Democratizing the World: One Torture Victim at a Time
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By Jason Miller
3/22/06
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Psychological torture, sleep deprivation, brutality, severe sexual humiliation,
and murder summon visions of a dank dungeon in a remote region of pre-invasion
Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, replete with evil inquisitors and hooded executioners.
However, those manifestations of horror did not spring forth from the Axis of
Evil. They are actually drawn from official post-9/11 US policy. Despite its
fabled commitment to human rights, the United States government has been committing
and enabling acts of torture for half a century. Not even Superman had the power
to snatch “Truth, Justice and the American Way” from the crushing
jaws of imperialistic ambition and avarice.
Ironically titled, Albert McCoy’s A
Question of Torture probes and exposes the extent of “the Land of the
Free’s” involvement in human torture over the years. Only a mainstream
media 90% controlled by five major corporations (whose executives and major stockholders
are amongst the de facto rulers of the America’s so-called republic) could
so effectively maintain the illusion that the United States is the world leader
in protecting human rights. Somewhere out there, David Copperfield is burning
with envy. Rest easy, David. They are running out of magic. Destroying our Constitution
and reversing the humanitarian gains achieved by millions of Americans with a
social conscience throughout our nation’s history, the Bush Regime is extinguishing
the candle of hope America once offered to humanity. Despite the exhaustive efforts
of the media handmaidens, people are taking notice.
Painstakingly slow ascent....high velocity decline
From our nation’s birth, many fine Americans labored vigorously to attain
a higher moral plane by ending slavery and advancing the rights of children,
minorities, women, and workers. Contrary to the fairy tale of America’s
benevolent government “of the people”, many amongst the plutocracy
and emerging corporatocracy fought the American evolution of human rights tooth
and nail. Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and company have taken that resistance to new heights
and are plunging the United States into an abyss of evil, at home and abroad.
Minority Americans, Native Americans, and citizens of other nations have been
aware of this descent for years, even before the Neocon catalyzed acceleration.
However, as the ruthlessly brazen disciples of Strauss have fervently attacked
human rights, many amongst America's indoctrinated White working class are smelling
the coffee, and it is not the best part of waking up.
On March 8, 2006, the US State Department released its Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices for 2005, in which it detailed human rights abuses occurring
in over 190 nations. In an act of supreme hypocrisy, they excluded themselves.
As one can readily discern simply from reading McCoy's expose' of human torture
committed by the United States since 1950, the United States is far from being
a bastion
of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".
"Torture is evil, pure and simple," is the powerful lesson Peggy Piel
imparted to her son, Alfred McCoy. Having spent a year of her childhood in Nazi
Germany, this erudite Jewish American knew a bit about the subject of torture.
Despite his mother's moralistic viewpoint, McCoy penned his examination of the
history of torture committed and facilitated by the United States in a detached,
analytical manner, without imposing a moral judgment. Noting over 30 pages of
sources, McCoy meticulously researched his chilling glimpse into America's Heart
of Darkness, yet still maintained relative objectivity. No easy task in light
of the virtually countless egregious violations of human rights and acts of murder
committed by the American Empire and its proxies.
Abu Gharib was simply a sign of a "few bad apples"....or was it?
In 1950, the intelligence organization of the “leader of the free world” began
to take a strong interest in research involving psychological torture.
McCoy summarizes:
“From 1950 to 1962, the CIA became involved in torture through a massive
mind-control effort, with psychological warfare and secret research into human
consciousness that reached a cost of a billion dollars annually—a veritable
Manhattan Project of the mind.”
While the United States was trumpeting its deep devotion to universal human rights,
the CIA was busily developing and funding research to yield “new and improved” torture
tactics with which they could extract information from Cold War enemies. Utilizing
its unique capacity to wield tremendous power clandestinely, the United States’ intelligence
juggernaut infiltrated and exploited hospitals, divisions of the military, and
universities to enable its research.
Many of the nauseating acts of inhumanity depicted in the Abu Gharib photos reflect
the rotten fruits of CIA labors. Years of study and experimentation determined
that torture involving physical pain lacked efficacy. The CIA found that strong
subjects usually responded by stiffening their resistance and weaker ones often
gave false information just to end the pain. Psychological torture, including
sensory deprivation, sensory disorientation, assault on personal identity and
self-inflicted pain appeared to provide a much richer yield of information. The
Abu Gharib photos are a window through which one can view the CIA-created world
of psychological torture. Hooding, stress positions, extreme intimidation with
ferocious dogs (for which a soldier was convicted on 3/21), and sexual humiliation
are recurring images in the Abu Gharib pictures and are powerful examples of
CIA torture protocol. Other techniques of psychological torture the US military
and CIA have used on detained suspects in the “War on Terror” are
sleep deprivation, isolation, and dietary manipulation. As the Command
Responsibility report by Human Rights First indicates, 45 detainees in the
US “War on Terror” have been murdered or have died as a result of
physical abuse. As McCoy argues, there is a fine line between psychological torture
and physical torture, and as the American Gulag has demonstrated, torturers usually
cross that line.
