And so we come to the central question: Can the cover up artists keep the focus exclusively on Abu Ghraib? Ironically, the flood of S&M porn shots now making their way onto the market tend to reinforce the media’s fascination with the perverted antics at the prison, which ultimately works in favor of the coverup, if not Rumsfeld personally. The new gulag archipelago, like the old one, requires anonymity. Right now, the other islands in the chain still have it, and may get to keep it – unless, of course, there are some candid snapshots from Gitmo or Bagram or the CIA’s mysterious ‘ghost’ prisons floating around in unauthorized hands.
Even if such photos were to come to light, I’m not sure the mainstream media, much less the American public, can absorb much more than they already have. It’s not easy to admit you live in a country that now owns and operates its own system of gulag camps – instead of contracting the entire job out to friendly despots, sight unseen, as in the good old days.
In other words, the administration has the public’s desire not to know on its side. And that, plus Bush’s gestures of contrition, may be enough to hold the line at Abu Ghraib – although Donald Rumsfeld’s scalp may have to sacrified to seal the bargain.
It’s funny he brings this up, because I was just thinking the exact opposite.
I think it is precisely the nature of the evidence that makes the media and the American public interested in the story. They are inured to charges of lies or corruption — violence and prurience are what moves them. I concluded long ago that the only scandal that really interests the American public is a sex scandal.
It is the S&M image of this one that is moving it, the pictures, the graphic kinkiness of it. That’s what shocks and thrills the public, if only in a sickening, voyeuristic, train wreck sort of way.
Bush and his band of faux moralists were in part chosen by the Republican establishment precisely because of their reputations for sexual rectitude. They knew they could get away with almost anything as long as they didn’t expose themselves to accusations of sex — of any kind. (The closest they came to slipping was Bush’s Top Gun flight of fancy, but that faded soon enough.) The press and the public are attuned to the tiniest hint of sexual impropriety, both loving it and pretending to be shocked by it, and the GOP knows this because they virtually created the environment of sexual hypocricy our culture slavishly embraces.
The pictures at Abu Ghraib have brought sex back into the White House and they don’t have a good way of dealing with it. Look at Rush — he totally misread the party line (but he knows his public…) The politicians are soiled by their association with this violent kinkiness, but their followers, like Americans everywhere, are drawn to those images like moths to the flame. They can’t escape it and they can’t change the subject. No matter how pious and faithful, Bush is tainted. It’s his war. It’s his sex scandal. It’s Clinton rules.
I don’t pretend to know how this will play out long term. But, sex has been introduced into the equation now and that changes everything. The scandal receptors are turned on and the American people will start to watch. As with most sexually hypocritical cultures, voyeurism is one of America’s biggest thrills. If news of further sexual humiliation and worse is confirmed about other prisons and prison camps around the world, the country will be watching with bated breath.
Rumsfeld not only preferred clarity and order, he insisted on them. That meant personally managing process, knowing all the details, asking the questions, shaping the presidential briefing and the ultimate results…In other words, Rumsfeld wanted near-total control.” – Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, pg. 16.
Keep this in mind on Friday as Rummy tries to pretend he was out of the loop.
I like to see patriotic Democrats make a buck. This guy sent me an e-mail saying he’d been inspired to create something to relieve his frustration. Makes an awfully nice stocking stuffer.
Once again we have the bizarre sideshow of pundits selectively calling for disavowels while devils are whispering sweet nothings in their own ears. TNR picks up on the strange silence on the right side of the spectrum towards Limbaugh’s vomitous response to the torture and abuse in Iraq. Strange, of course, because they erupted like Vesuvius over a tasteless cartoon by obscure alternate weekly cartoonist, Ted Rall, while ignoring the S&M rantings of their talk radio hero — who, not incidentally, boasts 20 million listeners a week.
“Why has, say, Salon not weighed in?” Sullivan wrote. “Why has Slate not barred [Rall’s] work permanently from their site?” These were examples of a distinct genre of conservative political writing that seeks to pressure liberals into distancing themselves from their extreme elements, ostensibly in the name of fostering a more civil, reasonable political culture. Conservatives who deploy this argument profess merely to be concerned about the tone of American politics. David Brooks summarized this view in a New York Times column last fall, writing that “the core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it’s the haters themselves.”
Now we have a well-timed opportunity to see how sincerely the right believes its own platitudes about civil discourse. On his syndicated radio show yesterday, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh hit a new low. Discussing the allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, he suggested that the humiliation of detainees was merely a bit of misguided recreation.
