Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Method To Their Madness

Keep in mind that General Taguba estimated that more than 60% of those detained at Abu Ghraib are innocent of any crimes:

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.

The techniques devised in the system, called R2I – resistance to interrogation -match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: “It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn’t know what they were doing.”

He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.

“There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends”.

Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan “prolong the shock of capture”, he said.

Female guards were used to taunt male prisoners sexually and at British training sessions when female candidates were undergoing resistance training they would be subject to lesbian jibes.

“Most people just laugh that off during mock training exercises, but the whole experience is horrible. Two of my colleagues couldn’t cope with the training at the time. One walked out saying ‘I’ve had enough’, and the other had a breakdown. It’s exceedingly disturbing,” said the former Special Boat Squadron officer, who asked that his identity be withheld for security reasons.

Many British and US special forces soldiers learn about the degradation techniques because they are subjected to them to help them resist if captured. They include soldiers from the SAS, SBS, most air pilots, paratroopers and members of pathfinder platoons.

A number of commercial firms which have been supplying interrogators to the US army in Iraq boast of hiring former US special forces soldiers, such as Navy Seals.

“The crucial difference from Iraq is that frontline soldiers who are made to experience R2I techniques themselves develop empathy. They realise the suffering they are causing. But people who haven’t undergone this don’t realise what they are doing to people. It’s a shambles in Iraq”.

The British former officer said the dissemination of R2I techniques inside Iraq was all the more dangerous because of the general mood among American troops.

“The feeling among US soldiers I’ve spoken to in the last week is also that ‘the gloves are off’. Many of them still think they are dealing with people responsible for 9/11”.

When the interrogation techniques are used on British soldiers for training purposes, they are subject to a strict 48-hour time limit, and a supervisor and a psychologist are always present. It is recognised that in inexperienced hands, prisoners can be plunged into psychosis.

The spectrum of R2I techniques also includes keeping prisoners naked most of the time. This is what the Abu Ghraib photographs show, along with inmates being forced to crawl on a leash; forced to masturbate in front of a female soldier; mimic oral sex with other male prisoners; and form piles of naked, hooded men.

The full battery of methods includes hooding, sleep deprivation, time disorientation and depriving prisoners not only of dignity, but of fundamental human needs, such as warmth, water and food.

Unless there is a ticking goddamned nuclear bomb in the basement of the White House, there is not even a tiny shred of an excuse for this shit.

The happiest man on the planet today is Osama bin Laden. He kisses a picture of Teresa Lapore every night before he goes to sleep, thanking Allah for sending her to put the dumbest assholes in the world into the White House.

The Smirking Jezebels From The Appalachians

Tory wierdo Boris Johnson coined the above phrase in his now infamous apologia for supporting the war. It’s facile and silly, but it made me realize that the two most vivid symbols of the war are two 21 year-old female soldiers from West Virginia — Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England — one blond, one brunette, one the embodiment of American goodness, the other the hated representive of America’s dark side.

It appears that the line between good and evil can run right down the center of one little state — a little state that was created during the civil war when those appalachians refused to join the confederacy. Perhaps it is, and always been, the beating heart of America, warts and all.

Thorough Investigations:

Three U.S. military policemen who served at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison said on Thursday they had witnessed unreported cases of prisoner abuse and that the practice against Iraqis was commonplace.

“It is a common thing to abuse prisoners,” said Sgt. Mike Sindar, 25, of the Army National Guard’s 870th Military Police Company based in the San Francisco Bay area. “I saw beatings all the time.

“A lot of people had so much pent-up anger, so much aggression,” he said. Sindar and the other military policemen, who have returned to California from Iraq, spoke in interviews with Reuters.

[…]

Although public attention has focused on the dehumanizing photos, some members of the 870th MP unit say the faces in those images were not the only ones engaged in cruel behavior.

“It was not just these six people,” said Sindar, the group’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons specialist. “Yes, the beatings happen, yes, all the time.”

[…]

Until earlier this year prisoners would arrive at Abu Ghraib with broken bones, suggesting they had been roughed up, he said. But the practice ended in January or February, as practices at the prison were coming under increased internal scrutiny.

Photos obtained by Reuters show U.S. soldiers looking into body bags of three Iraqi prisoners killed by 870th MP guards during a prison riot in the fall of 2003. One photograph shows a bearded man with much of his bloodied forehead removed by the force of a bullet.

