Why the torture? Two theories.

Theory 1:
They were trying to torture the location of WMD out of anyone they could lay their hands on.
Problem: That means they actually believed there were WMD.

Theory 2:
We were using the torture for the same reason Saddam did: as part of our reign of terror, in order to maintain control over the unruly populace. The Iraqis were intended to know about it and to fear it, but it was assumed that our press would never touch the story. (This theory turned out to be correct until the photos showed up.)
Problem: Well, it does assume a lot of cooperation from the press.

Of these 2 theories, I'm leaning toward the second.

Why limit it to only WMDs? Isn't it possible that those being tortured were believed to possess knowledge regarding attacks against coalition troops?

Or is this an unpopular gray area to discuss?

Certainly there are some detainees who know things, but torture and humiliation won't generally get it out of them. That's where his theory falls apart.

And my point has always been that if you truly need to get info out of someone and think you gotta put the screws to him (very rarely called for, IMHO), YOU DON'T USE REGULAR TROOPS TO DO IT. You turn the prisoners over to MI, CIA, NSA, etc. You don't allow Joe or Jane Blow from Podunk, TX, take their whacks at prisoners. All that does is brutalize everyone, including the families that the soldiers go home to. And it brutalizes our reputation. Fatally.

We don't care enough to equip our troops with body armor or to provide them with enough water, fer Chrissakes. We wouldn't put together a whole torture apparatus in order to look after their safety.

Put it this way. Assume you can gain a tactical advantage over your enemy by dipping babies in boiling oil.

Now probe the gray areas. How many babies? What about simmering oil? How long do we need to submerge them? How much of an advantage?

That's not a way to solve any of your original ethical problems. In most cases it probably just obfuscates things.

Or is that an unpopular gray area to discuss, rather than just drop hints about? If that is what you mean, just say so. I predicted about a week ago, that this torture apologist argument would start appearing in about a week. First by freepers, then other internet, then Rush/Fox, then CNN.

Defending torture is the slipperiest of slippery slope arguments, and some people do fall for it (take Dershowitz for example).

I'm afraid this is just part of the sad cycle of human ignorance and it's just now been captured in digital format.

Lesson learned? Don't invade places where you ain't welcome.

isn't this just the same thing we've seen throughout history? How can you say it isn't?

That's what History repeats itself means. The dynamics of culture, leadership and power have a predictable set of patterns that govern them, just like the laws of physics.

They had more short term goals; they believed that these men had information on resistance cells or actions they might take against American troops, and hoped to extract such information to stop the resistance.

This doesn't excuse the torture, of coures. A horrible action can be taken to a noble end, but that doesn't change a horrible action into an acceptable one.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Women and adolescents BRUTALIZED AND TORTURED in an absurd attempt to "cover up and substantiate" LIES... LIES...LIES.

The pictures looked like men to me. I have heard of the case of the woman who was ridden like a donkey though--so i guess it probably wasn't all men.

to his military commanders is that he wanted no american service men and women being killed on TV, with the election approaching ,by April. There was a lot of pressure from Bush to stop the combat losses for obvious political reasons. I believe it was last fall he gave this directive. The guards got more ruthless because of pressure from the White house to stop the roadside bombing. What turns my stomach is how the POS will continue to stay "above it all".

for human beings who are placed in the role of "guard" etc to become cruel to those who are incarcerated. It happens on many levels in the jails and prisons in the United States. Add the stress of this war, and there is really no reason for people to be shocked by it. Please do not misunderstand me: I oppose this type of behavior 100%. But I know for a fact -- with NO CHANCE of being wrong -- that it happens in the youth facilities, jails, and prisons in the USA. In fact, I believe that last fall there were reports from a youth facility in Mississippi of torture.

But this isn't like that. It's systematic. We sent a general over from Gitmo to teach them how to do it. The MP guards just did a little "softening up." It was the civilian contract guys who did the real work.

The US has taught torture methods for years at the School of the Americas (renamed a couple of years ago as part of a facelift).

Everything isn't the result of a huge conspiracy. Sometimes events really do occur because dumb people do dumb things. Don't get me wrong, this behavior was inexcusable. But, the fact it occurred doesn't mean abuse and torture are national policies and/or societal norms.

