Must-read article: photos from Abu Ghraib

(h/t to Jay Elias for linking this in a diary at Docudharma, and to webranding for linking it in a comment this weekend)

Lest we forget why we fight, the New Yorker had a long but outstanding article last week about the soldier who snapped the infamous photos from Abu Ghraib.  Specialist Sabrina Harman's letters home about the torture methods make for difficult but necessary reading.  Make no mistake: this, and not the excessive parsing of candidates' statements, is why we're all here.

Exposure
The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib.
by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris

edit: just a note that the article itself does not contain the photos, so you don't have to worry about having the images on your screen, especially if you're at work or home with the kids nearby.  But the descriptions are unsettling enough.

We like to think that people who advocate torture and abuse* are monsters, and that we are somehow not like them.  But the crime of Abu Ghraib isn't that the prison was staffed with horrible people, but that it was staffed by ordinary people who meted out horrible justice in the most banal way possible.  

Enter Sabrina Harman, a conflicted young soldier who found herself in a position that many of us would be unable to process mentally, much less respond to. What's particularly insightful about Harman's letters are the way that an ordinary person may be slow to respond to injustice.  For a while, she thought it was funny:

At first it was funny but these people are going too far. I ended your letter last night because it was time to wake the MI prisoners and "mess with them" but it went too far even I can’t handle whats going on. I cant get it out of my head. I walk down stairs after blowing the whistle and beating on the cells with an asp to find "the taxicab driver" handcuffed backwards to his window naked with his underwear over his head and face. He looked like Jesus Christ. At first I had to laugh so I went on and grabbed the camera and took a picture. One of the guys took my asp and started "poking" at his dick. Again I thought, okay that’s funny then it hit me, that’s a form of molestation. You can’t do that.

Gourevitch and Morris spend a lot of time explaining how the prisoners were progressively dehumanized in the minds of the guards, most effectively by referring to each of them by cartoonish nicknames rather than their actual names.  It's much harder to take someone seriously when you're calling him "Mr. Clean" or "Santa Claus".  

Though they make no bones about who's ultimately responsible for the orders (the "bad apples" case was never a strong one, since the orders most definitely came from above), Gourevitch and Morris also discuss the intense living situation for guards at Abu Ghraib, who couldn't even use the bathroom without donning a flak jacket and training for emergency procedures in the wake of almost daily shelling.  

What effect does this have on a person?  

Worse, when you break someone down like that, then put them in charge of prisoners of war, what do they become capable of doing?

They started talking to this man and at first he was talking "I’m just a taxicab driver, I did nothing." He claims he’d never try to hurt US soldiers that he picked up the wrong people. Then he stopped talking. They turned the lights out and slammed the door and left him there while they went down to cell #4. This man had been so fucked that when they grabbed his foot through the cell bars he began screaming and crying. After praying to Allah he moans a constant short Ah, Ah every few seconds for the rest of the night. I don’t know what they did to this guy. The first one remained handcuffed for maybe 1 ½-2 hours until he started yelling for Allah. So they went back in and handcuffed him to the top bunk on either side of the bed while he stood on the side. He was there for a little over an hour when he started yelling again for Allah. Not many people know this shit goes on.

In the end, Harman was court-martialed for her photos, and faced conviction along with some of the soldiers who appeared in them.  No one above faced any kind of real scrutiny.  Everything stopped with "the bad apples".    

They even tried to charge Harman for "destruction of government property" for her photos showing the body of Manadel al-Jamadi, who was killed during his interrogations at Abu Ghraib.  If there's anything more ludicrous, more enraging, more foul about this whole process, I have yet to see it.

Please read the whole article.  It goes into gory detail about the situation at Abu Ghraib, with a keen understanding of the human face behind the atrocities.  They do a much better job than my short and insufficient synopsis.  

update: Compound F has a comment below linking to an article at Harpers that discusses both the Gourevitch/Morris article in-depth, as well as the administration policies that led to the situation at Abu Ghraib.  Outstanding article, well-worth the read.

What We Can do:

I have no illusions about what a blogger can accomplish, but I refuse to go down without a fight.  

1. Contact your candidate of choice to take a strong, unequivocal stand on torture.  So far both Obama and Clinton have made solid statements opposing torture as U.S. policy (it took Clinton a little longer to get there).  But torture is an un-sexy issue for media coverage, so the candidates can get by only addressing it when asked about.  That's not good enough.  Ending support for torture, implicit or explicit, has got to be a foundational policy plank for the new Democratic administration, and we have to remind them of that as often as possible.