“We were constantly being attacked, we had terrible support … also being extended all the time, a lot of us had problems with our loved ones suffering from depression,” said another of the military policemen, Spc. Dave Bischel. “It all contributes to the psychological component of soldiers when they get stressed.”

The Californians’ remarks were unusual, as U.S. soldiers have been reluctant to speak out in public on the issue.

Some say investigators went out of their way to keep the allegations under wraps. When military investigators were looking into abuses several months ago, they gave U.S. guards a week’s notice before inspecting their possessions, several soldiers said.

“That shows you how lax they are about discipline. ‘We are going to look for contraband in here, so hint, hint, get rid of the stuff,’ that’s the way things work in the Guard,” Leal said.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Jacob Weisberg has a fascinating piece up at Slate called, The Misunderestimated Man – How Bush chose stupidity:

Bush’s assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush’s case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.

Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, “Smart comes in all kinds of different ways.” The president’s way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.

What’s more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn’t laugh at FDR because he couldn’t walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can’t talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush’s bond to the masses.

But if “numskull” is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

The most obvious expression of Bush’s choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad’s spear-chucker in Washington, he didn’t understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn’t get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn’t absorb anything from them. Bush’s ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public.

There’s more good stuff about his little Oedipal issue and the fact that he really is the laziest bastard to ever become president.

I maintain that the biggest insult the Republicans have ever pulled — and I’m including that bodice ripping romance novel they called The Starr Report — was to put this unqualified manchild in charge of the world.

They Should Be Grateful

From the previously mentioned Inhofe appearance on Chris Matthews yesterday:

JAMES INHOFE: … Let‘s look at this prison.

No. 1, this is one prison out of 26. No. 2, this is the same prison where Saddam Hussein was torturing people in an indescribable way, far worse than any abuses that took place in these pictures.

We‘re talking about drilling holes in their hands. We‘re talking about electrocuting people. We‘re talking about just dropping their bodies, half their bodies into acid. You know, things that are really serious.

Now if were an Iraqi and I went through what they said they went through, I would say to myself, That‘s not nearly as bad as if we had been here when Saddam was in charge.

They were letting off steam, Chris! Just a little ‘o that Deliverance style “sooooooey” action. They were damned lucky they didn’t get their hands drilled, for cying out loud.

Gotta run Chris. I’m late for the National Day of Prayer invitational Broomstick Slam. Thanks for having me.

Vote the liberals out of office. You will be doing the Lord’s work, and he will richly bless you. James Inhofe

Good Riddance

I think that the single most egregious mistake that Bush has made in his presidency (among many egregious mistakes) is continuously asserting that we are “better” as a people than “the enemy,” whom they have never adequately defined. His vaunted “moral clarity” continues to be nothing more that a puerile appeal to emotion that has done much more harm than good. Historically, nations have always done this, but in this age of global media, it is a very bad idea. It’s much too easy for pictures and words to make their way around the world in seconds to contradict such assertions and destroy our credibility. As Bush himself says repeatedly, “it’s a different kinda war” and indeed it is. It is much more a war of ideas than a war of military conquest. If there was ever a time when we needed someone with highly developed communication skills, it was now. Unfortunately, we were saddled with someone who speaks in the most simplistic terms possible and it is blowing back on us now.

Immediately after 9/11, Bush’s braintrust framed this War On Terrorism as between “good ‘n evil,” “us ‘n them” — exactly as bin Laden did. Instead of using reason, strength and good will to continue the solidarity the world felt toward America after 9/11, we reacted like a hurt child, lashing out with inchoate rage at virtually everyone, all the while screaming about our superior characters. (We even went after the Europeans for Christ’s sake.)

Had we emphasized our institutions and traditions rather than our alleged goodness, we might be able to get past this awful moment of Abu Ghreib by showcasing a system that resists brute power and religious judgments of character in favor of blind justice. Their scramble now to investigate and fact-find again completely rings hollow because we rested our entire argument on the character of Americans in contrast to everyone else. Our credibility is in shreds.

There were essentially three stated reasons for invading Iraq. The first was because Saddam had WMD. The second was because Saddam had ties to terrorists. The third was because Saddam tortured and terrorized his own people.

There are no WMD. There never were any terrorist ties. And by consciously undermanning the “liberation” we created the circumstances that have led to sweeps of innocent Iraqi people who are then dragged into a prison system with no due process and are systematically tortured — by us, not Saddam. No decent person can believe that it is moral to “pre-emptively” invade a country and do such things in the name of liberation and our superior “goodness” as a people.

