Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of Torture
It wasn’t just the naked human pyramids or the prisoner in a black hood standing on a small box with wires attached to his body. I knew the Abu Ghraib torture prison was big trouble when I first saw the pictures with the dogs. Guard dogs snarling at cowering men. Many Arabs, including Arab Iraqis, are afraid of dogs, uncomfortable in their presence, especially in a confined space. Canines are considered unclean. I learned this lesson the hard way one spring morning in Jerusalem.
I was there on a visit and friends of mine were taking care of a neighbor’s inexcusably adorable dog. Walking a dog on the Israeli side of town can be okay, but to do so along the streets of East Jerusalem, where we were, among the Palestinians of the West Bank, would be insensitive at best and asking for trouble.
As a result, the inexcusably adorable dog was kept within the confines of the small school where my friends lived. One morning I took her for a walk around campus. We turned a corner and ran into a Palestinian man I knew, who was okay with the dog, but he was talking with a guy who went ballistic at the very sight. He came at me, angrily screaming in Arabic, which I don’t think translated as, “How much is that doggie in the window?” Petite pooch and I beat a hasty retreat, each with our tails between our legs.
According to journalists Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin, writing two years ago for Salon.com, “Dogs arrived at Abu Ghraib on Nov. 20, 2003, and were used to abuse detainees just a few days later, according to Army reports. The use of dogs had been recommended two months earlier by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, as part of his plan to improve interrogation in Iraq, according to a Department of Defense investigation led by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger…
“The idea of using dogs in interrogations was not an aberration. At least two other military memos referenced exploiting many Arabs’ known fear of dogs.”
Since the horrors of Abu Ghraib and other such detainee sites were exposed, the military has, officially at least, cleaned up its act. Interrogation techniques are limited to 19 methods described in the Army Field Manual. Prohibited are such torture techniques as dogs, waterboarding, electric shock, the use of extreme heat or cold, withholding of food or water, sexual humiliation and mock executions.
Saturday, March 8, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have required the CIA to follow the same rules, and our nation was diminished yet again.
You may find the recent acts or words of such folks as Eliot Spitzer, Barack Obama’s minister and Geraldine Ferraro shameful. Theirs are puny sins measured against the havoc this veto signifies and affirms.
“The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror,” Bush said. “… This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us prevent a number of attacks.”
There’s little or no evidence to back this claim up. West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee replied, “I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack. And I have heard nothing that makes me think the information obtained from these techniques could not have been obtained through traditional interrogation methods used by military and law enforcement interrogators. On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop.”
The current issue of The Washington Monthly is devoted to 37 brief essays gathered under the title, “No More.” Of the authors, the editors note, “Some are Republicans, others are Democrats, and still others are neither.”
One of them, Jack Cloonan, formerly an FBI special agent with the bureau’s Osama bin Laden team, writes, “Intelligence failures had muc to do with the atrocity of September 11, but those had nothing to do with a lack of torture. Let me be clear on one crucial point: it is the terrorists whom we won over with humane methods in the 1990s who continue to provide the most reliable intelligence we have in the fight against al-Qaeda. And it is the testimony of terrorists we tortured after 9/11 who have provided the most unreliable information, such as stories about a close connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.”
In his essay, former President Jimmy Carter adds, “I would not have believed that in my lifetime I would feel the need to call for an unambiguous prohibition against the practice of torture by agents of the U.S. government… Tragically, the tolerance of torture by our own government is today threatening to undermine the cause of human rights and the work of those who defend these principles in the face of growing dangers.”
One more reason to count the days until this administration is loading up the moving vans. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino appeared on The Daily Show last week. “The president has said he’s going to sprint to the finish,” Jon Stewart remarked.
Then he asked Perino, “Can you get him to run faster?”
Let loose the hounds.
Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York.
copyright 2008 Michael Winship
Wholly apart from its immorality and illegality, one of the chief reasons torture is worse than worthless as an intelligence gathering tool is that it does not result in reliable information. False confessions or false accusations corrupt and eventually distort any fact finding process. Garbage in, garbage out.
The choice of course is not between doing torture and doing nothing. It’s a choice between using torture or using the more tedious, but proven, interrogation methods used upon criminal suspects by genuinely professional law enforcement agencies.