2. The same holds true for your Congressional representatives, even if they're the reddest of the red.  It's much easier for your representative to forget about the issue if s/he hears about it once in a blue moon.  We need to do better than that.

3. Support Blogs Against Torture.  Though the site itself is not producing new posts, it provides links to participating blogs in the sidebar.  Help get their voices heard. (We also look forward to the eventual reopening of Never In Our Names)  Also check out our own Valtin's blog Invictus.

4. Support groups like Amnesty International, either financially or with volunteer time.  They have been tenacious in their opposition to torture, and they need all the support they can get.

note: one of the article's authors is Oscar winner Errol Morris, one of the world's best documentary filmmakers.  His film about Abu Ghraib opens this year.  If you haven't seen his work, it's worth seeking out.

edit: as joesig noted below, I should have made a clearer distinction between torture and abuse.  Both occurred at Abu Ghraib, but my initial wording left out "abuse", which was the more predominant crime.  Diary edited to reflect that change.

•  I just hope this gets heard,

  so if you're one of the people reading, thank you for your time.

  by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:20:16 PM PDT

  •  Since the actual graphic photos are not herein

    you might want to edit your title to reflect that.  I almost didn't click because I wasn't ready to see them again.  

    by lgmcp on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:00:25 PM PDT

    •  Pico You Can Start Here

      Salon has them all ...

      http://www.salon.com/...

      by webranding on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:02:56 PM PDT

      •  All that have been released

        We know that there are hundreds more pictures, plus videos, the government refuses to release, despite legal manueverings by the ACLU.  It has been stated that these are much worse than what we've already seen.

        by jakbeau on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 07:17:49 PM PDT

        •  Much worse: women & children raped and more.

          So bad it should make the Bush govt. fall.

          by doinaheckuvanutjob on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 11:35:08 PM PDT

          •  doesn't Hersch have these?

            Why can't he release them himself?

            by borkitekt on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 03:41:33 AM PDT

            •  No, Hersch saw them but doesn't have possession

              of them. That's partly why the ACLU has been trying to get the material released.

              Some of the worst things that happened that you don’t know about. OK? Videos... And basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children, in cases that have been [video] recorded, the boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking.

              Link to the quote above at Past Peak, where his speech to the ACLU is transcribed, scroll down to header "Torture: Worse Revelations to Come"

              Link to the direct quote at boinboing.com, also has link to the audio speech, but it's a long speech, quote is after [1:29:08].

              Linkto ACLU FOIA info obtained from their lawsuits re: Abu Ghraib.

              by doinaheckuvanutjob on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 10:34:46 AM PDT

            •  Sen. Lindsey Graham corroborrated Hersch's charge

              From Salon.com:

              And here's what Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, said of the pictures after they were screened for members of Congress last year: "The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience... We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges."

              by doinaheckuvanutjob on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 10:43:17 AM PDT

              •  Found it, maybe,

                It was in the Chain of Command, but still my memory seems to recall Hersch receiving something from a soldiers mother or something.

                Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. According to a time sequence embedded in the digital files, the photographs were taken by two different cameras over a twelve-minute period on the evening of December 12, 2003, two months after the military-police unit was assigned to Abu Ghraib.
                One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the camera’s view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away. Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

                Actually, this is what I remember, from Democracy Now:

                So, in the middle of this stuff, I get a call from a mother. She wants to see me somewhere in northeastern America. I go see her. There’s a kid that was in the unit, the 372nd. They had all come home early. If you remember the timeline, they did their stuff in late 2003, reported in 2004. This mother is telling me—I’m writing in the spring of 2004—March of 2004, the kid had come home in the same unit totally changed. Young, pretty woman, vibrant. Depressed, disconsolate, inconsolable, isolated. Had been newly married. Left her husband, left the family, moved to a nearby town, working a night job or whatever. And nobody could figure out what’s going on.

                She sees the stories about Abu Ghraib. She goes, knocks on the door, shows the young woman the newspaper, and door slams, bam! And at that point, as she tells me, later—as she tells me in real time—this is May, early May—she goes back, the kid had been given a computer, a portable computer like. It turns out all the G.I.s in Iraq and all over the world now, they—portable computers are great, because you have CD drives, and you put a movie in there, and then you’re in business. And so you can watch movies and play games on your dead time. I had not thought about it, but that’s what happens. That’s why all the CD, these digital pictures are being passed around in the unit, because everybody has a computer.

