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Torture Blowback and Selective Outrage
The alleged torture of British Navy personnel by Iraqi Revolutionary Guards was page one news in the New York Times and other US publications on Saturday, and the outrage in America and Britain was almost universal.According to the just released 15 captives, they were blindfolded, then forced to listen to guns being cocked, which led them to believe they might be executed. They were placed in isolation from one another, yelled at, and forced to confess to having trespassed in Iranian territorial waters.
These abusive treatments are all awful, and no one would want to have to endure them, but let's be honest here: they pale in comparison to what American captives have been put through in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and at various secret "black sites" around the world from Poland to Ethiopia.
People held in captivity by American forces--military and CIA--are known to have faced mock executions, to have been beaten to the point of death, and to have endured repeated water-boarding sessions. They have been forced to stay in stress positions for so long that they have suffered permanent muscular and neurological damage. They have been subjected to total sensory deprivation, such as we saw was applied to American captive Jose Padilla, to the point that they went insane. They've suffered extended sleep deprivation, have been left staked to the ground in desert sun, or left wet and naked for days in front of blasting air-conditioners. They've been attacked by dogs, sexually humiliated, raped, and forced to watch the desecration of their Korans.
There are also forms of torture applied which we don't even know about--the reason provided by federal authorities for blacking out the testimony of captives at military tribunals in Guantanamo, and the reason two convicted "terrorists," David Hicks and John Walker Lindh, had to sign gag agreements barring them from talking about the conditions of their captivity in public in return for reduced sentences.
If anyone wanted to know why President Bush's authorization of torture by American forces was a criminal act, they should go talk to the freed British detainees. So far, no one has asked them what they think about countries that torture captives.
My guess is that they'll say it's a horrible idea, whoever does it.
So far, from what I've seen, none of the reports on the abusive treatment of British captives has made the connection to how American forces are torturing captives in their custody.
This is shoddy journalism at its worst.
So far, nobody in Congress, including Sen. John McCain, who once tried to pass a torture ban only to have it gutted by presidential signing statement, has said anything about this case-book example of blow-back of America's use of officially sanctioned torture of captives.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net and www.counterpunch.org His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office" (St. Martin's Press, 2006).
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17 Comments so far
Show All"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all."
Tacitus- roman historian c 56-c117
Waterboarding is the preferred, "legal" form of torture used in the US.
Iran could have done a lot worse to the British captives, but what we are doing is inexcusable be it in Iraq, Gitmo or some secret prison. I know it is hard for Americans to face, but we are the bad guys.
The Iranians we are holding are treated far worse and the Cuban five have spent years in solitary confinement for actually fighting against terrorism.
The news stories about this incident and its aftermath read like satire, in the light of the KNOWN torture we seem to have been using routinely for a long, long time.
People think that karma is some nutty notion posited by an obscure, dead religion. They are dead wrong.
Not a nutty notion, not a dead religion. Hinduism has never been improved on and karma means:
What goes around comes around, You reap what you sow, and You don't pee into the wind. Hard to believe? Not for me.
The British government would not have coached the fifteen?
Politely, of course - over tea...
Nietzche I so agree about karma. I also believe it fits in with reincarnation as who can argue that God is just if we all get one shot, and the disparities defy explanation (given that "one" shot approach). With that being said, Rove didn't wake up as a Machiavellian master at diabolic semi-legal arts overnight. That kind of dark power takes practice. I think he was among the Romans who figured they'd just get rid of Jesus, and blame the Jews. That PR has held for centuries, look at Gibson's recent (Passion of Christ) film. Condi Rice, why would a young Black woman study Russian history and have such a glint in her eyes? I see the reincarnation of Genghis Kahn in this lady, and her dreams of empire never sated. Newt Gingrich, one of the high judges involved with the Inquisition... and Bush, the Emperor Justinian who marrying Theodoro (quite the elite hooker of her times) and in order to expunge HER history, he merely had ALL mention of reincarnation removed from Biblical lore/texts of his time in the Council of Nicaea. Doesn't this sound like Bush? Just change the law, change the wording, change the Constitution and ONLY MY WORD matters. The problem with most academic disciplines and the linear conjecture they derive from this the conceit that time is a progressive line... that we have moved beyond the past and its monsters. In reality, time is a circle. We experience time as a direct result of our earth circling the sun, and women menstruate to the moon's 29 day orbital rhythm cycle, too. Of course this means that all things DO come full circle, and rather than having arrived at some distant progressive future, we are back where we started with today's pharaohs the corporations and the rest of us, the slaves laboring without the awareness that we are slaves. Of course such matters are also inconvenient truths of the inviolate sort, the stuff that got lots of mystics (thinkers of their times) executed so the church could keep all minds in lock-step. It's worked. I am an astrologer and my work is marginalized by both left publications and right ones. It's a sorry sight when the vision that could lift mankind from the redundant feedback loop its senses have been forced to adapt to is cordoned off as a heresy or treason, or perhaps laughed at or otherwise marginalized by being an excluded voice at the table. Why did Jesus choose 12, why did Abraham father 12? If there are 12 Divine facets of God, then the "singular monotheistic voice" is little more than a strategic cover for Mars, god of war to maintain dominion, and the counterbalancing QUALITIES