Orders, Truth and Torture at Abu Ghraib

[BridgeTheGap]

I enter my name in a search engine. There are 3,700 results. The word torture appears in most of them. I read the blogs. I read the comments that follow. I find more blogs. I pretend those don’t bother me either. I check email; 38 new messages.

Mr. Fair, I’m not at all sure why you have your panties in a twist. It seems clear that you were a willing participant, as a civilian contractor, in the interrogation process in Iraq. This is old news.

I navigate back to the opinion page of The Washington Post. The comments section is still growing. More than 800 now. I read the new ones and some of the old ones, too. I read my article again. I check email; 57 new messages.

Eric, your words are empty and hollow. I do not accept a single one of them. But let me offer you a suggestion if you want to do the honorable thing: kill yourself. Leave a note. Name names. Until that day, I hope you never sleep another hour for the rest of your life.

Read more: http://www.utne.com/politics/abu-ghraib-eric-fair-zm0z12ndzlin.aspx#ixzz2EHWRIUbs

[zipplewrath]

1. What was the good in this read

Curious why you suggested this read. I found it rather bland and lifeless. More on the order of "what I did on my summer vacation" than anything else. It was horribly devoid of substance unless I projected alot of knowledge "between the lines" so to speak.

[BridgeTheGap]

2. You're kidding, right? n.t

[BridgeTheGap]

3. "Good", of course, is always relative / subjective. And you're right

I found nothing "good" in this article - no rainbows or unicorns. It was the shared experiences of a torturer, sanctioned and paid for via our tax dollars. Happens every day. Boring as hell.

[zipplewrath]

4. Actually no

I didn't really get a "shared experience" at all. I got a long series of relatively unconnected incidents and not much else. Not explicitly anyway. I can infer much from it. But he makes little effort to actually explain anything. It actually read a bit like poetry in the technical sense.

So I'm asking, what did YOU read?

[BridgeTheGap]

5. Clearly this is a vet who is struggling with his experiences in Iraq

and he clearly regrets much of it. He wasn't content (doubt if he experiences much "contentment" at all since coming back) with "letting it be." He told his story via the Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801680.html

and he's now paying for it. He has the military and the justice department breathing down his neck. He gets vitriol from those who now view him as a traitor.

[zipplewrath]

6. Not clear

to me obvioiusly. He seemed to wander into some justification/rationalization of the whole thing there in the middle. He seemed to be most bothered by the judgements of other people about what he did. But as I say, I'm not sure and the fact that you see it differently is what I'm talking about. He didn't "reveal" anything, or explain, or really share. It was a string of barely connected descriptions of events.

[BridgeTheGap]

7. I think this guy is grappling with his experiences and that's

what makes it very real for me. How many others are there like him? Our country has clearly not dealt with the issue of what went on over there and is still going on at Gitmo. This guy's life exemplifies this from the perspective of the torturer. His is not a clear cut path to redemption or resolution. He is in the process and that's what I found fascinating in a morbid sort of way.

[zipplewrath]

8. 5 stages of grief

There are 5 stages of grief, and there were hints that he was stuck in the denial stage in a way. It was hard to tell since his effort didn't seem to be to explain. More of a stream of conciousness kind of presentation as oppose to a contemplative or introspective one.