By the standards of civility Sullivan and Brooks apply to the left, Limbaugh’s outburst is surely beyond the pale. His cavalier endorsement of sadism and sexual abuse for “emotional release” counts as hate under any reasonable definition of the word. Limbaugh trivializes the suffering of Iraqi civilians as badly as Rall trivialized Pat Tillman’s heroism. His comments are also, incidentally, a slur against the accused soldiers, none of whom have been so depraved as to defend their actions as “a good time.” They, at least, have insisted that the actions had a purpose–to soften up the detainees for interrogation–however warped it might have been. (Limbaugh was also inaccurate; the Skull and Bones initiation, while bizarre, is apparently light on physical cruelty.)
Thus far, however, his remarks have been met with silence on the right, which has indulged Limbaugh for years. If lack of condemnation is really the equivalent of approval, then the complicity of the right in Limbaugh’s bile is overwhelming. There have been no calls for radio stations to cancel Limbaugh, as Sullivan called for newspapers to drop Rall’s comic. Sullivan lightly mocked Limbaugh’s comments, but did not call for him to be taken off the radio. Ramesh Ponnuru came closest to mustering some genuine criticism on National Review’s website, where he managed to summon up a sort of decaffeinated outrage: “It was a tough line [Limbaugh] was trying to walk,” Ponnuru wrote. “But when he ended up comparing the abuse to a fraternity initiations ritual, I’m afraid he fell on the wrong side of it.” You don’t say!
Part of the reluctance to criticize Limbaugh may stem from his prominence in conservative politics; in terms of influence, Limbaugh, with his 20 million listeners, is an immeasurably more significant figure than Rall, whose cartoon reaches a paltry 140 newspapers, only some of which print any given strip (compared to 1,400 newspapers daily for Doonesbury). His prominence–and, indeed, the power he wields with the right-wing base–may help explain why conservatives repeatedly let Limbaugh off the hook. But it’s also why his comments are even more deserving of outrage than Rall’s. After all, Ted Rall is a pretty minor figure; Rush Limbaugh isn’t. Both men said repulsive things this week. If one is beyond the limits of acceptable political discourse, then surely the other is, too. It would be nice to see a conservative, any conservative, acknowledge that.
It’s certainly true that Limbaugh is prominent. The vice president just went on his show a couple of weeks ago. He was married by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Why, he was chosen to receive the prestigious “Statesmanship Award” from the Claremont Institute last year.
On November 21 the Claremont Institute will honor Rush Limbaugh with our Statesmanship Award. One of our heroes, Abraham Lincoln, frequently reminded his countrymen that “our government rests in public opinion.” Few Americans in recent memory have done more on a daily basis to sustain and invigorate a healthy public opinion in this country than Mr. Limbaugh, known fondly to us all as “Rush.”
In an overwhelmingly liberal media, Rush has brought to unprecedented millions of listeners a conservative point of view, year in and year out, on virtually every significant issue, trenchantly, intelligently, wittily, and inimitably. The buoyancy and optimism that infuse all of Rush’s commentary, the unfailing good cheer in a good cause that uplifts the spirits of conservative millions every day, are reminiscent of the irrepressible spirit of the man whose life we gather here annually to celebrate, Sir Winston Churchill.
There could be few more eloquent testimonies to the success of Mr. Limbaugh in broadening and strengthening conservative public opinion in America than the deep fear and loathing he inspires among big-government, politically correct, blame-America-first liberals. Few if any since Ronald Reagan have had the honor of being more doggedly hated and feared by America’s liberal elite than Rush Limbaugh. And the reasons are the same?Rush’s staunch opposition to liberal cultural tyranny and tax and spend government, and his unblushing conviction that America is a good and great country that does not need the permission of the United Nations to defend itself against its enemies.
In recent months, wealthy liberals have launched a multimillion dollar campaign in the desperate — and need one say, fruitless — effort to create a “Limbaugh of the Left.” More recently the same liberals have, of course, been publicly licking their unseemly chops at Rush’s widely publicized personal setbacks.
All the more reason, we say, for friends and fans of Rush to come together to welcome him back to the good fight, honor him for his remarkable contributions, and wish him many more years of broadcasting the conservative truth “across the fruited plains.”
Please join the Claremont Institute as we honor Rush with our Statesmanship Award for the service he has done our country as a leading voice of American conservatism.