As an aside, it is important to remember that there are currently over 14,000 “suspected
terrorists” or “enemy combatants” in US custody. These individuals
have been charged with no crime and have been denied due process. Guilty until
proven innocent. Now that is justice the American way. Abu Gharib is only an
aberration because the torturers were caught. Inflicting severe psychological
and mental anguish on suspected enemies of the Empire is now official policy
and has taken place at Bagram Air Base, Camp Cropper, Guantanamo Bay and throughout
the American Gulag. As for the McCain Anti-Torture Law, Bush and his fellow war
criminals are already inventing ways to circumvent it.
Abu Gharib is simply a public display of the psychological and physical torture
the CIA has been implementing and practicing for years. From 1962 to 1974, the
CIA sharpened its talons through a federal entity called the Office of Public
Safety, a branch of US AID. According to McCoy, the OPS trained one million police
officers in 47 countries. Not surprisingly, it was not long before these same
law enforcement entities began committing severe human right rights abuses and
acts of torture.
"Practice makes perfect"
It was morally repugnant enough that the United States killed three million Vietnamese
civilians in their imperialistic escapade into Southeast Asia, euphemistically
labeling them as “collateral damage”. However, McCoy describes torture
policies and techniques which resulted in the murder of tens of thousands more
Vietnamese. The Phoenix program was implemented by the CIA to eradicate the Vietcong
underground. Under CIA administration and supervision, the PRUs (aka Provincial
Interrogation Centers) of the Phoenix program degenerated into a collection of
South Vietnamese murderers, thugs and criminals who accepted bribes, presumed
guilt based on gossip, and murdered their detainees after they completed their
interrogation. Ultimately, (if one is gullible enough to take the word of former
CIA director William Colby), the Phoenix program murdered 20,587 “Vietcong”.
Saigon’s government puts the figure at 40,994.
Educating them on the finer points of torture and murder
The CIA also bears responsibility for the creation of SAVAK, the Shah of Iran’s
ruthless secret police force. SAVAK killed 20,000 Iraqi “dissidents” during
the Shah’s reign. In the Philippines, CIA instruction resulted in 3,257
murders and 35,000 victims of torture by the Ferdinand Marcos regime.
After its defeat in Vietnam, the United States government infiltrated Latin America
with a vengeance (to stop the spread of the “Communist threat”).
Project X, represented another CIA endeavor to impart their wisdom in the arts
of torture to ruthless US allies Not satisfied with their 1963 torture manual
called Kubark, the CIA wrote a sequel in Spanish entitled Handling of Sources,
Interrogation, Combat Intelligence, and Terrorism and the Urban Guerilla.
Of the sequel, McCoy writes,
“Apart from these cold-blooded tactics of kidnapping, murder, beatings,
and betrayal, the manual evidences, in its 144 single-spaced pages, an amorality,
a studied willingness to exploit an ally without restraint or compunction, hardened
on the anvil of the Vietnam conflict.”
Once located in Panama, an odious US Army institution known as the School of
Americas (sometimes called the School of Assassins) bestowed the CIA’s
torture wisdom upon hundreds of Latin American military officers. The School
of Americas fell under the auspices of Project X and provided the “hands
on” training to accompany the CIA torture manuals. Interestingly, by 1983
the CIA had begun to re-emphasize the use of psychological over physical torture
when it wrote its Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual. A laundry list
of CIA-trained Latin American military personnel and dictators murdered and tortured
hundreds of thousands thanks to the tutelage of Project X.
Of war crimes, evasion of responsibility and impunity
McCoy notes that the United States took a break and out-sourced torture to its
allies throughout the 1990’s. Unfortunately for the world, the Bush Regime
opportunistically seized 9/11 to begin its PNAC inspired quest for global military
dominance. In the process, the administration implemented torture as official
United States policy. Desperately attempting to fend off critics and preserve
the crumbling façade of moral superiority, America’s ruling class
has sacrificed several from amongst those near the bottom of the food chain.
However, calling the prosecution and conviction of a handful of military personnel
justice would be a farce. Those ultimately responsible for America’s abject
torture continue to act with impunity.
As McCoy has vividly illustrated, America’s “grunts” at Abu
Gharib and throughout the American Gulag were acting under the orders of the
Bush Regime and under the supervision of the CIA:
1. On September 11, 2001, George Bush told Donald Rumsfeld and his staff, “Any
barriers in your way, they are gone.” When they reminded him of legal constraints,
Bush shouted, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say; we
are going to kick some ass.”
2. Six days later, Bush authorized the CIA to begin rendition of terror suspects
to nations known to commit torture.
3. On November 13, the President determined that Al Qaeda suspects would be denied
access to domestic or international courts.
4. Close to the end of 2001, Bush’s Justice Department approved the use
of “sleep deprivation and deployment of ‘stress factors’” for
counter-terror interrogation.
5. Bush decided the Geneva Conventions did not apply to his “War on Terror” on
January 8, 2002.