                So she claims—this not a woman familiar with Freud or the unconscious—she claims at that point she just decided to look at the computer after hearing about Abu Ghraib. She said she had—she just hadn’t looked at it. She just was going to clean it up and take it to her office as a second computer. No thoughts. And she is deleting files. She sees a file marked “Iraq.” And she hits it, and out comes 60 or 80 digital photographs of the one that The New Yorker ran of the naked guy standing against a cell in terror, hands behind his back so he can’t protect his private parts, which is the instinct. And two snarling German dogs—shepherds. Somebody said they’re Belgian shepherds, perhaps, but two snarling shepherds, you know, on each side of him. And the sequence—in the sequence, the dogs attack the man, blood all over. I was later told anecdotally, I could never prove it. I am telling you stuff that is not provable—I mean, at least—that there was an understanding at least in the prison corps population that the dogs were specially trained to hit the groin area, which is one of the reasons there was so much fear of the dogs. This is—I will tell you right now why they believe among many senior officers that I know in the military, I can—but again, it’s not—it’s not demonstrable. There’s no way of codifying that. In any case, the fear was palpable in the picture.

                So she looks at this stuff and eventually calls me. And we do it all, and we get permission. We run the photographs, just one—how much—and the thought there of the editors was how much do you humiliate the Arab world and the Arab man. One is enough. You know, we can describe what else is on the picture. We just don’t need more than one. And then, later the mother calls me back, and we became friends. This happens a lot to people in my business. You get to like people. And she says, you know, one thing I didn’t tell you that you have to know about the young woman, when she came back, every weekend, she would go and get herself tattooed, and eventually, she said, she was filling her body with large, black tattoos, and eventually, they filled up every portion of her skin, was tattooed, at least all the portions you could see, and there was no reason to make assumptions about the other portions. She was tattooed completely. It was as if, the mother said, she wanted to change her skin.

                by borkitekt on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 12:27:51 PM PDT

                •  Good catch.

                  I think that's different from the rape videos he saw, but if you go to the New Yorker archives of Hersch's writings on abu ghraib, they have more info on some of the pictures and more of the atrocities as well.

                  There's lots of stuff out there that the media has downplayed or ignored, and then there's the video(s) in question that I referenced that are even more ghastly.

                  I am certain, despite Rumsfeld & co.'s efforts to obtain, control and destroy all evidence they could, that there is much more floating around out there. First, the CIA had a policy (which may have been reversed by now, or not) of videotaping most of these 'interrogations' and I believe that is what the ACLU is suing for through the FOIA. But secondly, there are many soldiers, and likely others such as Blackwater/private contractors, CIA personell etc. who may have made their own documentation and hid it for later release once they decide it is safe for them to do so. I don't doubt for a second that there are Ellsbergs out there but they fear they can't do anything about it until this crew is out of power.

                  by doinaheckuvanutjob on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 11:30:31 PM PDT

    •  Fair enough -

      I'll add a quick note.

      by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:15:47 PM PDT

  •  thanks for this pico

    important work.

    by FireCrow on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:09:42 PM PDT

  •  Reading the article made my sympathetic to Harman

    because it was clear that the chain of command encouraged cruelty by blurring the line between "prisoners of war" and those "not considered POW's" and therefore outside of Geneva Conventions tradition.  It got to a point where even Harman realized it was messed up, and she (says in the article that she) photo'd the dead prisoner to document that he was in fact tortured.  These are the pictures where she herself appeared in them.  And they caused widespread revulsion because she was doing the "thumbs up", but it turns out that she was always doing that out of habit- and did it to 'get by'.  She was said by all who knew her that she was pretty 'sof't and not violent at all, and it is clear that she was thoroughly disassociated from the reality- another intended aspect of the way her superiors ran the prison.  In any case, she took the pictures because deep down she wanted the pictures to be discovered and seen by the world, and her pictures did in fact document that he was tortured to death.  

    You get a fuller picture of the purgatory she lived in by reading the article and the letters she herself wrote home.  In the end these were kids being used and abused by their commanders- and ultimately, in the end- by Rumsfeld.

    by NYFM on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:32:26 PM PDT

    •  More human, that's for sure.

      I still have a mix of attraction/repulsion going on, in part because she did enjoy it in its early stages.  But that's easy for me to say, being in a safe environment, and not faced with the kind of dangerous, daily headfuck that was living in Abu Ghraib.  

