Democratizing
The World: One Torture Victim At A Time
By Jason Miller
24 March, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Analysis of the Long, Repulsive History of the United States Inflicting
Torture on Its "Suspected Enemies" (in Conjunction with a
Review of A
Question of Torture by Alfred W. McCoy)
Psychological
torture, sleep deprivation, brutality, severe sexual humiliation, and
murder summon visions of a dank dungeon in a remote region of pre-invasion
Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, replete with evil inquisitors and hooded
executioners. However, those manifestations of horror did not spring
forth from the Axis of Evil. They are actually drawn from official post-9/11
US policy. Despite its fabled commitment to human rights, the United
States government has been committing and enabling acts of torture for
half a century. Not even Superman had the power to snatch “Truth,
Justice and the American Way” from the crushing jaws of imperialistic
ambition and avarice.
Ironically titled, Albert
McCoy’s A
Question of Torture probes and exposes the extent of “the
Land of the Free’s” involvement in human torture over the
years. Only a mainstream media 90% controlled by five major corporations
(whose executives and major stockholders are amongst the de facto rulers
of the America’s so-called republic) could so effectively maintain
the illusion that the United States is the world leader in protecting
human rights. Somewhere out there, David Copperfield is burning with
envy. Rest easy, David. They are running out of magic. Destroying our
Constitution and reversing the humanitarian gains achieved by millions
of Americans with a social conscience throughout our nation’s
history , the Bush Regime is extinguishing the candle of hope America
once offered to humanity. Despite the exhaustive efforts of the media
handmaidens, people are taking notice.
Painstakingly slow
ascent....high velocity decline
From our nation’s birth,
many fine Americans labored vigorously to attain a higher moral plane
by ending slavery and advancing the rights of children, minorities,
women, and workers. Contrary to the fairy tale of America’s benevolent
government “of the people”, many amongst the plutocracy
and emerging corporatocracy fought the American evolution of human rights
tooth and nail. Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and company have taken that resistance
to new heights and are plunging the United States into an abyss of evil,
at home and abroad. Minority Americans, Native Americans, and citizens
of other nations have been aware of this descent for years, even before
the Neocon catalyzed acceleration. However, as the ruthlessly brazen
disciples of Strauss have fervently attacked human rights, many amongst
America's indoctrinated White working class are smelling the coffee,
and it is not the best part of waking up.
On March 8, 2006, the US
State Department released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
for 2005, in which it detailed human rights abuses occurring in over
190 nations. In an act of supreme hypocrisy, they excluded themselves.
As one can readily discern simply from reading McCoy's expose' of human
torture committed by the United States since 1950, the United States
is far from being a bastion
of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".
"Torture is evil, pure
and simple," is the powerful lesson Peggy Piel imparted to her
son, Alfred McCoy. Having spent a year of her childhood in Nazi Germany,
this erudite Jewish American knew a bit about the subject of torture.
Despite his mother's moralistic viewpoint, McCoy penned his examination
of the history of torture committed and facilitated by the United States
in a detached, analytical manner, without imposing a moral judgment.
Noting over 30 pages of sources, McCoy meticulously researched his chilling
glimpse into America's Heart of Darkness, yet still maintained relative
objectivity. No easy task in light of the virtually countless egregious
violations of human rights and acts of murder committed by the American
Empire and its proxies.
Abu Gharib was simply
a sign of a "few bad apples"....
or was it?
In 1950, the intelligence
organization of the “leader of the free world” began to
take a strong interest in research involving psychological torture.
McCoy summarizes:
“From 1950 to 1962,
the CIA became involved in torture through a massive mind-control effort,
with psychological warfare and secret research into human consciousness
that reached a cost of a billion dollars annually—a veritable
Manhattan Project of the mind.”