If you took a close look at the Marion federal pen, I think you would likely find a combination of the stupidity of individuals and of a system that leads to cruelty and torture. Or, way back in 1958, Princeton University social scientist Gresham Sykes wrote "The Society of Captives," which outlines a systematic approach to destroying human beings in order to keep order in a prison. What we are seeing today is comparable to the Rodney King "film." Though many people knew that police savagely attacking black folk was all too common, the "public" would not consciously accept it UNTIL IT WAS ON A FILM. Same thing today. Rumsfeld is ONLY angry about the film, not the policy, not the torture, not the sadistic sexual assault of Muslims. No, it is a combination of stupidity and the system, but I can say this: if the top dog lets it be known in no uncertain terms that this behavior will not be tolerated, it generally does not occure. But THAT is not the case with this administration. They will impeach a man for oral sex; call for a constitutional ban on gay marriage because they "hate the act;" but look at what THEY do!

Check out some of the new stories emerging. This goes up at least to Doug Feith, #3 civilian goon-about-the Pentagon & Wolfowitz protege.

Also, I think there was payback too for the Americans killed and hung on the bridge.

exhibitions of the killed mercenaries. More likely the civilians were killed in retaliation for the torture. At least one of those killed was an ex-South African white supremacist operative.

add understaffing the war effort - particularly security duty ... both on the ground and in the prison. Add fear (can we control...) anger (when fellow soldiers have been hit) and events running amuck. Now give some frightened, angry, and way undermanned personnel total authority over others who are constantly being dehumanized in rhetoric... I would guess that the control factor starts out of rationalization (we have to keep folks afraid so we can keep control) and soon psychologically morphs into something else.

While the following doesn't deal with the undermanned context (that might more quickly give individuals doing the guarding a form of rationalization for the behavior) it does demonstrate - under much safter conditions - how the power/authority roles related to imprisonment can quickly warp individuals. http://www.prisonexp.org/

If you ask me, I believe that the torture was designed to accomplish both tasks.

It doesn't matter the excuse, however, torture and abject humiliation is wrong.

Weren't we supposed to be the civilized ones in all of this?

obtain pleasure from torturing other people.

bush* is a fundi, he supports fundi ideas, he employs fundies high up
in our government, and finally, he believes the end of the world is near.

Combine all these elements, along with occupying a muslim country,
and you will get this result. Christian fundamentalists could care less
about their own family if they don't believe as they do. So just think
how they perceive a bunch of 'Brown-skinned Muslims'? Probably lower
than an animal(they do, not me). Throw in alittle 'Iraq linked to Al
Queda' bullshit, and our wonderful christian troops would gladly
humiliate a few muslims to get back for 9/11.

... that whole black/white thing is, in the immortal words of one SecDef Rumsfeld, "unhelpful in a fundamental way." -- all sick puns intended.
But seriously, though, have a look at a piece from the international NYT today titled "Europeans Like Bush Even Less Than Before" ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/international/europe/09euro.html
<snip>
Nor are Europeans thrilled about the American values they feel Mr. Bush has encouraged, in which anti-Europeanism is applauded as a virtue, people boycott French wine in protest at the French position on Iraq and Senator Kerry is ridiculed by the Republicans for being able to speak French.

"The idea that you have a leader of the U.S. who's not interested in listening to his allies is important in the way people perceive Bush," Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Center on the United States at the French Institute of Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "He has a very simplistic view of the world, which we find difficult to accept. In fact, that we find dangerous."

In Moscow, the political commentator Aleksandr Yanov said Mr. Kerry was a superior candidate for many reasons, high among them that he appears to have a far more nuanced view of the world.

Writing in Nyezavisimaya Gazeta, Mr. Yanov said, "In contrast to Bush, he will never put the Bolshevik principle - 'Those who are not with us are against us' - at the center of his policy."

With their Commander in Chief shouting things like "Bring 'em on!" and the Secretary of Defense insisting that detainees scooped up in Afghanistan are not worthy of Geneva Convention standards, it enforces the mentality that these "brown-skinned Arab folk" are sub-human and were personally responsible for 9/11.

edited for typo

See: http://www.counterpunch.org/zaitchik05072004.html

f the president wasn't so forthright about his disinterest in the world, it would have been hard to believe him Wednesday when he said the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison "doesn't represent the America I know." But who can doubt him? To represent the America George W. Bush knows, there would have to be explosive snapshots of Iraqi detainees lounging by the Abu Ghraib pool, barbequing ribs and snorting primo Bolivian coke off empty cases of Coors Light. There would have to be shocking reports of prisoners with family members on the Iraqi Governing Council being handed sweetheart deals on professional sports franchises and energy firms.