      She comes across like a multifaceted, interesting, flawed, normal human being.  In itself that's a valuable lesson for the rest of us.  I'm definitely inclined to direct my rage higher up the food chain.

      by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:41:33 PM PDT

      •  Lord of the Flies

        humanity, dignity, ethics, how quickly they get away from us... horrific

        by IngeniousGirl on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 10:58:58 PM PDT

  •  Great diary, but one correction:

    But the crime of Abu Ghraib isn't that the prison was staffed with horrible people, but that it was staffed by ordinary people who meted out horrible justice in the most banal way possible.  

    In the context of a place like Abu Ghraib (as in the case of Guantanamo) justice horrible or otherwise is never meted out, only denied.

    by nailbender on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 08:03:32 PM PDT

    •  I meant it semi-sarcastically.

      I should put quote marks around it, in fairness.

      by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 08:17:14 PM PDT

  •  Joan Walsh at Salon.com ...

    ...did a great expose of the Abu Ghraib files here:

    The Abu Ghraib files
    279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison -- and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.

    Editor's note: The 10 galleries of photo and video evidence appear chronologically in the left column, followed by an additional Salon report on prosecutions for abuse and an overview of Pentagon investigations and other resources. The nine essays accompanying the photo galleries were reported and written by Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin. Photo and video captions were compiled by Page Rockwell. Additional research, reporting and writing for "The Abu Ghraib Files" were contributed by Jeanne Carstensen, Mark Follman, Page Rockwell and Tracy Clark-Flory.

    By Joan Walsh

    http://www.salon.com/...

    by ImpeachKingBushII on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 03:17:43 AM PDT

•  Lest we forget why we are so passionate

  about the future of this country here at DKos....read no further.
  Thank you pico. It's shameful that we have to EVEN ask ANYONE in Congress to think twice about what we are doing in the name of "democracy".

  by bookwoman on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:25:02 PM PDT

  •  That's what boggles my mind:

    I'd always thought torture was a no-brainer issue.  I still have to pinch myself that we're even discussing it seriously.

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:26:29 PM PDT

    •  Not only that -- we have to DEFEND ourselves

      against the blowhard, know-nothing, Faux-watching, rush-worshipping crowd, who call us wimps and cowards for deploring torture.

      by snazzzybird on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 04:49:25 AM PDT

•  I never bought the "bad apples" argument

  How many "bad apples" has the Bush administration produced?  Every single outrage that they've perpetrated has been "unforeseeable" or just a "few bad apples" or...

  by mlharges on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:25:31 PM PDT

  •  There's also the problem

    that we know for sure the orders came from above.  We just stopped looking.

    The article also goes into detail about how the very fact of Abu Ghraib runs counter to wartime prisoner proceedings:

    Although they did not know it at the time, the lack of experience and training in handling prisoners in wartime made the soldiers of the 372nd ideally suited to Abu Ghraib, where almost nothing was run according to military doctrine. Since May, 2003, America’s war in Iraq had been waged as a chapter in the war on terror, and the military’s long-standing rules for running prisons in wartime had largely been ignored.

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:30:17 PM PDT

    •  We know some but there's still more to uncover

      We know that the general who set up Guantanamo was sent to Iraq to implement enhanced interrogation techniques there.

      The thing that I worry about is an effective revolt in the military if the Pentagon sees the efforts of a new administration to get to the heart of the matter as an attempt to hang one of their own out to dry.  I'm not talking about a coup, but a fight at every turn to uncover the truth.  Some of those oh so patriotic solders are certainly war criminals by the standards of the 20th century.

      by mlharges on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:36:58 PM PDT

      •  the bad apples

        start at the root, the CIC and his dark lord cheney

        by FreeTradeIsYourEpitaph on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:05:47 PM PDT

  •  I once went to the trouble to figure it out:

    in 2004 there were about 3,000,000 public jobs including the post office, of which about 3,000 were political appointments.  In the corporate world about  a 2% bad apple-essence would be sort of tolerated - the CEO's cretin cousin, the couch sloth (either sex) whatever. So statistically 60 bad political appointments can be expected, 6,000 bad civil employees.

    We've got what, about 450,000 people in Iraq, military, contractors, State, DoD, and the various Iraq rehab groups?  9000 bad apples is too many.

    Maybe we are really looking at evil apples, the worst of the worst, 1/10th of 1 percent.  Around 45 really really bad people. The number gets higher when one considers that people are rotating in and out of Iraq, and the legacy of bad apparently is handed off like a baton, from one rotation to the next.

    by sailmaker on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:16:42 PM PDT

    •  Wow - great analysis!