Now, I’m not saying that Americans are a bad people. We’re just people, comprising the full range of human character from saint to psychopath. So are the Iraqis and so is every other tribe. That is why we have government in the first place. It’s hard to tell who’s bad or good and it’s not enough to simply assert that one group is and one isn’t. We need systems and institutions to sort these things out in the most perfect way we can find and those systems and institutions are imperfect indeed. If we ever had a strength in America, a source of pride and superiority, it was that we put our trust in the rule of law not men.

And that is precisely the opposite of what our president has been saying. He’s said “trust us” because we are good. We don’t need to provide any explanations or adhere to any laws, treaties or agreements because the character of our people doesn’t require it. And that is why these pictures are being greeted around the world with both horror and glee. The president of the United States has been holding out the moral superiority of the American people as justification for flouting all laws and conventions and we’ve just been slapped in the face with the truth. Americans are capable of being just as depraved as anyone else. (I would have thought that anyone over the age of 10 would already know this, but apparently not.)

Once Bush is removed from office maybe we can drop this simpleminded drivel and start speaking to the world like adults again. Fewer self-righteous sermons about being “called to bring freedom to the world” and more talk about the rule of law would be a breath of fresh air. I have a feeling we might find that people around the world are more willing to cooperate if our president doesn’t constantly lecture them about our superior moral character and instead leads on the basis of reason, law and justice. In the war of ideas, the latter is where the real firepower exists.

Silver Lining

For the first time I’m glad that Al Gore did not take office in 2000. At least Joe Lieberman is not the Vice President of the United States today.

Because, unlike Joe and his fellow Republican members of congress, I don’t believe just because Dick Cheney is the second coming of Cardinal Richelieu that having a sanctimonious, sycophantic hypocrite for Vice President would be excusable simply by comparison.

Joe, like his fellow traveller the insane Jim Inhofe, just passionately asserted that Arabs who are completely unrelated to the torture and abuse at Abu Ghrieb had done bad things to Americans at different times and places that we didn’t owe an apology to those who we tortured and abused at Abu Ghrieb. I guess I need to put out a call to Torah scholors for some guidance on that one too.

Here is the chief lecturer on morals and ethics in the Democratic Party back in 1998:

Mr. President, I have come to this floor many times in the past to speak with my colleagues about the concerns which are so widely shared in this chamber and throughout the nation that our society’s standards are sinking; that our common moral code is deteriorating and that our public life is coarsening. In doing so, I have specifically criticized leaders of the entertainment industry for the way they have used the enormous influence the wield to weaken our common values.

…it is hard to ignore the impact of the misconduct the president has admitted to on our culture, on our character and on our children.

To begin with, I must respectfully disagree with the president’s contention that his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the way in which he misled us about it is nobody’s business but his family’s and that even presidents have private lives, as he said.

[…]

The president is not just the elected leader of our country…when his personal conduct is embarrassing, it is sadly so not just for him and his family, it is embarrassing for all of us as Americans.

[…]

In this case, the president apparently had extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just inappropriate. It is immoral. And it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family — particularly to our children — which is as influential as the negative messages communicated by the entertainment culture.

[…]

This, unfortunately, is all-too-familiar territory for America’s families in today’s anything-goes culture, where sexual promiscuity is too often treated as just another lifestyle choice with little risk of adverse consequences.

[…]

The president’s relationship with Ms. Lewinsky not only contradicted the values he has publicly embraced over the last six years, it has, I fear, compromised his moral authority at a time when Americans of every political persuasion agree that the decline of the family is one of the most pressing problems we are facing.

Nevertheless, I believe the president could have lessened the harm his relationship with Ms. Lewinksy has caused if he had acknowledged his mistake and spoken with candor about it to the American people shortly after it became public in January.

[…]

But I believe that the harm the president’s actions have caused extend beyond the political arena. I am afraid that the misconduct the president has admitted may be reinforcing one of the worst messages being delivered by our popular culture, which is that values are fungible. And I am concerned that his misconduct may help to blur some of the most important bright lines of right and wrong in our society.

[…]

The last three weeks have been dominated by a cacophony of media and political voices calling for impeachment or resignation or censure, while a lesser chorus implores us to move on and get this matter behind us.

