Torturing prisoners
Pfaff, William
:FAAi''A'. 1ti iMItSiR'a:!'.e.ralW:: ;:Ti ISilt aMil .-iB M M49:54tSXas 9SsitilK I.60' WILLIAM PFAFF TORTURING NE Setting the tone at the top he United States has suffered several defeats in the...
...People can become monsters in these circumstances, which invite atrocities and license sadism and gratuitous cruelty...
...SHARPNACKIt was obvious even to those following the matter from outside the government that after 9/11 there were new rules...
...Yet, the decisions to withhold from prisoners the right to be dealt with under the Geneva Conventions, and to set aside inter-national and U.S...
...An independent inquiry headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger re-ported that the scale of abuses by soldiers and civilian contract interrogators at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison was much greater than previously admitted...
...The Schlesinger panel did not accept the argument that high American officials should be punished...
...You cannot hold an army together without elaborate regulations and standard operating procedures...
...As Maj...
...Could we not do away with military euphemisms and simply say "torture...
...The "laws" of war represent an international consensus on what is permissible, thereby lending predictability and structure to the horror of combat...
...The Schlesinger panel's members concluded that Rumsfeld should not assume command responsibility for what happened and resign.-They said that if high-ranking officials accept responsibility, it "would be a boon for all of America's enemies...
...Although the Army report said there were "extenuating circumstances" for command failures, Lt...
...The psychological defense of soldiers against all that is to dehumanize enemy civilians, as well as enemy combatants...
...I would have thought that it would be a boon for America's friends, demonstrating that these practices were indeed "abuses" for which leaders were held accountable, rather than policy...
...All of this opened the way to these crimes...
...The Schlesinger report dealt with Abu Ghraib but had little to say about what has gone on at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan...
...And who were the "civilian contractors" these soldiers say told them to "soften up" the prisoners...
...Walter Wojdakowski, are likely to be confinedto the Aleutian Islands or Camp Swampy...
...Irregular war, with atrocities and terror, inevitably corrupts regular armies...
...When these are violated, people have to be held accountable or discipline breaks down...
...The second report, the Army's own internal investigation, said that alleged cases of "abuse" now total 300, with 66 confirmed...
...Some Military Intelligence commanders are under inquiry...
...Armies by nature are conservative, rules-following organizations...
...War is awful, but guerrilla and terrorist wars are the worst of all...
...Aren't those facilities where they are (like the Guantanamo prison itself) so that things can be done that are illegal in American and inter-national law...
...2004, Tribune Media Services International Commonweal 8 September 10, 2004...
...Implicitly conceded: The whole story has not yet been told...
...George Fay of the Army inquiry said, torture is a "subjective" term...
...The people who fight them can only keep their bearings if the moral structure of their own army is intact...
...Army norms concerning torture were taken at the highest levels...
...Still, we are a long way from the "aberrations" committed by a few "hillbillies," " which was the off-the-record description originally offered by some officials in Washington when the Abu Ghraib scandal became public...
...So it seems...
...1ti iMItSiR'a:!'.e.ralW:: ;:Ti ISilt aMil .-iB M M49:54tSXas 9SsitilK I.60' WILLIAM PFAFF TORTURING NE Setting the tone at the top he United States has suffered several defeats in the "war on terror," the latest and worst of them, conceded last month in two separate reports, being the "demoralization" and corruption of the U.S...
...Ricardo Sanchez, the former senior commander in Iraq, is unlikely to get his fourth star, and the future assignments of his deputy, Maj...
...The president even joked about it...
...What qualified them for this line of work, with authority over American soldiers...
...Where did they come from...
...I think we should be told...
...They automatically invite reciprocal atrocities, in-discriminate violence, and collateral killing of civilians...
...This was the message soldiers (and civilians) have gotten from the top down...
...You might think Americans had learned that in Vietnam...
...Terrorism and guerrilla warfare de-moralize armies because they are unpredictable and have no rules, no way to recognize enemies, no structure of what is and is not allowed...
...Army in matters concerning the torture of prisoners...
...The Abu Ghraib affair and the generalization of torture have been possible precisely because the enemy has been dehumanized by Americans...
...Having been commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the panel did not ask what hap-pens at the secret "holding facilities," which the CIA concededly operates in foreign locations...
...He concluded that a surprising number of unpleasant practices are not really torture...
...To whom did these contractors report...
...Still, the only people yet on trial or up for trial are enlisted men and women and junior noncommissioned officers from a single half-trained West Virginia Army reserve unit of military police...
...The Army's report said grudgingly that while those soldiers' claims to be carrying out the wish-es of superiors are "self-serving," they "do have some basis in fact...
...The president's own legal counsel prepared a study of what could and could not be judged torture...
Vol. 131 • September 2004 • No. 15