      Under normal circumstances I can easily see your numbers being spot on.

      The only point where I differ is that I don't think we're dealing with a normal distribution but instead it's a systemic rot that started at the top. This administration consciously pushed the limits at every step along the way and America as a whole turned a blind eye to the excesses. It's up to us to drive home the fact that the excesses aren't normal.

      by mlharges on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:35:06 PM PDT

  •  Bad apples? Wrong metaphor

    The fish rots from the head.  

    by Shockwave on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 07:22:14 PM PDT

•  it makes me sad and angry

  all at once

  by Pandoras Box on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:25:41 PM PDT

  •  Let's try to channel that together

    into accomplishing what we can as sad, angry citizens.  

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:32:02 PM PDT

    •  yes, pico, yes

      by Pandoras Box on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:39:25 PM PDT

•  Such a travesty

  I was stunned to see the photos and to think people would sink so low. Being prior military myself I had many questions. Such as WHY anyone would find torture "funny" and why take photos and why didn't more top dog commanders heads roll over this crap.

  I'm not sure how we get seen as anything but hypocrites over this.

  Very nice diary...thanks, rec'cd and tipped

  by Its any one guess on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:26:35 PM PDT

  •  I think your sig lines

    goes a long way towards explaining how things like this happen, sadly.

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:32:43 PM PDT

  •  Members

    I concluded from my military experience that the military gets a cross of people from the absolute worse excuse for a human to some of the best people you will ever meet.  

    It kind of bothers me the way America worships the military and its members.  Only people that have never been in the military could possibly worship a person simply for serving in the military.  

    by Jagger on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 07:56:24 PM PDT

•  Wow My First Shout Out In A Post

  The entire article should be read once, twice, then again and again. Below is the text in an email she sent back to the states:

  The next night, Harman was back on duty with Charles Graner on the M.I. cellblock, and she wrote again:

  October 20, 03—12:29am
  Kelly,
  The lights went out in the prison so here we were in the dark—in the prison. I have watch of the 18 and younger boys. I hear, misses! Misses! I go downstairs and flash my light on this 16 year old sitting down with his sandal smacking ants. Now these ants are Iraqi ants, LARGE! So large they could carry the family dog away while giving you the finger! LARGE. And this poor boy is being attacked by hundreds. All the ants in the prison came to this one boys cell and decided to take over. All I could do was spray Lysol. The ants laughed at me and kept going. So here we were the boy on one side of the cell and me on the other in the dark with one small flashlight beating ants with our shoes. . . . Poor kids. Those ants even Im scared of.
  So that was the start of my shift. They’ve been stripping "the fucked up" prisoners and handcuffing them to the bars. Its pretty sad. I get to laugh at them and throw corn at them. I kind of feel bad for these guys even if they are accused of killing US soldiers. We degrade them but we don’t hit and thats a plus even though Im sure they wish we’d kill them. They sleep one hour then we yell and wake them—make them stay up for one hour, then sleep one hour—then up etc. This goes on for 72 hours while we fuck with them. Most have been so scared they piss on themselves. Its sad. It’s a little worst than Basic training ie: being naked and handcuffed. . . .
  But pictures were taken, you have to see them! A sandbag was put over their heads while it was soaked in hot sauce. Okay, that’s bad but these guys have info, we are trying to get them to talk, that’s all, we don’t do this to all prisoners, just the few we have which is about 30-40 not many.
  The othernight at 3, when I wrote you, the firefight . . . 3 killed 6 injured—Iraqis. . . .
  Its time to wake them again!!!

  by webranding on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:26:59 PM PDT

  •  A much-deserved shout-out.

    I'm sorry I didn't catch this when you mentioned it in the first place.  Stories have a way of sliding by so quickly.

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:33:52 PM PDT

    •  Yeah, The New Yorker Was Never A Pub

      I liked, and I consider myself fairly cultured. But I starting reading a couple books by Malcom Gladwell (all his articles are free at the New Yorker -- great stuff) and then stuff by Seymour Hersh and I got hooked. Really some of the best, most in-depth reporting you'll find anywhere in the US.