Unfortunately, Rush was able to attend after all because the news broke that he was under investigation for money laundering and his lawyer advised him to go to rehab for his drug adiction immediately. Luckily, they were able to find a worthy replacement:
The Claremont Institute announced Wednesday that Rush Limbaugh will not be in attendance at the Institute’s annual Churchill Dinner on Friday, Nov. 21, 2003.
The Institute announced that Dr. William J. Bennett, recently appointed Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute, will deliver the keynote address at the event.
(Here’s a chance to take a Claremont institute Cruise with Bennett and half the masthead of National Review. Bring seasickness remedies.)
In case anyone thinks that Rush is on the outs with mainstream conservatives because he is a drug addict, he was welcomed back into the fold just last month to screams of adulation that Justin Timberlake would envy (if he were a balding, cretinous right wing blowhard):
Friday, March 19, 2004 10:40 a.m. EST
NewsMax.com’s Wes Vernon reports that top radio talker Rush Limbaugh wowed the Media Research Center with a surprise appearance at yesterday’s awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.
He was not on the program, but the audience in a huge hotel ballroom knew Rush Limbaugh was about to appear on stage when they heard his familiar radio theme song.
The occasion was the Media Research Center?s annual Dishonor Awards, held each year to spotlight grossly biased, inaccurate and downright wacky statements by the so-called “mainstream media,” or “partisan media,” as the famous talker prefers to call them.
Limbaugh castigated the elite media regarding a huge example of bias just within the last few days.
Taking note of the arrest of accused Saddam spy Susan Lindauer, Rush recalled that her resume includes four Democrat officeholders and several jobs with “the partisan media.”
“And all they could emphasize was that she was something like the 13th cousin of [White House aide Andy Card],” he lamented, “even though Card and Lindauer hadn?t seen each other in years.”
What set him off on the “partisan media” recently, Rush said, was the way South Florida news outlets had treated his well-publicized case where a Democrat prosecutor is singling him out on charges of “doctor shopping” in his pursuit of painkillers – the result of a years-long back pain problem.
Referring to the Palm Beach Post as the “newsletter” for Palm Beach prosecutors, the man regarded as a broadcast icon by 20 million-plus listeners revealed an “editorial” meeting he had with the newspaper editors.
He complained that other prominent figures in the area had been given a pass when they became reliant on painkillers, while the prosecutor went after him, largely as a result of e-mails received from Rush-haters. He cited reports from conservative news sources and interviews his lawyer had had with Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough.
“We don?t recognize the partisan media,” the editors responded.
By stubbornly refusing to recognize any news source other than those blessed by the liberal establishment, Limbaugh said, the editors were in essence regurgitating what has been heard in elitist newsrooms for years: “Facts don’t matter.”
Henceforth, said the top talker, he will not acknowledge that these establishment outlets are “mainstream,” a concession conservatives have been willing to make until now.
They are, he told his wildly cheering audience, “the partisan media.”
“Up until the last 15 or 20 years, they had ‘a virtual monopoly’ on deciding what is and what is not ‘news,'” he explained.
President Bush, according to Limbaugh, has found out that there is little point in trying to “get along with them. They hate his guts,” even more than they hated Reagan, “and that is saying something.”
The Democrats, the surprise guest proclaimed, “care more about whether Europeans like them than they care about terrorists who want to kill us.”
And don’t let them tell you they’re compassionate, he warned. “Just try disagreeing with them and see how far you get.”
In the world of the left, Rush believes, politics is about seeking power “to rule other people,” whereas conservatives seek to “give power back to the people.”
Dizzying, isn’t it?
And just so nobody gets the idea that the MRC “Dishonor Awards” are some fringe event rather than a mainstream conservative funfest, here’s Brent Bozell’s re-cap (pdf) from last years awards:
Nominees for each category were selected by the senior staff at the MRC, who combed through our massive archives to find 2002’s most biased quotes. The quotes were placed into five categories and provided to a distinguished group of 14 judges that included Rush Limbaugh,William F. Buckley, Jr., Robert Novak, Michael Reagan and William Rusher,among others. The judges voted for a winner and two runners-up in each cate-gory and, the “winners”were announced at the DisHonors. As a fun touch, we invite a top conservative leader to “accept” theaward on behalf of thewinner. More than 900 conservatives from around thecountry attended this year’s Dishonors and participants were a literal who’s who of the conservative movement. Sean Hannity, the co-host of FoxNews’ Hannity & Colmes; Laura Ingraham, the host of the country’s third-highest rated conservative radio talkshow; and Anne Coulter, the best-selling author of Slander: Liberal Lies About the America Right,were our Presenters. Rich Lowry of National Review, Steve Moore of The Club for Growth, Judge Robert Bork, author Mona Charen and the Washington Times’ Tony Blankley were our Accepters.
