Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 39, May 10, 2004

Subscribe

Change Address

Unsubscribe

Comment
by John Nordin
Iraq
This week we take a look at some aspects of the Iraqi prisoner abuse issue. But first, some easy fun ...

Rush Limbaugh: "All right, so we're at war with these people. And they're in a prison where they're being softened up for interrogation. And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it's pretty thoughtful. Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation ... Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got physically injured. But boy there was a lot of humiliation of people who are trying to kill us."

And again: "... here we have these pictures of homoeroticism that look like standard good old American pornography, the Britney Spears or Madonna concerts or whatever, and yet the Libs upset about the mistreatment of these prisoners thought nothing of sitting back while mass graves were being filled with three to 500,000 Iraqis during the Saddam Hussein regime.

And from the day before: "I think a lot of the American culture is being feminized. I think the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country."

From his May 5 and 6 radio shows.

From May 7th: "The objective is to soften them up for interrogation later, later on. As I said, there was no horror, there was no terror there was no death, there was no injuries, nothing. And given the profound fear of these jihadists and these prisoners, if you confront them with that fear, if you humiliate them that way, it might open them up."
Just in case you think there are only a 'few bad eggs' who defend this. But wait, maybe its all because we have women in the armed forces....

Ann Coulter: "I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation.

I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious." Stated on Fox News, Hannity & Colmes, May 5.
Now on to other aspects of the unfolding drama
Torture, Abuse or Fraternity Prank
The names we give things matter, there is a world of difference between 'guerilla' and 'freedom fighter.' And so most of the U.S. media refers to what happened in Abu Gharib as 'abuse.' Most of the rest of the world's media, it appears, calls it 'torture.' And some right wing commentators in the US seek terms like 'fraternity prank,' to diminish the impact. With the latest round of photos, I notice some signs of cracking in US media and the "t word" is being flirted with. It's understandable that they refrain from using it: America's self-image of us as morally different than all other nations puts up a very high barrier to us seeing ourselves as a nation that might torture people. "We don't do that."
In some cases, prisoners were "attached repeatedly over several days, for several hours each time, with handcuffs to the bars of their cell door in humiliating (i.e., naked or in underwear) and/or uncomfortable position, causing physical pain."

In other cases, prisoners were "forced to remain for prolonged periods in stress positions, such as squatting or standing with or without the arms lifted." Reports the Red Cross.
Close enough to torture for me.
Humiliation

Rush is right about one thing, humiliation is a key to understanding this event.

"However, the more potent symbol goes beyond the Iraqi situation to remind us that we Arabs are a nation without dignity. Had George Bush and Tony Blair not been certain of our passivity as Arabs, no American or British soldier would have dared undress any Iraqi detainee to beat them up with a broom, while another soldier urinated on them." Ahmad Amorabi, Al-Bayan, newspaper from the United Arab Emirates, quoted in Vancouver Globe and Mail, May 6, p. A17.

Note how the image carries a meaning beyond the humiliation of an individual Iraqi - it is an icon for the 'passivity' the Arabs feel at being helpless to control their own fate: they cannot control Palestinian territory or how that struggle is represented in US media, they cannot control the oil under their lands, and, to be sure, they cannot control their own autocratic governments. It has been noted that while hardly any Arabs supported Saddam, many Arabs did enjoy that he stood up to the United States and gave the US problems. No other Arab leader was able to do that. Through Saddam they took a measure of self-respect, twisted and ultimately damaging as it was.

That's why, I'd suspect, that even if the prisoners we are abusing are people who abused Iraqi's (and that does NOT appear to be the case), ordinary Iraqi's feel a strong identification with the abused victims.
A few bad eggs?
An important part of the spin on this even has to do with attempting to see it as "an aberration," the result of some "badly trained" soldiers, a "few bad eggs" who "got out of control." Others see this as part of a pattern - the abuse was the result of following orders, not of disobeying orders. I am not sure how widely this problem goes, or how high up the decisions were made, but there is some evidence that suggests it was not just "a few bad eggs."
"In certain cases, such as in Abu Ghraib military intelligence section, methods of physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel to obtain confessions and extract information," observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross found.

I also think it is interesting - and largely unremarked - that changes to the interrogation rules have been already announced and implemented. Why would you do that if the problems occurred because people broke the rules?

It will be very interesting to see if any officers are court marshaled for this, any CIA agents, any outside contractors. It will be interesting to see if any lower level people are offered a deal for rolling on their superiors. I would fully expect the Administration to try to confine the damage to lower level soldiers.
The International Court of Justice

The Administration has refused to sign any treaty that would permit US soldiers to be subject to the International Court of Justice for any war crimes they might commit. I didn't study that question in any depth, but I thought there was at least a case to be made that the Court's rules were overbroad. However, this refusal is now feeding world paranoia.

"The US behaviour since the ouster of Saddam in Iraq is as if the Americans had been nurturing a sense of revenge against the people of Iraq for decades and they are now doing what they had always wanted to do: suppress the people of Iraq no matter what, even it meant gross violation of human rights and defiance of every international convention and laws that govern foreign military occupation of a land captured through the use of force. No doubt, Washington had foreseen situations similar to those of Iraq and hence its effort, from day one, to exclude American soldiers from the jurisdiction of the newly formed International Criminal Court and thus give them protection against trial on war crimes or crimes against humanity." Musa Keilani, in the Jordan Times, reported by the US State Department.

I doubt that Bush or anyone in the administration 'foresaw' this or planned it, but that is the way many people are going to understand it. We are the all powerful America, thus everything we do will tend to be seen as planned and purposeful, even when its not.
Contractors

A few stories have made reference to civilian contractors. Apparently, many of these are ex-military. Early references in the story also hinted at involvement of people from other nations. I haven't seen much on this recently, but it raises some interesting questions. The use of contracted agents gives the Administration a way of distancing themselves from the problem. But if it turns out that we've been using agents from less savory governments to do our dirty work for us, the uproar could get worse.
Who is responsible?

While I certainly do not like Rumsfield and his general conduct of the war on Terror, I'm not sure I want him to resign. If this was a military problem, why doesn't the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resign? No blame is circulating to him that I can see. If CIA agents ordered this and ran the interrogation, why shouldn't the head of the CIA resign? If it was civilian contractors why not have Dick Cheney, the contractor-in-chief, quit? In any case, I'd just love Rusmsfield to hang on for several months, dripping scandal, and then be forced to resign right in the middle of the real presidential race.

However, as to who should resign: since they all work for Bush, just make him quit.
Gyroscope Home