....

Of course, if the President were more of a newspaper-reading sort of feller, he wouldn't have been so shocked by the pictures. As a tough-on-crime Texan, he would have recognized such treatment immediately, perhaps even feeling a little swell of pride. If he'd ever put down the Bible for a broadsheet after his conversion, he'd know that "Texas prison" is one of the most feared phrases in the languageÐand he'd know why. When he sat down in front of Arab tv audiences on Wednesday to explain the true American way, he could have pointed to an October, 1999 story in the Austin American Statesman that detailed how female prisoners there were regularly kept in portable detention cells for hours at a time in summer heat with no water. "In fear of more time in the cages," the article explains, "many women submit sexually to their oppressors and are raped, molested and forced to perform sodomy on their captors."

Everything can happen if he is afraid because he feels each inhabitant could be a threat. In this situation the escalation of violence is always the normality. (we lived the same in Algeria). And If the commandment is weak or connive, the torture can seem to be an acceptable solution for him.

But the pictures which we have seen are very sweet for military actions of torture. They seem "only" to be acts of humiliation and where are the other ones if they exist ?

I agree with part of theory 4: that troops probably looked upon Iraqis as a sub-human form of species. It's easier to deal with killing if you think you're killing something that isn't "really" human--or is human, but doesn't deserve to live. And that has nothing to do with a fundamentalist belief, that's just a coping mechanism, IMHO, religious beliefs aside. I bet more than one of the soldiers that will be indicted won't be a fundamentalist.

But I like to think that a "Lord of the Flies" mentality started to take hold there. Think about it--there was no discernable chain of command that was directing or supervising what was going on, or those officers that were participating were the local gang leaders, if you will.

A bunch of kids, left to their own devices, with no adult supervision.

Lord of the Flies, 2004.

Edit: spelling

The US kids and careerists in the pix may or may not have been significantly influenced by the Moon-Murdoch-Limbaugh-Graham-Bush agitprop (I suspect yes), but they were certainly acting as they believed appropriate to their duties and in accord with the expectations of their commanders.

This was not a little surreptitious S&M kink, this was in accord with statements at the highest level of command that Geneva Convention and the US constitution are irrelevant during the course of the War on Terra. They were carried out in full view of those around them and were in compliance with the orders they had received.

Such acts are just one small facet of how those now in control of the US State machinery regard those who stand against them, or might do so, or might have friends or relatives among the opposing forces.

Those now in charge are the successors to those who brought napalm and poison gas and strategic hamlets and Operation Phoenix to the people of Vietnam. This faction within the CIA and other such agencies regard terror and torture and brutality and mass slaughter as legitimate tools of war. These events are just a prologue, just a hint of what they will do in Iraq (and here) if they continue in power.

As a reminder of who they are and what they do, see this: http://www.serendipity.li/cia/operation_phoenix.htm and the parent page at: http://www.serendipity.li/cia.html

There was a great deal of pressure to find WMD. In addition, there was a great deal of pressure to find Saddam. Evidently a couple of Saddam bodyguards were "broken" in order to aid in the location of Saddam.

Torture was an accepted practice and I believe that many of the soldiers were following orders when they committed some of the torture shown.

I think that at the highest levels of the Pentagon, it was known that most of the WMD were destroyed by us at the end of the First Gulf War. That is one of the great cover-ups that no one mentions. The Khamisiyah affair, that was investigated following Gulf War I regarding the exposure of our own troops to WMD by the US military (resulting in Gulf War Syndrome) resulted in the final admission by the CIA in 1997 in a White Paper that special ops had in fact destroyed WMD-containing warheads at Saddam's weapons depot at Khamisiyah. However, the Pentagon has continued to maintain that virtually no written records were maintained regarding WHAT weapons of Saddam were destroyed by our top secret special demolitions teams at the close of Gulf War I. One bunker at Khamisiyah was all that they have ever admitted to. But I'm ready to bet that somewhere those records exist and that our military has a good idea of how much of Saddam's stockpile was no longer in existence.

