[Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

[Andreas Schou]

Gary --

>From the FBI report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay under Geoffrey Miller, the
general later brought in to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib:

"on several occasions, witness ("W") saw detainees ("ds") in interrogation
rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor w/no chair/
food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves, and were left there 18, 24
hrs or more. Once, the air conditioning was so low that the barefoot d was
shaking with cold. Another time, it was off so the unventilated room was
over 100 degrees, d was almost unconscious on floor with a pile of hair next
to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the night). Another
time, it was sweltering hot and loud rap music played - d's hand and foot
was chained and he was in a fetal position on the floor. Upon inquiry, W was
told that interrogators [military contractors] ordered this treatment. Took
place in Delta Camp"

The report goes on to substantiate that more than one detainee (d) was
brought into the infirmary with hypothermia after an interrogation session.
Detainees pissing and shitting all over themselves. Being sexually assaulted
by female guards. Forced to stay awake for longer than the human body can
stand. Being partially drowned. Being stuck in a coffin with what you're
told are scorpions.

These are not conditions you will find any Hilton other than the Hanoi. They
are not on the continuum of acceptable behaviors any more than a knife is on
the continuum of 'comfortable objects' because, like a knife, it's also an
object. These are techniques we reverse-engineered from North Korean torture
techniques in order to create SERE, and then reverse-reverse engineered in
order to create GTMO and the "black sites." This is despite the fact that we
-- as in, our country -- prosecuted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding, and
even Israel, no friend of terrorists, has abandoned it because it produces
bad intelligence. Indeed, if I were just a little more cynical than I am,
I'd say that that's quite the point: we waterboarded KSM for information on
the nonexistent Iraq-al-Qaida connection, and Abu Zubaydah for information
on confabulated terrorist plots he had no reason to know about.

You're wrong about the facts. You're wrong about the law. I could go on
about that, but I'd just be arguing with the tinny little noises escaping
from the echo chamber you pretend will replace journalism. I'm waiting with
bated breath to find out why you think the FBI is infiltrated by ACORN or
how George Soros is dictating the legal conclusions of Republican appointees
at Foggy Bottom. That's just your intentional ignorance, plus arrogance,
tribalism, and smug self-satisfaction at your clever turns of phrase. I can
tolerate that.

What gets to me -- why I'm provoked to respond -- is that you're willing,
even eager, to sell out our country's honor in order to soothe your rank
cowardice. Or maybe it makes you feel like a real man to hear that some punk
Afghan teenager with an AK-47 was awake for a week, stewing in his own shit,
shackled to the floor. Whatever the impulse is -- tribalism? sadism? fear?
-- it's not anything I recognize as American. What third-world tinpot
dictatorship did you grow up in that you think this is acceptable?

We consent to abide by certain principles. It's that common consent that
keeps our country from being a collection of miscellaneous foreigners on
someone else's land. I have disagreements with conservatives about the metes
and bounds of those principles, sure. But here you are, disputing whether
America should have principles at all.

Americans, by which I mean FDR and Eisenhower, Reagan and JFK, held off the
Soviets and Nazi Germany, nations that both posed a dire existential threat
to our country, while banning torture, expanding the protections of the
Geneva Convention, and abandoning the pretense that it's okay to attack
civilian populations. These are tempting tactics. Some of them work. Torture
produces words rather than silence. The Geneva Convention bans effective
tactics for making war. Killing civilians forces submission. We stepped away
from these things. We won. Twice. Over the two most belligerent,
technologically advanced, and staggeringly immoral nations ever to exist,
one armed with enough weapons to destroy the world several times over.

But then 9/11 made you wet yourself. A crime of unimaginable scale happened
to people in New York City; people whom you don't even accord the privilege
of being called Americans. The crime was carried out by guys carrying
weapons you can buy at Home Depot. Somehow, that uprooted your sense that
America stands for anything. But how deep were those roots, Gary, that fewer
deaths than those caused by the flu could pull them up?

Our soldiers make a commitment. They tell us they'll uphold the
Constitution. But there's a reciprocal side to that commtiment: we tell them
that they're the good guys; that they're not just protecting American lives,
but American values. That they're fighting for liberty, mom, and apple pie.
Because 9/11 made you wet yourself, you're asking those soldiers to sit and
play Minesweeper while some dumb Afghan redneck shits his pants in Arctic
cold, chained to the ceiling of a lightless cell. If you tell his President
to tell our soldiers to do that, you've reneged on our commitment to make
our soldiers the good guys. Our moral purpose doesn't come from who we are;
it comes from what we do.

I don't know whether there's going to be a reckoning for the people that
authorized this. But you're the reason there should be: to put the rudder
straight and make people like you -- who actively argues for torture -- too
ashamed to speak up in public. Anything you just said should be enough to
make any decent person drop their beer, walk out of the room, and go find
another locksmith. I'm looking forward to the day when it is.
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