Shining a light into dark world of torture

[seemslikeadream]

"Some people may recover their humanity if something extraordinary happens," Crelinsten explains. "It's much harder to leave than to enter the routine of torture. Special privileges, for instance, alcohol and rewards, reinforce what they are doing."

However, he said, some do repent. "A man who tortured prisoners in a Latin American country said that one day he noticed a victim who had a club foot. So did his best friend. Suddenly he felt that it could be him, and he couldn't go on."

But once inside the closed world of torture — whether in a formal training school or a military base — resistance is difficult, and for some, impossible.

In the case of Iraq, the U.S. had already taken steps to make sure its troops were exempt from international war crimes prosecutions, and to remove international protection from those captured in its "war on terror." Officials at every level have also denied any involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

"No responsible official of the Department of Defence approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses," said defence spokesman Larry DiRita.

However, says Allodi, who has treated torture victims since the American-backed assault on Latin America's left-wing rebels and governments in the 1970s, Washington has developed a thorough knowledge of the theory and practice of torture for decades, and has instructed both Americans and foreigners: "torture is as American as apple pie."

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http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1085264105258&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

[seemslikeadream]

1. What's in a Word? Torture

•"Water-boarding." This, as we now know, does not involve water skis, but holding prisoners under water for long enough that they think they are drowning. Again, interrogators favor it because after the prisoner has coughed the water out of his lungs, it leaves no identifiable marks. Reports by human rights groups on countries including Brazil, Ethiopia and El Salvador have noted the prevalence of "simulated drowning" or "near drowning."

•"Stress positions." What is a stress position? Mike Xego, a former political prisoner in South Africa, once demonstrated one for me. He bent down and clasped his hands in front of him as if they were handcuffed, and then, using a rolled-up newspaper, showed me how apartheid-era police officers would pin his elbows behind his knees with a stick, forcing him into a permanent crouch. "You'd be passed from one hand to another. Kicked. Tipped over," he explained. "The blood stops moving. You scream and scream and scream until there is no voice."

This begs an obvious question: when the Abu Ghraib detainees were in "stress positions," were they then kicked, tipped over, rolled around like soccer balls? We do not yet know, but chances are that if the guards were told to create "favorable conditions" for interrogation, the prisoners were not lectured politely about the benefits of human rights and the rule of law that the United States is supposedly bringing to Iraq.

Granted, the torture of prisoners under Saddam Hussein was incomparably more widespread and often ended in death. The same is true in dozens of other regimes around the world. But torture is torture. It permanently scars the victim even when there are no visible marks on the body, and it leaves other scars on the lives of those who perform it and on the life of the nation that allowed and encouraged it. Those scars will be with us for a long time.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/opinion/23HOCH.html?ex=1085889600&en=6cae4c1146208561&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

US Justice Department Recommended Torture


Lawyers from the US Department of Justice reportedly recommended to President George Bush that the US did not have to obey international law during its war against terrorism; nor did it have to follow the laws concerning due process of captives.



Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty wrote a memo on January 9, 2002, that allegedly says that it is not necessary to fulfill Geneva Convention when dealing with the Taliban and Al Qaeda militants that were transported to Guantanamo. The Geneva Convention outlines the rules of conduct that must be followed when dealing with prisoners of war.

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http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&trh=20040523&hn=8847

[Media_Lies_Daily]

2. We don't know yet how many Iraqis died while being tortured...

...calling the prisoners "detainees" makes it way too easy to bury the evidence and claim they were never in custody.

[Barrett808]

3. kick

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seemslikeadream]

5. The Silence of the Vultures

The vultures are similarly silent on the subject of torture and sexual degradation which was not only condoned as an acceptable method of interrogation, but officially sanctioned at the highest level in the military chain of command. Notice how mainstream hacks in deference to their sensitive Whitehouse masters have replaced "torture" with "humiliation". By my estimate, at least, the latter is the outcome of squatting in wearing low rider jeans, while the former insultingly understates what happened to Iraqi detainees in US custody.

The administration's claims that a few rogue elements were responsible for the atrocities carried out at Abu Ghraib and other US run detention facilities has been reinforced, rather than scrutinized by the media with their constant focus on PFC Lynndie England. It has proved less labor-intensive to look no further up than the bottom rung of the military command structure. In all fairness, though, a flesh-eating zombie occupying the country's top military post is no match for the whore of Babylon herself trailing a dog leash, in terms of visual impact. For that reason, Donald Rumsfeld has been able to distance himself from the combustible allegations that the orders to torture and sexually degrade prisoners were approved by a secret organization within the Pentagon and rubber stamped with his approval. In his role of human shield to the President, Rumsfeld has bought himself a temporary stay of execution. The Defense Secretary has the corporate media to thank for the extra layer of teflon coating protecting him from the dirt flying up from Seymour Hersh's shovel.

It wasn't so long ago that the obedient hacks, who received their potty training on the Whitehouse lawn, would have found a heartwarming human interest story in Lynndie England and the other girl guards of Abu Ghraib if Jessica Lynch hadn't already been invented. Until only recently, their official duties have primarily focused on inventing all that "good news" coming out of Iraq. It's not hard to imagine these khaki-clad femme fatales featured in some star-spangled segment on the wonderful opportunities for women in the military (minus the sadistic she-male whip-kitten angle).

Here was a girl even the President himself could have comfortably chewed the turkey fat with at a KKK rally, or at least a Thanksgiving dinner photo op in a Baghdad mess hall. In hindsight, "Bring It On" seems almost prophetic in light of Lynndie England's predilection for prison gang-bangs. Still, it's debatable whether Bush himself is intellectually up to the task of appreciating the irony of having his words come back to bite him as the porno-imperative to his entire war effort. Such are the contradictions of life for a "war president," especially when your virulent puritanism comes back to assault you in full-frontal, triple "X" technicolor.

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http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May2004/Matsui0524.htm

[seemslikeadream]

6. Conservatives Claim Abu Ghraib Abuses Aren't "Real" Torture

by Dennis Rahkonen



And that’s just one side of a very tarnished coin.

From the Civil War prison infamy of Andersonville, to Vietnam’s terrible Tiger Cages, to the sadistic mistreatment that triggered 1971’s Attica Rebellion and its subsequent, barbaric repression...it isn’t hard to connect the dots that lead to Abu Ghraib.

Need a little help in reaching the conclusion that it’s more than a “few bad apples” who’ve “embarrassed” us in Iraq?

Consider the vicious cruelty of slavery, the genocide we dealt Native populaces, our mass slaughter of Filipinos after the Spanish-American War, and the nearly four million Southeast Asians who’d never have died but for our bellicose imperialism.

There’s more than enough violent racism in our national makeup to fully warrant the belief that very definite torture in Iraqi prisons is widespread, even systemic.


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http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May2004/Rahkonen0524.htm


The lynching of Will James.

Lynching scene. Commercial Avenue jammed with spectators below the electrically lit Hustler's Arch. November 11, 1909, Cairo, Illinois.


Etched in negative: "leBlock." Addressed to "Mrs. Jake Petter, 2057 Broad St, Paducah Ky."

This image was taken moments after the rope broke and Will James' body fell onto the unpaved street. Under magnification a small group of suited men peer down as if into a well.
http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html