No one needs to reinvent the wheel to competently address the threat of international terrorist plots. We should model our approach after that of the FBI, rather than Torquemada, Stalin, or Cotton Mather.
Bill from Saginaw
The real problem is the fact that We The People simply cannot accept the fact that Dear Loonitary Decider, 4th Branch Limbo Executive Cheney and their cultists are clinically insane. How else to explain their insatiable desire to torture humans? Hell, our so-called president still claims he’s nothing more than God’s handyman - and we don’t want to accuse God of being absolutely bonkers, now do we?
Rush, any comments?
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?…
You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.”
And that POS isn’t alone, either - according to a recent USA/Gallop poll, 76% of Republicans STILL SUPPORT BUSH. And, hence, illegal invasions, the killing and maiming of millions of innocents for oil, illegal spying, TORTURE, the destruction of our economy, the death of New Orleans, outting CIA NOC agents, (insert litany of horrors here.)
That’s 41 million fellow “Americans” who still, STILL, support the destruction of all things American.
Uphill battle we have indeed…
Listen to the testimony of the Winter Soldiers, US Veterans of the catastrophe in Iraq talk about their experiences on wwww.democracynow.org
It is painful to see these clean faced youth talk about the atrocities they committed not as an exception but as part of policy. Then get everyone you know to listen until Americans have to face the monsters we’ve become.
As one mother of a veteran said in another segment…I gave you a kid,you gave me back a murderer.
What did y’all expect from the Murderous Ninny and his handlers? It’s simple: you put the firecracker in the frog’s butt, light the fuse, and then rub your wiener. Just a little fun for Mommy and Poppy’s nice little children. Amplify that to include the murder of millions and the torture and deprivation of millions more and you still just have a playtime thingy for the sick children of privilege.
I’m not a fan of polls and think that most of them are complete BS provided as ‘evidence’ to support someone’s personal opinion.
If you look around on the web though you will see that a majority of Americans think torture is “Ok under certain circumstances”. Since torture is a simple yes/no issue, this can only mean that the majority of the American population thinks it’s OK to torture people. Since torture is Anti-American and contrary to the Constitution, the people that support is cannot be Americans. Therefore, America is gone. The majority of Americans have already rejected their Constitution and are ready to tart forming a new form of government. (ideally fascist)
Those of us (minority) that are still Americans need to either fold up the flag and leave, or start defending what’s left of our nation.
We may have gotten these horrible photos and evidence out of the MSM and public view, but they are still very much viewed and examined by the rest of the free world. This is a stain that we will not quickly get away from as a nation. What have we become, and how can 30% of this country still think these policies are a good idea?
When I first heard the statement that “Arabs are afraid of dogs”, made by a senior US officer, I thought that perhaps one explanation for the herd-like cheering to occupy Iraq was the west’s underlying hatred and fear of the Arabs.
As an Arab who likes dogs, I had to smirk at the arrogance and racism of such a generalization. Now, whenever I see the sign “Beware of Dog”, I wonder if it is personal. It might as well be “Arabs Beware”. Just wondering if any other humans have that fear, otherwise the sign “Beware of Dog” is useless in some areas devoid of Arabs.
frank1569: “That’s 41 million fellow “Americans” who still, STILL, support the destruction of all things American.”
Oh, I’m so glad a considerable portion of those “41 million fellow Americans” are those good Christians who believe fully that the Founding Fathers meant for the U.S. to be a Christian nation.
Not.
Since they are so ignorant of the beliefs and non-beliefs of our Founding Fathers, a very broad-minded and visionary bunch, to say the least, it is not surprising they are similarly ignorant about the principles, posited, preached, and acted on by the person called Jesus/Yeshua, the one they worship. Maybe they just skipped those parts of the New Testament or never got that far at all in the Bible, preferring instead to hang out in the Old Testament where an EYE FOR AN EYE is certainly alive and well as a cultural precept and the Darth Vaders, Goldfingers and GWBushes of all stripes reign and fight, and live to fight another day … until they learn … or don’t … and meet sad or grisly ends.
Maybe, I guess, if you’re “SAVED,” with a guarantee of heaven, then torturing, killing, mutilating, starving, walling-in the”unsaved” non-Christians really come down to just trivial pursuits, for which it seems no one is really responsible nor really cares in this Christian nation of ours.