I think that most of the efforts in interrogation at Abu Ghraib were directed at an attempt to find WMD. The military even complained that too many of our intelligence resources were being consumed in an attempt to find WMD instead of trying to stop the insurgents. Of course WMD were not the reason we invaded, as we knew at the highest levels of the US military that much of it had been destroyed 10 years before. But I think that they felt that SOME were left. All BU卐H and Company needed was one example of a WMD...just one. Just one sarin-containing warhead would have done it. It would have been the focal point of Bush political ads, of endless Bush celebration on Fox News, of a media blitz extravaganza. The existence of just one WMD containing missle nosecone would have been extrapolated into an argument that thousands could have followed it and endangered us, all for the consumption of the sheep. It would have justified further military spending, continued death, continuing plans to invade other countries, and improved Bush poll rating. For the Neocons, it would have been better than Hitler's triumphant moment of vindication in that boxcar in Paris after he defeated the French army.

The goons who orchestrated the whole shebang didn't care about actually finding WMDs, but they wanted to extract confessions anyway, "for beaurocratic reasons."

According to this version of events, the policy, which includes rape, torture and murder of innocents, may be characterized as "a catastrophic success."

No question about it.

I posted this in another thread

You've probably also read that the torture orders reach hign into the admin. (Douglas Feith, OSP, Cheney). The answer to the question of WHY may now be coming into focus: An insurgency is exactly what the neocons WANT. It is their only hope to win the election. If they can keep the level of turmoil at a high level smirk gets to remain the war president.

Fomenting unrest has been a long proven strategy for the war profiteers. They have to continue to bleed the treasury dry. This is the best way of re-dircting the cash flow to their cronies, and keeping the constituency that is waiting for rapture, happy.

The idea being to bring shame to the Iraqis to ensure thier consent to tyranny.
This article gives a good idea of it i.e. "black propaganda"


http://antiwar.com/justin/

What is undoubtedly a black mark on the reputation of the American military, and on this administration's ability to know and control what's occurring on the ground in Iraq, looks to me very much like a black propaganda campaign designed to demoralize not only Iraqis but the entire Arab world. One major neoconservative talking point in the run-up to war was that the Arabs only understand the language of power: you can't negotiate or reason with them, you have to conquer them – and, once conquered, they have to be kept down. This is precisely the methodology used by the Israelis on their Palestinian helots, and in my last column I detailed some evidence that the torturers of Abu Ghraib may had training and other help from Israeli "advisors."

The conception of shame as a key element of Arab warfare was explored in a paper on "the Arab mind," by David Leo Gutmann, emeritus professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Medical School, in Chicago, purporting to describe "Arab psychology" – just as a Nazi theoretician might explore "Jewish psychology." Writes Gutmann:

The traditional Bedouin created a nearly pure ''Shame'' culture, whose goal was to avoid humiliation, and to acquire sharraf – honor. Thus, the goal of the Bedouin raid is not to finally win a war, for such inter-tribal conflict is part of the honorable way of life, and should never really end. The essential goals of the raid are to take wealth – not only in goods, but also in honor - and to impose shame on the enemy. Any opponent worth fighting is by definition honorable, and pieces of his honor can be ripped from him in a successful raid, to be replaced by figments of the attacker's shame. The successful attacker has 'exported' some personal shame to the enemy, and the enemy's lost honor has been added to the raider's store."


I fully realize that this sounds more than a bit farfetched – but, then again, this whole matter is so completely bonkers that no other explanation makes much sense. It is all too imaginable that some in positions of power latched on to Gutmann's cockamamie theory, or a reasonable facsimile, and ran with it – all the way to the lower rungs of Hell. It's just the kind of "scientific" lunacy that naturally enthralls the bureaucratic-military mind, and, with all Gutmann's talk of "genetic" and "hardwired" tendencies in the Arab mentality, has enormous appeal for the neocons. As the investigation proceeds, and the legal cogs begin to turn, I won't be at all surprised to learn that, far from representing random acts by troubled individuals, what the Abu Ghraib photos document is a sickness that runs deeper, and reaches higher, than any now imagine.

end of snip

I believe I saw a thread here recently where that bloated sack of shit Rush called the humiliation "brilliant" for just these reasons.