posted on July 4, 2008 06:44:07 AM Where Is the Outrage? Where is the Outrage?
Posted on May 27, 2008
By Robert Scheer
Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Because the report was widely cited in the media and easily accessed as a pdf file on the Internet, it is fair to assume that those of our citizens who remain ignorant of the extent of their government’s commitment to torture as an official policy have made a choice not to be informed. A less appealing conclusion would be that they are aware of the heinous acts fully authorized by our president but conclude that such barbarism is not inconsistent with that American way of life that we celebrate.
But that troubling assessment of moral indifference is contradicted by the scores of law enforcement officers, mostly from the FBI, who were so appalled by what they observed as routine official practice in the treatment of prisoners by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo that they risked their careers to officially complain. A few brave souls from the FBI even compiled a “war crimes file,” suggesting the unthinkable—that we might come to be judged as guilty by the standard we have imposed on others. Superiors in the Justice Department soon put a stop to such FBI efforts to hold CIA agents and other U.S. officials accountable for the crimes they committed.
That this systematic torture was carried out not by a few conveniently described “bad apples” but rather represented official policy condoned at the highest level of government was captured in one of those rare media reports that remind us why the Founding Fathers signed off on the First Amendment.
“These were not random acts,” The New York Times editorialized. “It is clear from the inspector general’s report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials. The report shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners.”
One of those top officials, who stands revealed in the inspector general’s report as approving the torture policy, is Condoleezza Rice, who in her capacity as White House national security adviser turned away the concerns of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft as to the severe interrogation measures being employed. Rice, as ABC-TV reported in April, chaired the top-level meetings in 2002 in the White House Situation Room that signed off on the CIA treatment of prisoners—“whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called water boarding. ...” According to the report, the former academic provost of Stanford University came down on the side of simulated drowning.
As further proof that women are not necessarily more squeamish than men in condoning such practices, the report offers examples of sexual and religious denigration of the mostly Muslim prisoners by female interrogators carrying out an official policy of “invasion of space by a female.” In one recorded instance observed by startled FBI agents, a female interrogator was seen with a prisoner “bending his thumbs back and grabbing his genitals ... to cause him pain.” One of the agents testified that this was not “a case of a rogue interrogator acting on her own.” He said he witnessed a “pep rally” meeting conducted by a top Defense Department official “in which the interrogators were encouraged to get as close to the torture statute line as possible.”
That was evidently the norm, according to FBI agents who witnessed the interrogations. As The New York Times reported, “One bureau memorandum spoke of ‘torture techniques’ used by military interrogators. Agents described seeing things like inmates handcuffed in a fetal position for up to 24 hours, left to defecate on themselves, intimidated by dogs, made to wear women’s underwear and subjected to strobe lights and extreme heat and cold.”
In the end, what seems to have most outraged the hundreds of FBI agents interviewed for the report is that the interrogation tactics were counterproductive. Evidently the FBI’s long history in such matters had led to a protocol that stressed gaining the confidence of witnesses rather than terrorizing them into madness. But an insane prisoner is the one most likely to tell this president of the United States what he wants to hear: They hate us for our values.
posted on July 4, 2008 06:10:29 PM
Your problem is that in this day and age people have seen "torture" on their TVs daily. So when you go:
Aren't you OUTRAGED....
they made him wear women's panties...
they served bacon for breakfast ....
they used sleep deprivation ....
they disrespected the Quran .....
a woman w. an open blouse interrogated him
etc
etc
posted on July 5, 2008 08:27:22 AM
You appear to be referring to torture at Abu Ghrib and you are sugessting by your "yawn" that torture intended to demean and humiliate and violate human dignity is no big deal? Do you realize that by humilating these people, some of whom were guilty of nothing, that we were demeaning the entire country of Iraq and Muslim countries throughout the middle east? And do you realize that by causing these people such loss of human dignity that we lost ours to an even greater degree?
