We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective. – Dick Cheney, 9/16/01
Every so often, something happens in life that wakes you up - grabs you firmly by the shoulders and shakes you until you until sleep is no longer an option. In fact, you have no idea how you slept so long, or why it took until now for your eyes to finally pry open. It can come in the form of a catastrophic event, or even just a few softly spoken words from a loved one. In this case, it was a simple film telling the story of an Afghani taxi driver: Taxi to the Dark Side.
Lacking a knack for farming, Dilawar -- it was the only name he bore -- started driving a taxi, a used Toyota his family bought him. He died on Dec. 10, 2002, hanging from his wrists from a wire-mesh ceiling, his arms spread above him, his head fallen forward and to the side, his feet barely touching the ground. He was alone.
...Dilawar's legs had been hit repeatedly, hundreds of times, until the tissues inside had broken down and turned to pulp. Internal blood clots then had broken free, traveled to his heart, lodged in a partially blocked artery and stopped the flow of blood.
Dilawar died in the custody of the U.S. Army at Bagram Collection Point, a prison and interrogation facility about 30 miles north of Kabul.
Dilawar, of course, had done nothing wrong. He was captured by an Afghani warlord, who in turn was paid generously by the US Military as a reward, on false charges of taking part in rocket attacks on US bases. It was later determined that the warlord himself was responsible for the rocket attacks, and was arresting innocent people and handing them over to the US to gain favor. I wonder if he assumed the innocents would be treated humanely by the bastion of liberty and champion of human rights that is the United States of America.
The detention center at Bagram was built into the cavernous shell of an aircraft-repair shop that was built in the 1960's and later used by the Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan during the 1980’s. In 2002 and 2003, most prisoners were held in crude pens fashioned from coils of razor wire piled in stacks reaching above their heads. They were often shackled to the metal gates at the front of those pens as punishment...
Of course Dilawar was not the only one. Nor was Bagram the only place. Names like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, no longer associated with ruthless dictators like Fidel and Saddam, are now synonymous with the United States, and with torture. How easy it is to forget to ask: How could this happen?
MR. RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violated human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I think the--one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we'll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. There's--if you're going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you're not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you're going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I'm convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.
MR. RUSSERT: These terrorists play by a whole set of different rules. It's going to force us, in your words, to get mean, dirty and nasty in order to take them on, right? And they should realize there will be more than simply a pinprick bombing.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah, the--I think it's--the thing that I sense--and, of course, that's only been a few days, but I have never seen such determination on the part of--well, my colleagues in government, on the part of the American people, on the part of our friends and allies overseas, and even on the part of some who are not ordinarily deemed friends of the United States, determined in this particular instance to shift and not be tolerant any longer of these kinds of actions or activities.
How far we have strayed in so little time. And how easy it was to goad us into destroying everything we stand for. 19 men and 4 airplanes was all it took.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: What starts at the top of the chain of command drops like a rock down the chain of command.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: There will be no outrages upon human dignity. Is it like—it’s very vague.
Was I sleeping all along? No, I remember it all. But why did I do nothing? How could I sit idle, knowing, yet not acting? While watching Taxi to the Dark Side, I found myself constantly thinking, "Oh yeah, I remember that." So no, I was not asleep. But I was not awake, either.
PFC. DAMIEN CORSETTI: You put people in a crazy situation, and people do crazy things.
SGT. KEN DAVIS: People being were told to rough up Iraqis that wouldn’t cooperate. We were also told they’re nothing but dogs.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Interrogators were telling the guards, strip this guy naked, chain him up to the bed in an uncomfortable position, do whatever you can.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You had these young soldiers, very little training, just as the rules were changing, and they weren’t told what the new rules were.
SGT. KEN DAVIS: You start looking at these people as less than human, and you start doing things to them you would never dream of. And that’s where it got scary.
GEN. RICHARD MYERS: It was only the night shift. There’s always a few bad apples.
PFC. DAMIEN CORSETTI: The brass knew. They saw them shackled and hooded, and they said, "Right on! Y’all are doing a great job."
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: There were emails from FBI personnel down at Guantanamo saying, "You won’t believe what’s going on down here. We’ve got to disassociate ourselves."
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You have no right to a lawyer. You have no right to witnesses. You don’t really know what the charges are. And you certainly don’t know what the secret evidence is against you.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: They saw an intentional decision taken at the height of the Pentagon to put out a fog of ambiguity.
What may set us apart from others in the past that have transgressed as we have is our ability and desire to self-reflect. In how many countries would a regime engaged in systematic torture allow films to be made that document that very torture? Perhaps that is the light at the end of the tunnel. Surely, if the people know, and if they want to know, they will not allow this to continue. If their eyes are open, and they are aware, awake, this cannot continue.
Yet sometimes, the wool is pulled over our eyes.
AMY GOODMAN: ...The Discovery Channel has bought the rights to the Oscar-nominated film and had planned on airing it, but this week filmmaker Alex Gibney learned Discovery has dropped plans to air the film because it’s, quote, "controversial." Alex Gibney is the award-winning director, writer and producer of Taxi to the Dark Side. He joined us about a week ago to talk about the Oscar-nominated film, but today he’s back to respond to Discovery. What happened, Alex?
ALEX GIBNEY: Well, it turns out that the Discovery Channel isn’t so interested in discovery. I mean, I heard that—I was told a little bit before my Academy Award nomination that they had no intention of airing the film, that new management had come in and they were about to go through a public offering, so it was probably too controversial for that. They didn’t want to cause any waves. It turns out, Discovery turns out to be the see-no-evil/hear-no-evil channel.
AMY GOODMAN: They bought the rights, though.
ALEX GIBNEY: They did.
AMY GOODMAN: So they own it.
ALEX GIBNEY: They own the rights for the next three years. They own the broadcast rights. It’s currently playing in theaters, where people can see it, but we had hoped that it would have a broad airing on television. And indeed, you know, one of the reasons I went with Discovery was because they had told me, "Look, we love this film. We’re going to give it a broad and very prominent airing."
AMY GOODMAN: But if they still own the rights, can they just not air it for three years and keep you from airing it anywhere else?
ALEX GIBNEY: Yes, they can. That’s their right, because they paid for it. Now, we’re hoping that they’ll agree to sell it to somebody else, you know, maybe for a profit, if they need to do that. But I’m hoping at the very least that they’ll allow somebody else to take it on so it can be shown to the American people.
Please, contact Discovery Channel and demand that they show this film. Go see Taxi to the Dark Side in a theater.
And Wake Up.
We do not know what revenge is coming down the road.