You’d think I’d sleep better at night than I do, knowing that so many heaven-bound Christians, including Mein Commandant, are in charge of the fate of this nation of my birth.
… and lest anyone think I am being prejudiced here, I was raised a Christian … but fortunately in a church whose erudite pastor emphasized Love, Kindness, Compassion and Generosity of Spirit … not hate, not revenge, not superiority of one faith over another …
That is why it hurts so now to live in a country where hatred, violence, revenge, torture, greed, callousness, and so much ignorance are all reflected in daily “news” reports as the Righteous Reality of the United States of America.
peace, good folks, with your hearts in the right place … This too shall pass … and maybe we will be much wiser when it does. Let us hope so.
Mentioning that Arabs are scared of dogs is probably not the best way to win over westerners, who are devoted to their pets, especially the canine ones. Caring for their four footed friends matters much more to the average western liberal, feminist etc than caring for other humans who live in “foreign parts”. Add in western feminists bizarre notion that western society is fairer to women than eastern (as if Hillary wasn’t being torched in numerous liberal venues merely for being middle aged and female) and I don’t think we have a hope of getting people to feel any kind of outrage at the atrocities committed in their name. Serve the Ayrabs right for hating dogs and raunchy women - that’s what they will say.
I for one, would like to “divorce” this president and his minions. I would so like to totally disassociate myself from this government! I would like to repudiate all that they have done and not done. All of it makes me sick to the bone.
I grew up being taught to love my country, this land of my ancestors, my native and european ancestors. I still love this land and its people. But I am so ashamed of the things that have been done in our name!
The hardest part of being a citizen of this country is that our elected officials who are our proxy in the world have disregarded us and betrayed us!
I would like a divorce NOW! Short of moving to Canada or to any other country. Does anyone have a suggestion? Yes, I’ve written letters, sent e-mails, called offices, etc…nothing seems to make the tiniest ripple.
OldBadgertoo March 18th, 2008 3:57 pm
Mentioning that Arabs are scared of dogs is probably not the best way to win over westerners, who are devoted to their pets, especially the canine ones
Don’t know about you, I love my cats - liked the dog when it was alive. But the dogs used at places like Guantanimo and in prisons across the mid east would scare the piss outta me. They aren’t using cute little fluffy things there, they’re using rotties and shepard’s trained to be indistinguishable from a rabid dog.
Anyone not an American in Iraq is a “hodgie.” It’s the same as calling someone a “nigger.” The idea is purposeful dehumanization.
It’s different, though, if we call Bush, Chaney, Mukasey and McCain “cockroaches.”
Because they made the pro-torture choice.
It was THEY who dehumanized THEMSELVES.
According to Lyndie England…torture is OK as long as no one knows about it.
“I’m saying that what we did happens in war. It just isn’t documented,” she was quoted as saying. “If it had been broken by the news without the pictures it wouldn’t have been that big.”
She told the magazine that there are other photographs that have not been released that contain more graphic images than those that were seen on television, in newspapers and on the Internet.
“You see the dogs biting the prisoners. Or you see bite marks from the dogs. You can see MPs holding down a prisoner so a medic can give him a shot,” she said. “If those had been made public at the time, then the whole world would have looked at those and not at mine.”
What a vile, disgusting excuse for a human being…particularly one of the female variety…I bet her and “Ann the man” Coulter have a mutal admiration society. She should be re-tried for War Crimes under International Law
Remember the idiot book called “The rules” that was supposed to guide women into how to get men to marry them? How about the popularity of Dr. Phil, football coach crossed with Baptist Minister who is a religious proponent of “one size fits all”? And John Dean’s masterful book filled with insight into the authoritarian mentality that makes for “Conservatives without Conscience.” These are examples of American culture putting the idea of “rules” and the narrow sense of “who’s right” before caring & compassion. It’s these definitions that make a lot of people feel that being “right” or on some fictional “right team/side” is more important than the very notion of humanity. The dark irony here of course is that they purport to be Christian, and Christ was a Master teacher of caring for the weak, showing compassion, and above all… turning the other cheek to AVOID vengeance, aggression and behavior that would harm another.