Appealing as that latter option may be to many people who are understandably weary of this crisis, the transgressions the president has admitted to are too consequential for us to walk away and leave the impression for our children today and for our posterity tomorrow that what he acknowledges he did within the White House is acceptable behavior for our nation’s leader. On the contrary, as I have said, it is wrong and unacceptable and should be followed by some measure of public rebuke and accountability.

[…]

With the nation at war with itself, President Lincoln warned, and I quote, “If there ever could be a time for mere catch arguments, that time is surely not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and eternity.”

I believe that we are at such a time again today.

We are not at such a time in 2004, however. Soldiers leading naked prisoners around on a leash, riding around on old ladies backs calling them donkeys, forcing bound prisoners to simulate anal and oral sex — things like this are not worth a righteous condemnation from the Senate Floor by our self-appointed moral conscience, Joe Lieberman. Instead, we are treated to a litany of crimes committed by Saudi Arabians on September 11th, 2001 and by a mob in Fallujah months after the torture took place as crimes for which WE deserve an apology — and therefore, by implication, it’s even steven.

By this logic, until we see some apologies from the Japanese, the Germans, the Brits and especially the French, it’s perfectly ok for us to kill as many Canadians as we want.

Just as long as nobody gets any consensual, unphotographed blow jobs. That would be immoral.

Update: Yglesias notices Joe’s new flexible morality too.

Correction: Smokin’ Joe actually said that we did owe an apology to the prisoners. However, his impassioned conflation of the torture with the unrelated events of 9/11 and Fallujah in the next breath certainly implied that there is a moral equivalence. There is, of course, if the US has lowered itself to the level of terrorists and a street mob.

Because He Isn’t

A wide variety of officials in the administration had advised Bush to apologize on Wednesday when he gave interviews to two Arab television channels and were puzzled when he did not, senior U.S. officials said. An apology had been recommended in the talking points Bush received from the State Department and elsewhere, the officials said. Senior administration aides then made a push overnight for him to say he was sorry during his news conference with Abdullah, the officials said.

Relative Indignance

I just watched the Beltway Boyz have a complete meltdown over the idea that someone would ask Rumsfeld to resign over such minor infractions as torture, abuse and the suspension of 200 years of legal precedent and international treaties. After all, as Mort indignantly cried, “This is not My Lai!” (Fred added that Stalin was much, much worse because he killed millions.) When you look at the great historical sweep of political malfeasance, depravity and corruption it is really the lowest of the low to ask for the resignation of a cabinet secretary over such a silly little thing.

Funny, I seem to remember that the Beltway Boyz and their pals were apoplectic at the alleged criminal behavior of Mike Espy who was forced to resign because he was accused (and acquitted) of taking some free football tickets. Or Henry Cisneros who was chased out of Washington for lying about how much he paid his lying mistress. But then, unlike the stoking of a firestorm of rage from the Arab world, those things were threats to the nation so they deserved to lose their political careers and face jail time and millions of dollars worth of legal fees.

Now, I’m hearing James Inhofe, a very religious man, making the moral argument on Hardball that nobody dropped anyone into acid like Saddam did in that very same prison, so let’s not get carried away with our condemnation of Americans. “Compared to what they do to us, it’s a picnic.” (Any ideas about what they’re doing to us?) He did go out of his way to say that he “didn’t approve” of the behavior of those bad apples before he waved around an Ahmad Chalabi special report from 1992 that says bin Laden was good friends with Saddam.

I’m once again struck by the moral surety of these religious Republicans who don’t seem to be upset by the deviant behavior graphically shown in these pictures and who don’t seem worried in the least about how they are going to explain it to their children. It seems like only yesterday that every other word from their mouths was “deplorable,” “reprehensible,” “despicable,” “disgusting,” and ” “revolting,” as they relayed their shock and horror at the stunning news of a 50 year old man having an affair with a young woman in his office. If I recall correctly, this was considered to be an act of such depravity that they didn’t know how the nation could survive if the perpetrator wasn’t removed from office.

But, somehow, pictures of a young soldier pointing gleefully to a naked, hooded prisoner forced to masturbate on camera only elicits a mild “disapproval.” Anyone have some clues where I might find an explnation of this in Senator Inhofe’s Baptist Bible or Freddie Barnes’s Episcopal prayerbook, because I’m finding it awfully difficult to understand?

Voyeur Nation

Billmon says:

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.