      And as this little article notes I don't think most people are aware how many of our top-tier, expensive publications (Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New York Times, Time, Harpers, Nature) have completely opened up their archives online. Some that date back to the 1850s. Cool times.

      by webranding on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:45:50 PM PDT

  •  Hell

    Special place in hell for torturers from the top to the bottom.

    by Jagger on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 07:58:15 PM PDT

•  Scott Horton on the same article:

  Torture was introduced as a result of conscious decisions taken at the pinnacle of power in Washington. Vice President Cheney was a principal instigator; President Bush was certainly fully informed, and consciously lied about it in dozens of public appearances. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, was the principal legal architect of the torture system, and he was aided and abetted in the process by a number of senior figures in the Justice Department. John Yoo and Jay Bybee are two of the more central figures in the opening phase, but Alice Fisher, Michael Chertoff and Steven Bradbury each also played an essential role. Jim Haynes, now general counsel to Chevron, and then Rumsfeld’s lawyer in the Pentagon, was another. The story of this team and its dark enterprise pursued under the guise of national security remains lamentably underdeveloped.

  http://www.harpers.org/...

  Stephen Cambone & Abu Gonzales, as well.  

  by Compound F on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:32:03 PM PDT

  •  Outstanding article - thank you.

    I'll link it in the diary, so that more people may see it.

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:34:41 PM PDT

    •  Horton is a pretty even keel,

      seldom, if ever, hyperbolic.

      by Compound F on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:36:51 PM PDT

•  And What America Reaps

  Narcissism

  America,
  you are finally reaping what you sow.
  From the " Wall " in Washington, D.C.
  to the collapse of Wall Street.

  As Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote:
  "No Lie Can Live Forever."

  The Titanic Empire is approaching
  the iceberg of lies.

  America,
  you have bombed,
  sent missiles,
  or military troops,
  into over 30 countries since 1965.

  When the American people open their
  personal cash registers to see what
  they are worth,
  there will only be dead American soldiers,
  and an infinity of dead innocent civilians
  around the world.

  That's what happens when apathy
  becomes a virtue.

  Fasten your seat belts America,
  the swarming locust are coming
  home to feed.

  Mike Hastie
  U.S. Army Medic
  Vietnam 1970-71
  March 25, 2008

  by jimstaro on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:39:48 PM PDT

  •  wow, time passes but nothing changes..n/t

    by Statusquomustgo on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:14:32 PM PDT

  •  This line

    That's what happens when apathy
    becomes a virtue.

    is brilliant. Conscise and right to the point.  

    It needs to be on t-shirts and bumperstickers and billboards along with descriptive photos of Abu Ghraib, flag covered coffins, Guantanamo, Katrina, forclosure auction signs, headlines depicting the latest Bush administration scandal du jour, and so on and so forth . . .  Anything to raise public consciousness of the consequences of continuing apathy.

    by meg on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 04:42:58 AM PDT

•  The architects of this war have gotten away

  with it. They are criminals.  I'm so angry about what they've done to this country I can barely speak about it.

  by BentLiberal on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:40:21 PM PDT

  •  They've accomplished an evil miracle of sorts

    by making torture a debatable issue in the first place.  Talk about making a mockery of the supposed ideals of a civil society.

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:43:29 PM PDT

    •  Even setting ideals aside

      the backlash they have exposed us to is staggering, both in terms of future treatment of our own soldiers by enemy captors and of our international standing and reputation.  This shit always went on in secret operations, but to stand up and claim it is stunningly, horribly new.

      by lgmcp on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:04:43 PM PDT

•  Bloggers Against Torture

  has referred existing and new members to Never In Our Names, since NION's founders were longtime members of Bloggers Against Torture. so for anyone who would like to have discussions of human rights and what we can do as bloggers and offline, NION will re-open on or before May 1. (We are currently getting a Soapblox upgrade.)

  by Avila on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:41:13 PM PDT

  •  I updated - sorry about that!

    I meant to include a link at first, but I wasn't sure how actively you were promoting the site during hiatus.  

    by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:42:24 PM PDT

    •  no sorry

      thank you for this excellent diary, Pico. I'm not promoting at all -- just wanted to mention 'cuz Bloggers Against Torture has been closed and then NION closed, but soon there will be a community for human rights bloggers again.

      by Avila on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:48:16 PM PDT

•  At the risk of flames...let abu ghraib go.

  All the Republicans and nearly 50% of Democrats support a candidate who thought a war in Iraq was just a peachy idea.  When you go in with half the troops required, minimal planning for post-combat security, and no exit strategy...it's time to stop fucking piling on the poor saps working in the prison under unbelievable stress and horrendous working conditions.  Impeach Bush, McCain, and Hillary.....then I'll be ready to continue attacking the lowest level troops.  

  by joesig on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:41:46 PM PDT

  •  Exclusive:

    Who's Behind Abu Ghraib?

