My husband Richard, my friend Marietta and I just returned from one of the more disturbing evenings of our lives inside the beltway; the Council of Foreign Relations/HBO presentation of Rory Kennedy's documentary, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.
Rory opened the evening by talking about the balance between national security and the rule of law, and how fluid that line has become. The price we have paid is a commitment to human rights first. She would like to see the film raise questions that lead to a policy debate, and ultimately, a rethinking of what we are doing.
So would we.
At the reception prior to the film we had met and talked with Janice Karpinski. Marietta and I told her we used some of her story in Fear Up: Stories from Baghdad and Guantanamo and we thanked her for speaking out as she has been. She was gracious and friendly.
The film opens with a reminder about the experimental work of Dr. Stanley Milgrim In 1961 Milgram conducted experiments in obedience. What follows is a quote from a 1974 paper on those experiments:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
We have noticed.
Sound bites followed from the young men and women who had been accused of the worst kind of torture at Abu Ghraib:
"That place turned me into a monster."
"You become like a robot."
"If you walk through all of that, when do you say 'It's enough'?"
"You'll go crazy if you don't adapt to it."
"After 9-11, I believed someone had to pay."
For years, the United States was not only a follower of the Geneva Conventions; we were known to promote and operate above those standards.
John Yoo, however, thought it was time to move on. "They don't apply", he said of the Conventions.
The film points out that in 2002, torture was redefined to mean actions against a prisoner that led to organ damage or death; the film also points out that many of the torture methods that were approved were the ones used by Saddam Hussein in his prisons.
Ironic, no?
Ken Davis, one of the military police at Abu Ghraib said that when he got to Iraq, he was given an automatic rifle and told to guard the back of a truck in a convoy. He asked what the rules of engagement were. The officers were confused by the question. "If it looks like the enemy," he was told, "shoot it." Davis said he replied, "I've never been out of the United States. Everything looks like the enemy to me."
Sam Provance, another MP, said that Abu Ghraib was like Apocalyse Now meeting The Shining. "There are ghosts there," he said. Building 1B had women and children in it--they were there to draw in the more dangerous insurgents. But in the end, it was clear to the MPs that at least 75-80% of those held had no information or intelligence to give over.
General Geoffrey Miller was dispatched from Guantanamo, where they had developed the use of dogs for torture, among other methods, to Iraq. According to Donald Rumsfield, they just weren't getting the intel from Abu Ghraib. He sent Miller to "GITMO-ize" Abu Ghraib.
Rumsfield also added a note to one of his dispatches, pointing out that HE--Rumsfield--often had to stand up for 8-12 hours a day and why were the prisoners at Abu Graib only standing up for four hours a day?
General Miller had some advice for Brig. Gen. Karpinski: "If you don't treat the prisoners like dogs, you are treating them too well."
General Sanchez, who was the top commander in Iraq, issued conflicting and confusing recommendations on what was OK and what was not. The military police and guards were totally unclear on what they could and could not do.
Nakedness, for example. One of the guards stated "It was just business." The interrogation efforts were removed from Brig. General Karpinski, and the interrogators were given free rein. It became customary (and recommended) to torture the detainees throughout the night before they were going to be interrogated. And tortured they were.
But the night shift had cameras. Sabrina, one of the guards (the one with the big smile in the photos) said she liked to take pictures, always had. Another said that he wanted souvenir photos of the places they'd been.
Sabrina, smiling for the camera. Oh, and that man is dead.
If not for the gruesome photos that they took, and subsequently shared, we would not even know about Abu Ghraib. But the fact that they took photos at all demonstrates where the degree of desensitization and obedience to authority can lead. One young woman said, "I had just come out of basic. I didn't feel it was my place to question anything."
Army Spc. Charles Graner had questioned what he was doing early on. But in the end, the power got to him. He did not hide what he was doing; and he received a commendation even after he had been reported.
In fact, had he not given a CD with the photos on it to the friend who wanted some pictures of Baghdad, Joseph Darby, who subsequently turned the CD over to CID, we would not even know about the photos. Darby, who is interviewed in the film, said that he was promised anonymity, but that CID brought in the interrogators from the photos while he was still there being interviewed. They had to take him out in a blanket. "That was the last time I talked to CID about anything," he said.
It was not the end for Darby, however. Donald Rumsfield himself named him, on national television, thanking him for being so brave as to turn the others in. Darby caught the next plane home.
The interviews with the prisoners themselves is wrenching. A psychiatrist pointed out that it's harder to cure psychological torture than it is to cure physical torture. One man describes holding his father in his arms while he died. Others describe what it was like to hear their fellow prisoners being tortured.
"We listened as his soul cracked."
The description and photos of the three men, naked, who were forced to take sexual positions with each other, while the soldiers stood around looking on were the hardest to watch. The sheer degradation of everyone, including the soldiers, is stunningly clear. This is what we have come to; this is who we are in the world now.
Eleven soldiers have been convicted of the torture. Gen. Miller got a promotion and some more ribbons for his chest. Donald Rumsfield got fired, but only after three more years of damage. George Bush got re-elected. Janice Karpinski got demoted and fired. We the people got nothing, except the contempt of the world, and we can only hope, enough guilt to move us to act.
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The film was followed by a panel discussion with Sen. Lindsey Graham, Senator Ted Kennedy, and moderated by Jeffrey Toobin.
Sen. Graham led off. He said that he thought Janice Karpinski should have been court-martialed. He said he bore some responsibility for "not speaking out sooner" on the issues at Abu Ghraib. He said that none of our neighbors would have any trouble with the idea of the thirty-five practices that were OK'd so long as they were applied to the terrorists. He asked us to consider if we would mind so much if a pedophile had buried one of our children and we needed to know where that was.
While we chewed on that last one especially (feeling the stomach-turning that so often accompanies listening to such drivel--it's Fear Up all over again!), Teddy grabbed the mike and let it rip. He pointed out that the standards that Gonzales drafted were not about getting intelligence, but about being about to take prisoners to the brink of death. He pointed out that Gonzales actually had to recant his memo in order to get the votes he needed to become A.G. "This has been a complete whitewash," the senior Senator from Massachusetts stated. "The echoes of Abu Ghraib are still out there."
Graham was asked about the Military Commissions Act, which drove him to mention "the enemy" at least five times. He pointed out that the US had not given prisoners incarcerated inside the US in World War II habeus corpus rights.
He did not point out that 80% of those in Abu Ghraib and 90% of those at Guantanamo were innocent; had been pointed out by bounty hunters or were just driving cabs, trying to earn a living when they wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Teddy said about habeus corpus: "It is basic to everything we stand for."
And then a moment that could only happen at an event like this: Jeffey Toobin asked Janice Karpinski--remember, she was there-- to respond to Lindsey Graham if she wanted to.
Oh, she wanted to! She said to him that she was from South Carolina and could not wait to get back there and make sure everyone knew what he had said. No one, she said, had made a public comment about her like that. Graham, she said, her voice getting stronger by the word, is as cowardly as Miller and Sanchez. "No one asked me what happened," she said. "We asked for a court martial. But the Army did not want me to testify in court."
The room was still, witnessing the fireworks. After it was over, most people applauded politely and left. A few of us stayed behind to ponder and consider the lack of rage, the sheer detachment and blase attitude of so many in this town. Among us were Col. Ann Wright, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern. I think tomorrow may be an interesting day. Or it might be just like today--as we all go about our usual business, while the soul of the world cracks again.