Category Archives: Iraq Atrocities

The signs have been clear from the start that the lion's share of the US's organized and systematized torture is by the civilians in the intelligence biz. In Iraq, their example, or pressure to emulate them, appears to have inspired those military torturers who were not simply free-lance sadists.

So far, though, it appeared that the CIA's conduct (and that of other similar agencies?) was out of bounds for a discussion which focused on the uniformed services. Perhaps, though, the ice is cracking.

C.I.A. Expands Its Inquiry Into Interrogation Tactics: Former intelligence officials say that lawyers from the C.I.A. and the Justice Department have been involved in intensive discussions in recent months to review the legal basis for some extreme tactics used at those secret centers, including “waterboarding,” in which a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned.

…

It has been known that, after the abuses at Abu Ghraib were disclosed, the Justice Department abandoned some legal opinions written in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks that had been used as the basis for the broad latitude allowed interrogators in using extreme procedures against suspected Qaeda detainees. In recent months, government lawyers said the legal opinions were too broad and were being rewritten to restrict the harshest interrogation measures.

The broader inspector general investigation into the agency's involvement in detention and intelligence in Iraq since May 2003 was ordered in May by George J. Tenet, who was then director of central intelligence. But additional questions about the C.I.A.'s practices center on a small number of high-level suspected Qaeda detainees being held by the agency outside Iraq in undisclosed locations around the world.

The C.I.A. has already scaled back some coercive methods used against detainees, although officials would not discuss specific techniques. Agency officials have demanded advance Justice Department approval for each tactic used against detainees and a new legal analysis of federal laws on the subject, including a statute that makes it a felony for American officials, including C.I.A. employees, to engage in torture.

One seminal document repudiated by the government was an August 2002 memo by the Justice Department. It concluded that interrogators could use extreme techniques on detainees in the effort to prevent terrorism.

Unfortunately, the NYT article also suggests that the CIA is seeking, or using, torture to question Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a “high-level Al Qaeda suspect”.

Some of the most evil regimes have cloaked their vilest acts with a blizzard of paperwork and legality. Let's not end up like them.

Rumsfeld in the NYT

“I have not seen anything thus far that says that the people abused were abused in the process of interrogating them or for interrogation purposes.” A transcript of the interview was posted on the Pentagon's Web site on Friday. Mr. Rumsfeld repeated the assertion a few hours later at a news conference in Phoenix, adding that “all of the press, all of the television thus far that tried to link the abuse that took place to interrogation techniques in Iraq has not yet been demonstrated.” After an aide slipped him a note during the news conference, however, Mr. Rumsfeld corrected himself, noting that an inquiry by three Army generals had, in fact, found “two or three” cases of abuse during interrogations or the interrogations process. In fact, however, the Army inquiry found that 13 of 44 instances of abuse involved interrogations or the interrogation process, an Army spokeswoman said.

OK, how do we explain this repeated lapse on the part of a supposedly hands-on detailed-oriented man?

• Couldn't care less about torture
• Deep denial, perhaps fueled by spread of 'war crimes trial' meme [I am not making this last part up]
• Yes-men (and women) surrounding him never briefed him on the abuses at any time
• Knows about abuses but ordered cover-up (why else send Sanchez to do intial report?) and no one dared tell him it failed
• Is past his sell-by date

One slip of the tongue I could believe. But more than one, and so wrong on basic facts, about one of the most serious issues facing the Pentagon today?

Whatever it is, it's quite serious.

I've suggested before that the folks who blew the whistle about the abuses in Iraq deserve a medal.

Well, instead of medals, what at least one of them is getting is death threats — threats serious enough for the Army to place Joe Darby and his wife in a secure undisclosed location. I've take the liberty of quoting more than I usually do; I hope author Wil S. Hylton and GQ magazine will forgive me. (That said, you really should read the whole article.):

They shut him up. Fast. You never even saw him. No footage of him coming off the plane, no flags or banners waving, no parade in his honor. He came home from Iraq in May, but there wasn't even a formal announcement. In fact, you're not supposed to know he's here.

He lives in a secret location. It might be just down the street, or it might be halfway to nowhere. Maybe he was sitting at the next table last night, having dinner right beside you. You have no way of knowing: Nobody knows what he looks like. …

… He's been under a gag order for three months.

First the media drove Darby's wife out of her home. Then danger from the neighbors drove her into hiding.

Meanwhile, why can't Darby talk to the press? One reason may be that he knows just how bad the horrors were at Abu Ghraib — and as yet no one has gone on the record to confirm them…

Continue reading →

This item, by a soldier recently returned from Iraq, is upsetting on many levels:

Better Angels of our Nature: Over the Bridge: On January 2 of this year, a team of soldiers in my brigade stopped a couple of Iraqis near the town of Samarra. We were engaging in counterinsurgency operations there, trying to stabilize the town so the area could begin to recover and rebuild from the rigors of war. And on that day, one of the men I knew and had worked with, CPT Eric Paliwoda, lost his life during a mortar attack.

Four soldiers stopped two Iraqis. In the passion of war, on a day marred by anger and tragedy, the two Iraqis ended up getting thrown off a bridge. The bridge in question was, if I recall correctly, about 15 feet above the Tigris. The river, at that point, was about 6 feet deep.

That much we know; that much is beyond dispute. Beyond that, everything is in dispute. A man may or may not have died—the soldiers claim he lives, the other man who was flung into the waters says he met a watery doom.

But there is one other thing that I haven't mentioned yet that is also beyond a doubt. No matter what happened on that bridge, the soldiers were ordered to lie about it. And they were ordered to lie about it not just by their team leader, but by the entire leadership of their unit, from their company commander all the way up to their battalion commander.

How do we know this? Because at the Article 32 hearing only 2 weeks ago, their commanders, under grant of immunity, said so.

It's wrong it should happen. It's wrong it should be covered up. It is very very wrong that the investigators should give immunity to the high-ranking officers in order to get evidence against the low-ranking ones and the grunts (isn't it supposed to work the other way? Prosecutors get cooperation from the low-ranking members of the conspiracy to get the leaders?)

There's more in this post besides what I quoted, which discusses the more general context in which these things happen, and that's upsetting too.

Ghastly Abu Ghraib photos at The Memory Hole (via The Yin Blog).