    For the first time, one chart shows the scandal's full chain of command from Bush to detainees.

    March 20, 2008

    by jimstaro on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:45:55 PM PDT

    •  You might try

      Adding the graphic, don't know how clear it would show smaller, to your diary!

      by jimstaro on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:54:34 PM PDT

    •  How convenient. Yes voters on AUMF are somehow..

      absolved of all blame?  At the risk of being pedantic...they weren't tortured, they were abused.  And the reason they were abused was incompetence, stress, lack of a clear command focus, lack of resources.  Again, the second the administration and congress decided to half-ass this war it became inevitable that untrained soldiers under at times unimaginable stress would eventually crack.  I'm more than willing to punish them....but I would prefer the political leadership to be punished first.  

      by joesig on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:55:20 PM PDT

      •  joesig

        I believe I got what your meaning was.

        by jimstaro on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 03:59:28 PM PDT

        •  Thanks. And I'm completely in agreement with you

          that abu ghraib was a disastrous symbol of the incompetence of our political leadership, both Republican and Democratic.  

          by joesig on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:17:10 PM PDT

      •  That's fair in some cases

        but not others.  The death of al-Jamadi definitely shifts the discussion to torture, since it occurred as part of an interrogation.

        I don't disagree with you at all about holding higher-ups accountable.  The article goes into great lengths describing the living situation at Abu Ghraib, the lack of training, and the understanding that much badness coming from such a volatile situation was inevitable.  We're all on the same page here.

        by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 04:28:54 PM PDT

      •  Also: I edited the diary

        to include "abuse", which - you're correct - was the more predominant issue at Abu Ghraib.

        by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:01:16 PM PDT

      •  Off on facts, correct on program

        Really, only somewhat off on facts. The treatment of the guards at Abu Ghraib was put in motion by the CIA and other military intelligence (or contractors working for the same). The SERE-style sexual humiliation, and fear techniques, were done on purpose. While some of the actions of the guards could be chalked up to stress, poor training, etc., the main fact is that this was a policy that was implemented from above.

        And then you are completely correct, in that the political leadership needs to be punished. I include here any high military leadership as well.

        But this is unlikely to happen, and certainly has not happened yet.

        It also did not happen after the first generation of torture scandals occurred in the late 1970s, or the second generation in the aftermath of Iran-Contra (and the CIA Latin American torture manuals were leaked/declassified).

        It's not going to happen now either... unless the political leadership that we follow announces that it wishes to take on the CIA and high Pentagon leadership. I can't see this happening before the election. Afterwards, it may be another story, and then only if Obama is elected. And even then, it's a long shot.

        I have repeated this so often before, but it must be made clear in our minds: this did not start with the Bush Administration. Both Democratic and Republican hands are quite dirty. Moreover, the compliance and participation of American allies, Canada and Great Britain, is pervasive and at various times in history, just as bad as the current U.S. regime.

        If anyone wishes to truly defeat torture, it will take a sophisticated, well-funded, organization, with a political program that is aimed at reducing or ending government secrecy and the power of the intelligence agencies.

        Torture has been attacked via international treaty, U.S. law, legal actions against previous government actions, journalistic muckraking, U.S. military code, civilian protests, and probably other means I cannot think of at this moment.

        The result: the U.S. government is more likely to torture now than in the past. The U.S. maintains a torture camp on ostensibly U.S. soil (Guantanamo), and nothing seems to be able to shut it down. Secret renditions continue. Black site secret prisons continue to operate (or so we assume... they are secret, you know).

        There are organizations out there that are working full-time to address the torture problem -- Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights, to name just two.

        I applaud pico and all commenters for working to keep this issue alive. Those looking for an anti-torture blog, while waiting for NION to come back online, could do worse than check out my own blog, Invictus. Do a search on the keyword "torture," and you can read the over 100 postings/articles there, covering everything from the history of torture, the fight against doctors or psychologists assisting U.S. torture, the way torture is conducted now, the politics behind the fight against torture, and much more.

        by Valtin on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:18:26 PM PDT

        •  Edited to link your blog in the diary.