I don’t know if the SCLM routinely hangs out at snotty insider awards dinners with Ted Rall, but maybe they ought to start. This kind of sophomoric Mean Girls bitchiness shouldn’t just be confined to fun loving kooks like Buckley Novak and Bork.
Until our side gets it together and learns to embrace every left wing wacko like he or she is the reincarnatiuon of Bob Hope, in the spirit of public disavowelment for everyone, I suggest we write some letters to Judge Robert Bork, the man who appeared on Larry King and denounced President Clinton as morally unfit for office because he participated in a “depraved sexual act” and ask him whether he agrees with his good friend, the mainstream Rush Limbaugh, that those MP’s at Abu Ghraib were just blowing off steam and getting a needed “emotional release.”
Then we’ll call Gary Bauer, James Dobson and Jerry Fallwell.
Via Ezra Klein, I read that John Kerry has formed a rapid response operation. This is one way for blog readers to get involved in the campaign. If you have time to read my scratchings at work, you have time to write a letter. (And it’s a good way to look busy when somebody walks by….)
Kevin Drum discusses the sickening new pictures in The Washington Post as well as an interview with Sy Hersh in which he mentions the strange choice of General Miller to “clean up” the abuses as Abu Ghraib:
“HERSH: No, look, I don’t want to ruin your evening, but the fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.
One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it’s very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.”
Just as reminder, I posted about this a few days ago:
“One of the five Britons recently returned to the UK from Guantanamo Bay has claimed that he was subjected to cruel and sadistic treatment by US authorities.
Jamal al Harith, from Manchester, told the Daily Mirror today that detainees of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta had to face frequent beatings, prolonged periods of isolation and traumatic psychological torture.
The 37-year-old was held at Guantanamo Bay for just over two years after coalition forces brought about the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan. The divorced father-of-three said that the behaviour of prison guards was a deliberate affront to Islam and exacted to offend and terrorise the detainees.
Jamal told the Daily Mirror: ‘The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture – bruises heal after a week – but the other stuff stays with you.’
Mr al Harith said that religious practises were often disrupted or even banned in order to punish and antagonise prisoners.
The most extreme of these claims centres around how guards would bring prostitutes into the camp to pose naked in front of prisoners, who were used to veiled women, and counter to Islamic practice.
He said: ‘It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend – and we would shout it out around the whole block”
If there is even a modicum of truth to this, the choice of Miller to head up the prisons in Iraq after the torture debacle is so completely insane that it may be the straw that breaks Rummy’s back.
Josh Marshall has more — according to the Taguba report there is good reason to believe this is true.
Promising a broader investigation, the U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that two guards at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had been disciplined over allegations of prisoner abuse.
[…]
Military officials were still investigating the three cases, which had not been submitted to a court, and whether any other complaints of prisoner abuse had been made.
The revelations came as Guantanamo’s former commander, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, apologized Wednesday for the “illegal or unauthorized acts” committed by U.S. soldiers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Photographs showed Iraqi prisoners being abused by smiling American guards at the notorious Saddam Hussein-era prison.
Miller has taken charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq. He was the commander of Guantanamo from October 2002 to March 2004 and has said he was able to increase the amount of valuable intelligence tips gleaned from detainees during interrogations.
The hard-nosed general attributed the success to a system of rewards given to detainees and said officials were working to make the detainees’ incarceration more comfortable.
[…]
Criticism from human rights groups lessened when the detainees were moved into their permanent cells but spiked again after a rash of suicide attempts. There have been at least 34 suicide attempts since the mission began in January 2001.
Marshall points out the differences between Gitmo and its allegedly hardened terrorists and the average Joes who are being “liberated” indefinitely in Iraqi prisons, but the wanton disregard for any kind of rule of law in the WOT is the root cause of all these problems. General Hard Nose is the last guy who should be anywhere near a prison right now.
And, just to end the day on an up note, Hersh also had this to say on O’Reilly:
I can tell you just from the phone calls I’ve had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn’t want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women’s section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It’s much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.
