superior to another, that the abilty to do violence arises. It is only when we see everyone as our brother that we can end the violence. Acts of retribution only perpetuate the cycle. Only forgiveness will end it.
!!!!!!! EMERGENCY ACTION ALERT !!!!
This is what I just e-mailed to my Congressional representatives…..
Dear Senator,
Thank you for supporting the Supplemental Funding bill that has time lines for the withdrawal from Iraq. Unfortunely, both the House and Senate bills have a “benchmark” that needs to be removed in negotiations to reconcile the two versions of the bill. I need your help to get this message to the Senators on that panel. PLEASE read the following information and HELP the citizens of America and Iraq!
I don’t think President Bush has any intention of vetoing the Supplemental funding bill if it ever gets to his desk. One of the “benchmarks” he has to certify turns Iraq’s oil over to the major American and British oil companies and is buried in this Supplemental!
Please read Richard Beham’s “George Bush’s Land Mine” just posted here on Common Dreams. Excerpt:
“The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war.”
We have to contact every member in the Congress that is on the panel to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the Supplemental funding bill that just passed both houses of Congress. This “benchmark” has to be stripped out of this bill before it goes to the President’s desk!
PLEASE contact your Congressional representatives with the same message! NOW!!! GO! GO!! GO!!
Is the implication — “I realized that most of the prisoners were innocent” — is that if they weren’t innocent, torture would have been acceptable?
Not just “24″ but our whole entertainment culture is rife with images of police, soldiers, superheroes, using tactics of coercion to put badguys away or punish them. Everyone cheers in the theatre, everyone who watches “Law & Order” feels great when the bad guy is gunned down by one of his victims, to say nothing of the video games.
Then we’re shocked that ‘college-educated’ men & women indulge in vindictive brutality against helpless captives.
It is the country & the culture which is sick at the heart, not just the few who reveal the perverse core of the ideology of liberal capitalist democracy.
Thank you Dichterfreund..
that is what I wanted to say…if they weren’t innocent would torture have been acceptable? NO! torture can never be acceptable.
I found shocking the first photos I saw early on of prisoners with plastic bags over their heads.. an image I had never seen in US war news coverage through WW2,Korea or Vietnam.Then the photos got worse and few seems to object.
It is true the country and the culture is sick at heart.