are not given representation (like all knights at King Arthur's table). HIS-story repeats because its the only thing allowed... it depends on the same stories, pouring the same wine into the old wineskins and like insanity, expecting a different outcome. For starters, it takes 2 oars to maneuver any boat up stream, with only one (left brain logic without right brain intuition and sentience) the boat only circles. And the same ism-divisions and redundant outcomes recur, except now the price is too high for it would mean all out nuclear destruction OR environmental collapse. What is meant by the new age of Aquarius (and these age-phases take 2200 years each, approximately) is that the TRUTH would set them free. In a climate of such intolerable lying, paradox, duplicity and deception on the part of a great many with power, the truth that would lift us to the next phase for mankind is being obstructed by the "dark gods" that do NOT want mankind's progress or evolution. As someone quite likely burned as a witch before, and rather empathic with forces that would do so again in America as the rising intolerance of the authoritarians crossed with those seeking a Christian nation have on their record the decimation of many other people. GOD is not one way. There are no sides in the circle. Looking at ourselves from the transcendental lens of the heavens, we might come to see how the different branches are all fruit from the same Divine tree, but that tree is NOT based on uniformity or one way or one superior race or any of that hype that does nothing but destroy people, creation and the TRUTH about spirit. MOST religion has turned people on people and in my view IT has rendered itself blasphemy in so doing. If the established religions lead us to war in the Holy Land, then maybe the heretics ought to have a place at the table to counter the course. Whether it's the military pursuing the agenda of M.A.D or the religious fundamentalists in their courting of Armageddon, it's the same net effect, and both salute MARS, the god of destruction and do a disservice to the God of peace and love. And by the way, just as the ant can't fathom HUMAN psychology, how dare us mortals presume to understand something as beyond our perceptual range as the Deity? At least through the 12 phases of time and the mythological theatres each gives rise to, a notion of Deity is expanded that includes more than one narrow voice!
The imperialist media shills in Britain, including the New York Times and other US publications, have long proven to be propaganda tools for the US ministry of disinformation. The truth is, as the world has repeatedly seen the happy and smiling faces of the marines on international TV screens, the Iranian government treated the British marines with utmost compassion and humanely. The fact that the marines thanked the Iranian government even upon their departure speaks for itself. This is in stark contrast to the way the US and Brits have been treating their captives. The Iranians showed the human face and thus put the west to shame. Western publications are now trying to do some damage control, which is quite understandable. To compare the two types of treatment and call it a blowbacck is in itself propaganda, and is comparing apples with oranges.
Essie
"The alleged torture of British Navy personnel by Iraqi Revolutionary Guards was page one news in the New York Times and other US publications on Saturday, and the outrage in America and Britain was almost universal."
The outrage literally drips with hypocrisy
Lobo Gris
Terry Jones said it best: "No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians Clearly Are a Very Uncivilised Bunch."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/31/208/
What the British soldiers endured at the hands of the "thuggish" (NYT adjective) Iranians sounds horrible.
But I'll bet the worst part was the time those captive soldiers had to meditate, in isolation, about the precedent set by the US and its rationalizations for the barbarous treatment of enemy captives.
Given that example, and audience-tested rhetoric with which to excuse any form of torture and atrocity, I'd say that the Iranian Army captors behaved with a courtesy that puts us to shame. Perhaps they were trying to set a good example for us.
"...but let's be honest here: they pale in comparison to what American captives...."
Sloppy wording. It should be "foreign captives held by the Americans."
Talking of sloppy wording, I am guessing that David Lindorff didn't mean "The alleged torture of British Navy personnel by Iraqi Revolutionary Guards" in line 1. I presume he meant to say "Iranian Revolutionary Guards" - although this Freudian slip is probably prophetic of the direction in which Iraq is headed thanks to the US and British interverntion - I am sure there will be a similar takeover by the Ulama in Iraq as there was in Iran, again thanks to the US and British policy. As Nietzsche commented above: "You reap what you sow."
The differnece is that when you or I reap what we sow we reflect on how we stuffed ourselves by our own action and adjust our behaviour in future, if not for karmic then at least for selfish reasons. In other words we change how we act because we are either nice, or not stupid. The problem with the Middle East policies of the USA and Britian since about 1000AD is that they do not learn a single bloody thing.
The entire US governmental response is much better summed up by Chateaubriand (describing the reckless and self-defeating actions of the returning Bourbons aritstocrats to government in France in 1814): "They remembered nothing and they forgot nothing." That is the Bush response to a tee: they have learned not a single thing from planes flying into buildings, and they have in fact settled every neo-con score they can inthe Middle East - leading to another century or two of destruction and even maybe the end of the world.
Mission accomplished!
Shrub % Company, in our name, has made America the true terrorists of the world. Committing torture and murder in our name is only the tip of the iceburg.
As I understand it the 15 British Marines were held in isolation, interrogated, fed, clothed in brand new suits, given a bag full of tourist trinkets and then as a final gesture of villainy given a audience with the President of Iran....
Where the hell was the torture as per Guantanamo style?.....Was this another fabrication of the British Government to cover up for who the real torturers are?
REMEMBER in real domestic violence the PERPETRATOR ALWAYS BLAMES THE VICTIM.....
"REMEMBER in real domestic violence the PERPETRATOR ALWAYS BLAMES THE VICTIM..... "
By the way, this has been Bush and Cheney's etal
"modus operandi" right from the beginning of the Iraqi War Crimes committed by these two mongrels....