So, Squirrel, in answer to your yawning insinuation, the significance of such torture is that a methodical attempt to destroy the human dignity of people just for the hell of it is evil.
posted on July 5, 2008 09:13:21 AM
The History Channel had a marathon yesterday on the American Revolution. An interesting bit of information, related to this subject, had to do with the effect of British brutality on the Patriots. The British general Banastre Tarleton, was particularly brutal. In one battle, won by the British, he continued to kill Patriot soldiers, even after they surrendered. Morale was very poor for the Patriots. They were finding it difficult to recruit soldiers and persuade loyalists to join the revolution. The Continental Congress and leaders made sure to get the word out, and even exaggerate, Tarleton's brutality. Funny thing---this caused many men to join up and loyalists to foresake Britain for America. It made them more determined to fight Britain. You can't underestimate the effect of brutality on those who are brutalized.
[ edited by coach81938 on Jul 5, 2008 09:14 AM ]
posted on July 5, 2008 11:18:20 AM
You asked for an explanation and I gave it to you. I have yet to hear anyone express "outrage" over the "innocent" detainees other than politicians and Vendio posters.
BTW, Tarleton was not a General and his tactics were not unique in the Southern campaigns. While the battles in the North were fought "European" style, the South was a place where hundreds of years of blood feuds raged unchecked with loyalists and colonials both giving free reign to the blood lust.
posted on July 5, 2008 01:36:41 PM
Sorry, my mistake. Tarleton was a Lt. Colonel. The battles in the south were more free-for-all, but Tarleton's brutality stood out, even then.
This is an excerpt from U.S. Dept of Internor site:
It was in the Waxhaws that Tarleton came to symbolize British cruelty in the Revolutionary War. There were numerous versions, however, of what actually happened in the Waxhaws. Traditionally, Tarleton was seen as a "butcher" when , it was said, America forces under Buford laid down their arms in an attempt to surrender yet the British continued their assault. From then on, his reputation grew and "Tarleton's quarter", in effect, came to mean "no quarter."
"Tarleton's quarter" was to become a rallying cry at the Battle of Cowpens. Tarleton, then only twenty-six, had been charged with covering the Carolina upcountry against Patriot guerillas. Specifically, he was to seek out and destroy a threat to his rear, a wing of the American Southern Army, commanded by General Daniel Morgan. By January 12, 1781, he was closing in on Morgan, pushing his men on, fording the rain-swollen Enoree, Tyger, and Pacolet Rivers. Morgan, on the other hand, suddenly halted a desperate retreat, was joined by more militia, and parlayed the fear and hatred of Tarleton into victory at Cowpens in the South Carolina Upcountry.
At Cowpens, January 17, 1781, Morgan appeared to take into account Tarleton's tendency to rush the attack. His collapsing lines (skirmishers, militia, and Continentals14) brought the tired (having marched since two in the morning) but confident British in prematurely, in effect, exposing them to heavy fire. As the Continentals pinned the British down, militia cavalry would crush them in a flank attack. A mistaken command to retreat drew the British in even more, and, when the retreat was stopped, the Continental line turned and fired with devastating results. In the ensuing panic, the American cavalry, already engaged in battle, flanked the British left, leading to double envelopment and victory and a turning point in the war in the South.
At battle's end, American cavalry leader William Washington, in mad pursuit of the defiant Tarleton along the Green River Road, engaged the British commander in a dramatic hand-to-hand encounter, in which Washington barely escaped with his life. With the approach of American riflemen, Tarleton, with fifty-four of his supporters, abandoned the battle and fled east toward the British camp, never to be caught up with."
The point I was trying to make in my first post was that Tarleton's brutality, real or exaggerated,(and used by American officers as propaganda) spurred the Americans to defeat the British at Cowpens which then lead to the victory at Yorktown.
posted on July 6, 2008 07:24:29 AM
But that was American outrage against torture of Americans, coach. Torturing Americans = wrong. Torturing Islamic militants = good. Radical islamists would never have the same reaction to their people being tortured. Nope. They wouldn't.
posted on July 6, 2008 01:14:53 PM
Profe--I realize that radical Islamists don't need much incentive, but don't you think torturing of their people by Americans would incite them even more, if only as an excuse to the world for terrorist attacks? Hope I am not being naive here, but I just can't wrap my head around torture of any kind as a general policy. On a personal level, if one of my loved ones was killed in a terrorist attack, I am sure the desire to kill them would be overwhelming.
posted on July 7, 2008 06:04:41 AM
You have to be on your toes to keep up with Prof's keen sense of irony and facetious humor. He managed to spin my head a time or two also.
or something!