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

Fri Apr 24 11:57:18 PDT 2009

This is probably the finest post I've ever read on Vision 2020.  

Thanks, Andreas.  

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/

Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:31:27 -0700
From: ophite at gmail.com
To: jampot at roadrunner.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

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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