The rightwing and its churches have conditioned their followers to follow very narrow letter of the law approaches to purported morality. The people who do this become very uptight, and then resent others’ freedoms. They are being conditioned to think that only those who live in these limited ways deserve God’s blessing, and therefore those who disobey, deserve to be punished. It is an extension of THIS mentality that can be so cold and callous when it comes to how others are treated. The word “war” and its cousin “enemy” also justifies a good deal of delivered pain in the eyes of those who have chosen the narrow path, and lost all sense of relating to others who do not share their way of life, values, religion or skin tone. AS if ours is a God of exclusion!
This is a bit tangential, but I did not much like the author’s remark about how we might find Jeremiah Wright’s words “shameful”. I certainly do not put Wright in the class with Spitzer for having done something shameful. Actions always count more than words. Spitzer betrayed his wife with his actions. He also lied to the public. Wright said, in regard to 9/11, “The stuff we have done overseas is brought right back into our homes”. This is the “shameful” stuff that Obama and others are trying to distance themselves from. Its shameful. Haven’t we grown up enough to talk about this yet?
Torture and golf are among conservative’s favorite sports.
The bush years will always be remembered as the most shameful chapter in US history.
I hope you are right great. If we are lucky this is just a shameful episode in the history of an otherwise decent people, like slavery or the internment of Japanese in WWII, or the treatment of native Americans.
We don’t know that yet. What if this a paradigm shift for a people who have disgraced themselves to the point that they are no longer ashamed? What if these people have disassociated from their government to the point that they don’t care? What if they have been frightened just enough to stand by and cheer on the worst among us?
I heard a gun rights guy say the other day that a terrorist went into a school in Israel the other day and a school boy pulled out his gun and blasted the shooter. See! The guy proclaimed victoriously, all school kids should get to carry guns into school, he concluded.
What? Why would we want to become as crazy as the state of Israel? That is the most violent place on the planet, next to Detroit.
And they torture too, so we should too
“Can you get him to run faster?”
Yes! And more importantly the opportunity is ripe to put the arrogant sadistic behavior prevalent in executive positions (whether governmental, corporate or head of household) on the run.
How?
Join the Call To Impeach: May Day to Mother’s Day.
Perhaps the biggest contributing factor for arrogance to prevail in representative positions is the disconnect of the Citizen from their representatives. Thus this is a win - win - win proposition:
1 - Solidify Citizen and Representative relations by writing, calling and visiting your governmental representatives with the appropriate call for impeachment (State Senators, City Councils ask for Resolutions, US Senator ask for Censure etc. …).
2 - Share representative contact information with neighbors, family, co-workers, associates…most importantly making new connections…with increasing voter registration.
3- “Hold The Line” and stay connected — We do not need Senate Conviction for victory! The victory will be an invigorated relationship between Citizen and Governmental Representative. The victory will be an undeniable statement by the Citizens that the arrogant, deceitful and traitorous behavior of the special interest lobbyists masquerading as Representatives will no longer be accepted by The People — the most important part here is that the American Electorate, composed of ethnic groups from around the globe, will now be engaged in a democratic republic feedback loop never before manifested, thus unfettering humanities greatest talents, expressing humanities greatest glory, in time of it’s greatest need.
Protect The Troops: Impeach!
Change The Mission: Impeach!
Reclaim The Rule Of Law: Impeach!
May Day to Mother’s Day - Hold the line, stay together…
Impeach Bush/Cheney!
Evansdadop@aol.com
I agree the time for impeachment hearings is now. Think of the coverage for the “liberal” media. If the dems are scared to impeach now, thinking that cheney will reveal all their dirty little secrets that he got from spying on them, don’t you think that if cheney/bush really do leave office at the end of the year that they won’t leak this info anyway? Might as well take cheney/bush down with you now instead of letting bush escape to his secret protected ranch in South America. We’ll never know where cheney will go.
I think the pols all believe that it is “too late” to impeach.
They are protecting their backsides too. Look what happened to Spitzer….Don’t you think they could find just a few other such scandals on the dems. I think they have a “dirt/scum patrol” just to keep the dems in line. Spitzer had too much of an “agenda” for the neocons and big money guys.
Yes, I will continue to push for impeachment, but I feel really discouraged and as said earlier, ashamed for us because of what they have done in our name.