Tom Friedman: “We were hit on 9/11 by people who believed hateful ideas ideas too often endorsed by some of their own spiritual leaders and educators back home. We cannot win a war of ideas against such people by ourselves. Only Arabs and Muslims can. What we could do –and this was the only legitimate rationale for this war — was try to help Iraqis create a progressive context in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world where that war of ideas could be fought out.
But it is hard to partner with someone when you become so radioactive no one wants to stand next to you. We have to restore some sense of partnership with the world if we are going to successfully partner with Iraqis.”
[…]
This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all.
That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — today, not tomorrow or next month, today. What happened in Abu Ghraib prison was, at best, a fundamental breakdown in the chain of command under Mr. Rumsfeld’s authority, or, at worst, part of a deliberate policy somewhere in the military-intelligence command of sexually humiliating prisoners to soften them up for interrogation, a policy that ran amok.
Either way, the secretary of defense is ultimately responsible, and if we are going to rebuild our credibility as instruments of humanitarian values, the rule of law and democratization, in Iraq or elsewhere, Mr. Bush must hold his own defense secretary accountable. Words matter, but deeds matter more. If the Pentagon leadership ran any U.S. company with the kind of abysmal planning in this war, it would have been fired by shareholders months ago
No, the axis-of-evil idea isn’t thought through – but that’s what I like about it. It says to these countries and their terrorist pals: “We know what you’re cooking in your bathtubs. We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do about it, but if you think we are going to just sit back and take another dose from you, you’re wrong. Meet Don Rumsfeld – he’s even crazier than you are.”
There is a lot about the Bush team’s foreign policy I don’t like, but their willingness to restore our deterrence, and to be as crazy as some of our enemies, is one thing they have right. It is the only way we’re going to get our turkey back.
Well, that worked out really well. Looks like old Rummy took Tom literally.
And this guy is considered to be one of our leading analysts of the middle east. I think it’s safe to say that after this his column is officially irrelevant and should be used exclusively as cat box filler.
Rush: In these American prisoners of war, have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes. The babes are meting out the torture. Well, I’ve just been asked if I’m surprised.
Pause for a few minutes of lubricous sound effects followed by a sigh…
You know, I could get into a lot of trouble here with this. No, part of me is not — yes, I’m surprised. I am surprised. I do not believe — I will go to my grave placing women on the pedestal of gentleness. On the surface it’s a smart move, but in real life it could be incredibly stupid, but regardless – women are tougher than — you know, we all must be honest about this. I mean, this business of weaker sex is all a bunch of trumped up stuff they teach when you you’re five years old and you end up living your whole life that way, and it’s just one big mystery that never gets solved.
A mystery you’ll never solve, that’s for sure Gordo.
One thing’s becoming crystal clear lately. Rush, with his constant references to testicle lockboxes and Feminazis and “babes” with German Shepards is a certified sexual masochist. Really. Just the day before he described this behavior as “emotional release.” Is it reasonable that anyone but a submissive slaveboy looked at those pictures and got HOT over them?
Folks, these torture pictures with the women torturers, I mean Marv Albert looking at those pictures would say, “Hey, that doesn’t look so bad.” You know, if you really look at these pictures, I mean I don’t know if it’s just me but it looks like anything you’d see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe you can get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean this is something you can see at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City: the Movie. I mean, it’s just me.
No, Rush. It isn’t just you. There are whole communities of people who can fulfill your fantasies and lots of big, mean “babes” to punish you like you need to be punished. Nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of bigmouthed, phony macho men like you need a little spanking.
But, it’s just a game, Rush.
War, on the other hand, isn’t a game. It’s a real life struggle for survival for all concerned and chickenhawk fuckheads like you need to confine your S&M fantasies to your little dittohead fan clubs.
But do say hello to Little Dick and Mistress Lynn next time you have “dinner” in the dungeon.
Via Suburban Guerrilla I find that Keith Olberman is the media hero of the week. He had Joe Wilson on and had the cojones to publicly reveal what Tweety and all the others fail to mention:
OLBERMANN: You do know that they are still going after you, right? We promoted the fact that you would be on this show tonight. Today we received three separate copies of the same e-mail with talking points from the White House, one asking a contact here “Can you please get this to the Olbermann people. Wilson is on the Olbermann show.” Misspelled my name, by the way, but that‘s neither here nor there. Another one asks one of our producers “I understand you have Mr. Wilson on. Can you please call me on this?”