While the United States was
trumpeting its deep devotion to universal human rights, the CIA was
busily developing and funding research to yield “new and improved”
torture tactics with which they could extract information from Cold
War enemies. Utilizing its unique capacity to wield tremendous power
clandestinely, the United States’ intelligence juggernaut infiltrated
and exploited hospitals, divisions of the military, and universities
to enable its research.
Many of the nauseating acts
of inhumanity depicted in the Abu Gharib photos reflect the rotten fruits
of CIA labors. Years of study and experimentation determined that torture
involving physical pain lacked efficacy. The CIA found that strong subjects
usually responded by stiffening their resistance and weaker ones often
gave false information just to end the pain. Psychological torture,
including sensory deprivation, sensory disorientation, assault on personal
identity and self-inflicted pain appeared to provide a much richer yield
of information. The Abu Gharib photos are a window through which one
can view the CIA-created world of psychological torture. Hooding, stress
positions, extreme intimidation with ferocious dogs (for which a soldier
was convicted on 3/21), and sexual humiliation are recurring images
in the Abu Gharib pictures and are powerful examples of CIA torture
protocol. Other techniques of psychological torture the US military
and CIA have used on detained suspects in the “War on Terror”
are sleep deprivation, isolation, and dietary manipulation. As the Command
Responsibility report by Human Rights First indicates,
45 detainees in the US “War on Terror” have been murdered
or have died as a result of physical abuse. As McCoy argues, there is
a fine line between psychological torture and physical torture, and
as the American Gulag has demonstrated, torturers usually cross that
line.
As an aside, it is important
to remember that there are currently over 14,000 “suspected terrorists”
or “enemy combatants” in US custody. These individuals have
been charged with no crime and have been denied due process. Guilty
until proven innocent. Now that is justice the American way. Abu Gharib
is only an aberration because the torturers were caught. Inflicting
severe psychological and mental anguish on suspected enemies of the
Empire is now official policy and has taken place at Bagram Air Base,
Camp Cropper, Guantanamo Bay and throughout the American Gulag. As for
the McCain Anti-Torture Law, Bush and his fellow war criminals are already
inventing ways to circumvent it.
Abu Gharib is simply a public
display of the psychological and physical torture the CIA has been implementing
and practicing for years. From 1962 to 1974, the CIA sharpened its talons
through a federal entity called the Office of Public Safety, a branch
of US AID. According to McCoy, the OPS trained one million police officers
in 47 countries. Not surprisingly, it was not long before these same
law enforcement entities began committing severe human right rights
abuses and acts of torture.
"Practice makes
perfect"
It was morally repugnant
enough that the United States killed three million Vietnamese civilians
in their imperialistic escapade into Southeast Asia, euphemistically
labeling them as “collateral damage”. However, McCoy describes
torture policies and techniques which resulted in the murder of tens
of thousands more Vietnamese. The Phoenix program was implemented by
the CIA to eradicate the Vietcong underground. Under CIA administration
and supervision, the PRUs (aka Provincial Interrogation Centers) of
the Phoenix program degenerated into a collection of South Vietnamese
murderers, thugs and criminals who accepted bribes, presumed guilt based
on gossip, and murdered their detainees after they completed their interrogation.
Ultimately, (if one is gullible enough to take the word of former CIA
director William Colby), the Phoenix program murdered 20,587 “Vietcong”.
Saigon’s government puts the figure at 40,994.
Educating them on
the finer points of torture and murder
The CIA also bears responsibility
for the creation of SAVAK, the Shah of Iran’s ruthless secret
police force. SAVAK killed 20,000 Iraqi “dissidents” during
the Shah’s reign. In the Philippines, CIA instruction resulted
in 3,257 murders and 35,000 victims of torture by the Ferdinand Marcos
regime.
After its defeat in Vietnam,
the United States government infiltrated Latin America with a vengeance
(to stop the spread of the “Communist threat”). Project
X, represented another CIA endeavor to impart their wisdom in the arts
of torture to ruthless US allies Not satisfied with their 1963 torture
manual called Kubark, the CIA wrote a sequel in Spanish entitled Handling
of Sources, Interrogation, Combat Intelligence, and Terrorism and the
Urban Guerilla.