6. On January 9, 2002, John Woo of the Justice Department crafted a memo denying
application of the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act to suspected
members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom he characterized as “enemy combatants”.
Since they were now neither soldier nor citizen, the articles of the Geneva Convention
barring “cruel treatment and torture” and “humiliating and
degrading treatment” did not apply to them (according to Yoo’s perverse
logic).
7. As Afghans captured in the “War on Terror” started populating
Guantanamo Bay prison on January 11, Donald Rumsfeld stated that those “unlawful
combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention.”
8. On January 18, the man Bush later elevated from White House legal counsel
to Attorney General (for his loyalty to the Empire) informed the President that
the Justice Department “had issued a formal legal opinion concluding that
the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War does not apply
to the conflict with Al Qaeda.”
9. The following day, Rumsfeld advised his field commanders that “Al Qaeda
and Taliban individuals under the control of the Department of Defense are not
entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of
1949.”
10. January 22, 2002: Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee presented Alberto
Gonzales with a 37 page memo which outlined the means to implement “coercive
interrogation” without legal consequences, affirming that “neither
the federal War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions would apply to the detention
conditions of al Qaeda prisoners”, and that Bush had the Constitutional
power to suspend US treaties with Afghanistan.
11. Behind the scenes, Bush and Rumsfeld approved an SAP or “special-access
program” within the CIA. By its very nature, only a handful of top level
government officials are aware of the existence of an SAP. This particular SAP
endowed the CIA, Navy Seals, and Army Delta Force with the power to assassinate,
kidnap and, of course, to torture. Concurrently, the CIA began creating the American
Gulag by establishing secret prisons in places like Diego Garcia Island and Thailand.
12. The Bush administration entrusted the CIA with “operational command” of
its long coveted “War on Terror”, which enabled the United States
to abandon FBI and military restrictions on torture.
13. In August of 2002, Bybee, Yoo, and Vice Presidential counsel David Addington
created another Justice Department memo “legitimizing” torture. Employing
reasoning which defied the laws of reality, this trio determined that federal
law and the UN anti-torture conventions only prohibited torture that was “specifically
intended to inflict severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical.” They
concluded that to be a crime, the torture must “be equivalent in intensity
to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment
of bodily function, or even death.” Utilizing this memo, the CIA could
evade responsibility for torturing “enemy combatants” simply by claiming
they were attempting to gain information rather than to inflict pain. The memo
also constructed a very strict definition of psychological torture, interpreting
many CIA techniques as legal. Most significantly, in defiance of the Supreme
Court’s decision in Youngstown Sheet and Tube et al vs. Sawyer, Bybee and
his cohorts asserted that restraints on Bush’s directives to interrogate
would “represent an unconstitutional infringement of the President’s
authority to conduct war.”
14. At about the same time as the release of the Bybee memo, the Justice Department
gave the CIA classified permission to utilize harsher interrogation tactics than
the military, including water boarding, a practice which leads the victim to
believe they are drowning.
Bush and his murderous cabal gave the authorization, the CIA provided supervision,
and the military carried out the “coercive interrogation”. A Question
of Torture sheds significant light on the culpability of Generals Miller and
Sanchez in implementing the policy of inflicting excruciating psychological and
physical pain on “enemy combatants” throughout the military prison
system in Iraq, the nation America “rescued” from Saddam Hussein.
America’s leaders condoned torture and ordered their subordinates to carry
it out. In the tradition of monsters like Pol Pot and Idi Amin, they revel in
their endless access to money, power, and immunity. Small wonder much of the
world hates the American Empire, and its de facto rulers in particular.
Playing with fire
The CIA has repeatedly demonstrated that they are slow learners. Brutality, abuse,
and torture, whether physical or psychological, are not only gross violations
of a person’s inalienable human rights; they are ineffective means of extracting
information or modifying behavior. The FBI is one of the few federal law enforcement
or military entities not implicated in the web of torture emerging in the “War
on Terror” and, according to McCoy’s research, its agents’ legal,
humane interrogation tactics were yielding respectable results before Bush superseded
them with the CIA.
Besides lacking value beyond its capacity to satisfy a primal urge for revenge,
torture is a double-edged sword which harms both perpetrator and victim. McCoy
points out that committing torture intoxicates one with power. Organizations
and governments engaging in mass torture deteriorate as the rule of law and respect
for humanity disintegrates, breaking down their political and social structures.
Objectifying and inflicting suffering upon helpless human beings leaves deep
scars upon the souls of the torturers and creates monstrous sociopaths Contrary
to the wishful thinking of the Bush Regime, the United States will reap a bitter
harvest once the noxious weeds of torture grow to maturity.
Realistically, except in the minds of those who tenaciously cling to their indoctrination
from the American Empire, there is no question that the United States egregiously
violates human rights on a frequent basis. For a more thorough examination of
the cancer of torture ravaging the United States, read A
Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy.
Jason Miller is a 39 year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts.
When he is not spending time with his wife and three sons, researching, or writing,
he is working as a loan counselor. He is a member of Amnesty International and
an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He welcomes
responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or
comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
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