          Sorry about that - it slipped my mind.  You've done fantastic work on this issue, especially on the APA side of things.

          by pico on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:23:50 PM PDT

          •  Thanks

            While I'm known for the reporting on APA, I've actually written a number of pieces on how torture works, especially the psychological torture of abuse, degradation, debilitation, and sensory deprivation/isolation.

            Btw, I'm really looking forward to the phoenix-resurrection of NION.

            by Valtin on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:58:13 PM PDT

            •  I have a question.

              Knowing the effect of these things and knowing of the Stanford episodes is there a possibility of some one placed in either prisoner or warder roles to avoid the traps?

              Are these things that happen to the unaware or to all?

              Because if awareness can ameliorate the effect of these human characteristics then we should be (carefully) reproducing the Stanford experiment in every high school with every student so that everyone can get a sense of how far they can fall.

              by Demena on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 01:55:16 AM PDT

              •  No one knows for sure

                The American Psychological Assn bases its position that psychologists belong at interrogations precisely because of their knowledge base when it comes to this kind of problem. However, experience thus far demonstrates that psychologists have not been able to in any appreciable way stop the abuse, and in fact, have been known to both promote it or to observe it without notice.

                (There's one case of someone blowing a whistle -- psychologist Michael Gelles at Guantanmo -- but the report was not effective in stopping the abuse, and the reporter stopped at the chain of command.)

                The Stanford experiment implies that ALL behavior is contextual, and that all of us are subject to the kinds of pressures produced at abusive interrogations. That doesn't mean anyone will torture, but that anyone could torture.

                by Valtin on Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 09:36:01 AM PDT

        •  You're reaching too far. It was not a...

          "policy implemented from above".  You have no evidence of a written or briefed policy given to the guards.  You have no evidence of an implementation strategy.  

          I share your hatred of both abuse and torture...but you're reaching too far and indulging in a fantasy about the efficiency and evilness of the American government.  

          And here's the most basic and most obvious proof: there was almost no prisoner of any importance at abu g.  They were the random people taken off targets.  They were the ones implicated by low level sources and grabbed by conventional units.  Virtually all the HVI's were held in other places.  Abu g was the left overs and "who the hell is this?" prisoners.  They got abused because they didn't merit a real policy or real attention or the experienced professional interrogators.  

          by joesig on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:34:21 PM PDT

          •  Do I have personal evidence? No... BUT...

            Such evidence has been evinced before.  

            Dec. 21, 2004 – Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday....

            The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics....

            The specific methods mentioned in the email as having been approved by the unnamed Executive Order and witnessed by FBI agents include sleep deprivation, placing hoods over prisoners' heads, the use of loud music for sensory overload, stripping detainees naked, forcing captives to stand in so-called "stress positions," and the employment of work dogs. One of the more horrifying tools of intimidation, Army canines were used at the prison to terrorize inmates, as depicted in photos taken inside Abu Ghraib.

            The correspondence is dated May 22, 2004 -- a couple of weeks after images of torture and humiliation at the prison broke in the world media -- and was sent between FBI officials attempting to clarify the Bureau's position on the terminology to use when categorizing and reporting such techniques. The author repeatedly states those techniques were, at least temporarily, permitted under the mysterious presidential directive. The author also wrote that Pentagon policy had since restricted most of the techniques to require specific authorization from the chain of command.

            "As stated, there was a revision last week in the military's standard operating procedures based on the Executive Order," the letter reads. "I have been told that all interrogation techniques previously authorized by the Executive Order are still on the table but that certain techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted." The author goes on to recount having seen a military email that said certain techniques -- including "stress positions," the use of dogs, "sleep management," hoods, "stripping (except for health inspection)," and blaring music -- cannot be used without special authorization.

            You could also read Seymour Hersh's reporting on this. Here's the Wikipedia summary:

            Copper Green is reported by American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to be one of several code names for a U.S. black ops program, according to an article in the May 24, 2004 issue of The New Yorker. According to Hersh, the task force was formed with the direct approval of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and run by Deputy Undersecretary Stephen Cambone Hersh claims the special access program members were told "Grab whom you must. Do what you want". The program allegedly designed physical coercion and sexual humiliation techniques for use against Muslim Arab men specifically, to retrieve information from suspects, and to blackmail them into becoming informants.

            According to the article, the sexual humiliation techniques were based on the book, The Arab Mind, written by the late cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai in 1973. The book claimed to be a "study of Arab culture and psychology". According to Hersh's anonymous intelligence source, the Patai book was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior", which gave life to two themes: "One, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation".

            by Valtin on Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 05:56:54 PM PDT