Of the sequel, McCoy writes,
“Apart from these cold-blooded
tactics of kidnapping, murder, beatings, and betrayal, the manual evidences,
in its 144 single-spaced pages, an amorality, a studied willingness
to exploit an ally without restraint or compunction, hardened on the
anvil of the Vietnam conflict.”
Once located in Panama, an
odious US Army institution known as the School of Americas (sometimes
called the School of Assassins) bestowed the CIA’s torture wisdom
upon hundreds of Latin American military officers. The School of Americas
fell under the auspices of Project X and provided the “hands on”
training to accompany the CIA torture manuals. Interestingly, by 1983
the CIA had begun to re-emphasize the use of psychological over physical
torture when it wrote its Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual.
A laundry list of CIA-trained Latin American military personnel and
dictators murdered and tortured hundreds of thousands thanks to the
tutelage of Project X.
Of war crimes, evasion
of responsibility and impunity
McCoy notes that the United
States took a break and out-sourced torture to its allies throughout
the 1990’s. Unfortunately for the world, the Bush Regime opportunistically
seized 9/11 to begin its PNAC inspired quest for global military dominance.
In the process, the administration implemented torture as official United
States policy. Desperately attempting to fend off critics and preserve
the crumbling façade of moral superiority, America’s ruling
class has sacrificed several from amongst those near the bottom of the
food chain. However, calling the prosecution and conviction of a handful
of military personnel justice would be a farce. Those ultimately responsible
for America’s abject torture continue to act with impunity.
As McCoy has vividly illustrated,
America’s “grunts” at Abu Gharib and throughout the
American Gulag were acting under the orders of the Bush Regime and under
the supervision of the CIA:
1. On September 11, 2001,
George Bush told Donald Rumsfeld and his staff, “Any barriers
in your way, they are gone.” When they reminded him of legal constraints,
Bush shouted, “I don’t care what the international lawyers
say; we are going to kick some ass.”
2. Six days later, Bush authorized
the CIA to begin rendition of terror suspects to nations known to commit
torture.
3. On November 13, the President
determined that Al Qaeda suspects would be denied access to domestic
or international courts.
4. Close to the end of 2001,
Bush’s Justice Department approved the use of “sleep deprivation
and deployment of ‘stress factors’” for counter-terror
interrogation.
5. Bush decided the Geneva
Conventions did not apply to his “War on Terror” on January
8, 2002.
6. On January 9, 2002, John
Woo of the Justice Department crafted a memo denying application of
the Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act to suspected members
of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, whom he characterized as “enemy combatants”.
Since they were now neither soldier nor citizen, the articles of the
Geneva Convention barring “cruel treatment and torture”
and “humiliating and degrading treatment” did not apply
to them (according to Yoo’s perverse logic).
7. As Afghans captured in
the “War on Terror” started populating Guantanamo Bay prison
on January 11, Donald Rumsfeld stated that those “unlawful combatants
do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention.”
8. On January 18, the man
Bush later elevated from White House legal counsel to Attorney General
(for his loyalty to the Empire) informed the President that the Justice
Department “had issued a formal legal opinion concluding that
the Geneva Convention III on the Treatment of Prisoners of War does
not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda.”
9. The following day, Rumsfeld
advised his field commanders that “Al Qaeda and Taliban individuals
under the control of the Department of Defense are not entitled to prisoner
of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.”
10. January 22, 2002: Assistant
Attorney General Jay Bybee presented Alberto Gonzales with a 37 page
memo which outlined the means to implement “coercive interrogation”
without legal consequences, affirming that “neither the federal
War Crimes Act nor the Geneva Conventions would apply to the detention
conditions of al Qaeda prisoners”, and that Bush had the Constitutional
power to suspend US treaties with Afghanistan.