Irish documentarian Jamie Doran says he has evidence of American complicity in a massacre in Afghanistan, and he’s been showing his rough footage to European leaders in the hope of preventing a coverup.
Doran, who worked at the BBC for more than seven years and has made documentaries about human rights abuses throughout the world, screened 20 minutes of his unfinished feature documentary, “Massacre at Mazar,” to the European parliament and the German parliament on Wednesday. After witnessing the screening, Andrew McEntee, former head of Amnesty International in the U.K., called for an independent investigation.
Doran has yet to release the footage to the public because he says his eyewitnesses’ identities need to be obscured for their own protection. But Doran felt he had to get some of the information out immediately because the mass graves he secretly filmed are in danger of being tampered with, which would make an independent inquiry into his film’s allegations of Northern Alliance and American war crimes impossible.
According to Doran, of the approximately 8,000 Taliban prisoners taken after the fall of Kunduz in late November 2001 to Gen. Rashid Dostum, around 5,000 are unaccounted for. He says he’s filmed eyewitnesses testifying that many of those prisoners suffocated in the metal containers used to transport them between Qala-I-Zeini fortress and Sherberghan prison, and that Northern Alliance troops fired into the containers, killing and wounding other prisoners. One witness claims that an American officer ordered the bodies dumped in the desert of Dasht-I-Leili, and that living people were taken there as well and executed. Furthermore, Doran says he has witnesses claiming to have seen American special-forces soldiers torturing prisoners who made it to Sherberghan.
I remember hearing about this film on “Democracy Now” some months ago. It could not find distribution in the US and no television station would air it. It has been seen all over the world, however, including the CBC in Canada, (which also has a lot of links to various stories and resources on this story.)
Here’s an article about it from the Global Policy Forum:
When the containers were unlocked at Sheberghan, the bodies of the dead tumbled out. A 12-man U.S. Fifth Special Forces Group unit, Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, guarded the prison’s front gates and, according to witnesses, controlled the facility in the hopes of picking key prisoners for interrogation and possible transportation to Guant?namo Bay. (This is how Lindh was singled out.) “Everything was under the control of the American commanders,” a Northern Alliance soldier tells Doran in the film. American troops searched the bodies for Al Qaeda identification cards. But, says another driver, “Some of [the prisoners] were alive. They were shot” while “maybe 30 or 40” American soldiers watched.
Members of ODA 595, interviewed for the PBS program “Frontline” on August 2, 2002, confirm their presence at Sheberghan but cagily deny participating in war crimes. “The prisoners were being treated the exact same way as Dostum’s forces were,” said master sergeant “Paul.” “I didn’t see any atrocities, but I easily could have. Some prisoners may have died because they were sick or ill, and Dostum’s forces just couldn’t give them any care because they didn’t have it.” But even General Dostum admits 200 such deaths. And the Northern Alliance soldier quoted above says U.S. troops masterminded the cover-up”: “The Americans told the Sheberghan people to get rid of them [the bodies] before satellite pictures could be taken.”
These ODA 595 Special Forces guys freely admitted being very close to General Dostum and his troops. But, they had to leave right after the massacre at Mazer al Sharif:
Yeah we eh, we were ordered out quite rapidly and without General Dostum’s knowledge. He was out of town and we got word that we were to be quickly ex-filled, to brief Mr. Rumsfeld.
We have no idea what really happened here, but there is ample evidence that the massacre itself took place. Whether Americans were involved remains unknown.
And, while this is a war crime, there is a distinction between what happened in Afghanistan to these suspected Taliban fighters and the Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib — the most obvious being that we invaded Iraq, unprovoked, on the basis of lies about “grave and gathering” threats, lies about ties to terrorists and the increasingly surreal and threadbare claim of liberation. Nonetheless, war crimes are war crimes and this was a particularly horrifying one.
And regardless of any righteousness of cause, it is the policy of “gloves off” that Bush and his testosterone addled advisors begat right after 9/11 that led inexorably to the sickening display at Abu Ghraib. There is a direct line from Mazar al Sharif to Gitmo to arcane arguments about habeus corpus before the Supreme Court to Abu Ghraib and it began with the puerile warcry that afternoon on top of Ground Zero when our president called for bloodlust instead of strength and wisdom.
I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon.
With that level of statesmanship and leadership, what did we expect?