11. Behind the scenes, Bush
and Rumsfeld approved an SAP or “special-access program”
within the CIA. By its very nature, only a handful of top level government
officials are aware of the existence of an SAP. This particular SAP
endowed the CIA, Navy Seals, and Army Delta Force with the power to
assassinate, kidnap and, of course, to torture. Concurrently, the CIA
began creating the American Gulag by establishing secret prisons in
places like Diego Garcia Island and Thailand.
12. The Bush administration
entrusted the CIA with “operational command” of its long
coveted “War on Terror”, which enabled the United States
to abandon FBI and military restrictions on torture.
13. In August of 2002, Bybee,
Yoo, and Vice Presidential counsel David Addington created another Justice
Department memo “legitimizing” torture. Employing reasoning
which defied the laws of reality, this trio determined that federal
law and the UN anti-torture conventions only prohibited torture that
was “specifically intended to inflict severe pain or suffering,
whether mental or physical.” They concluded that to be a crime,
the torture must “be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying
serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily
function, or even death.” Utilizing this memo, the CIA could evade
responsibility for torturing “enemy combatants” simply by
claiming they were attempting to gain information rather than to inflict
pain. The memo also constructed a very strict definition of psychological
torture, interpreting many CIA techniques as legal. Most significantly,
in defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Youngstown Sheet
and Tube et al vs. Sawyer, Bybee and his cohorts asserted that restraints
on Bush’s directives to interrogate would “represent an
unconstitutional infringement of the President’s authority to
conduct war.”
14. At about the same time
as the release of the Bybee memo, the Justice Department gave the CIA
classified permission to utilize harsher interrogation tactics than
the military, including water boarding, a practice which leads the victim
to believe they are drowning.
Bush and his murderous cabal
gave the authorization, the CIA provided supervision, and the military
carried out the “coercive interrogation”. A Question of
Torture sheds significant light on the culpability of Generals Miller
and Sanchez in implementing the policy of inflicting excruciating psychological
and physical pain on “enemy combatants” throughout the military
prison system in Iraq, the nation America “rescued” from
Saddam Hussein. America’s leaders condoned torture and ordered
their subordinates to carry it out. In the tradition of monsters like
Pol Pot and Idi Amin, they revel in their endless access to money, power,
and immunity. Small wonder much of the world hates the American Empire,
and its de facto rulers in particular.
Playing with fire
The CIA has repeatedly demonstrated
that they are slow learners. Brutality, abuse, and torture, whether
physical or psychological, are not only gross violations of a person’s
inalienable human rights; they are ineffective means of extracting information
or modifying behavior. The FBI is one of the few federal law enforcement
or military entities not implicated in the web of torture emerging in
the “War on Terror” and, according to McCoy’s research,
its agents’ legal, humane interrogation tactics were yielding
respectable results before Bush superseded them with the CIA.
Besides lacking value beyond
its capacity to satisfy a primal urge for revenge, torture is a double-edged
sword which harms both perpetrator and victim. McCoy points out that
committing torture intoxicates one with power. Organizations and governments
engaging in mass torture deteriorate as the rule of law and respect
for humanity disintegrates, breaking down their political and social
structures. Objectifying and inflicting suffering upon helpless human
beings leaves deep scars upon the souls of the torturers and creates
monstrous sociopaths Contrary to the wishful thinking of the Bush Regime,
the United States will reap a bitter harvest once the noxious weeds
of torture grow to maturity.
Realistically, except in
the minds of those who tenaciously cling to their indoctrination from
the American Empire, there is no question that the United States egregiously
violates human rights on a frequent basis. For a more thorough examination
of the cancer of torture ravaging the United States, read A
Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy.
Jason Miller
is a 39 year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. When
he is not spending time with his wife and three sons, researching, or
writing, he is working as a loan counselor. He is a member of Amnesty
International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human
Rights Watch. He welcomes responses at [email protected]
or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.