Exposed at Abu Ghraib: Torture of U.S. Rule\r\n<\/p>
Revolutionary Worker #1240, May 16,\r\n2004<\/em>, posted at\r\nhttp:\/\/rwor.org<\/p>\r\n\r\n Day after day, there is more. Much more. More horrific pictures,\r\ndepraved videos, and the heart-rending testimony of former\r\nprisoners.<\/p>\r\n The U.S. interrogators, officially called \"Human Exploitation\r\nTeams\" (HETs) have been terrorizing, raping, torturing and\r\nmurdering prisoners in Iraq.<\/p>\r\n When Secretary Rumsfeld testified before Congress on May 7, he\r\nadmitted that even more evidence was going to come out. \"It's going\r\nto get a good deal more terrible, I'm afraid,\" he said.The next\r\nday, senior military officials told NBC News<\/i> that the next\r\nround of images showed U.S. soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner to\r\nthe brink of death, and guards raping a Iraqi female prisoner and\r\nyoung boys held in Abu Ghraib.<\/p>\r\n A British government envoy, Ann Clwyd, now reports that last\r\nyear at Abu Ghraib, U.S. soldiers put a harness on an elderly Iraqi\r\nwoman and made her crawl on all fours, while one of them rode her\r\nlike a donkey.<\/p>\r\n Former female prisoners have reported repeated torture-by-rape\r\nin the women's wing of Abu Ghraib. And there is new proof that U.S.\r\ninterrogators repeatedly tortured people to death<\/i> around the\r\nworld.<\/p>\r\n The shock of the published pictures has brought millions of\r\npeople face to face with the actual deeds of U.S. occupation. Here\r\nis a glimpse of a long-suppressed, heatedly denied reality--and the\r\nreactions have been explosive. This gruesome evidence is shattering\r\nU.S. government claims to be liberators--in Iraq or anywhere\r\nelse.<\/p>\r\n\r\n These atrocities were no \"exception\" or \"aberration.\" The\r\ntechniques of Abu Ghraib were developed and refined over decades of\r\nvicious interrogations in all the many wars and interventions the\r\nU.S. has waged. There are countless people, who in countless prison\r\ncells all over the world--including in the U.S.--have seen this\r\n\r\nface of U.S. rule.<\/p>\r\n Look at those photos again: This is what U.S. domination and\r\nU.S. democracy looks like.<\/p>\r\n For many people in the U.S., that truth is as shocking and\r\ndifficult as the photographic evidence itself. Many in the U.S.\r\ndesperately want to believe that the U.S. army is \"the good guys.\"\r\nMany look at the relative prosperity and \"democratic\" trappings of\r\nU.S. society--including its so-called \"rule of law\" and electoral\r\nprocedures--and assume that this (or something like it) is what the\r\nU.S. troops would bring to foreign countries.<\/p>\r\n And even in oppressed countries, there is a widespread tendency\r\nto believe that the goal is, somehow, to win for their countries\r\nthe kind of democracy (and the corresponding economic conditions)\r\nthat seem to exist in the U.S.--even while the U.S. is directly\r\noppressing them!<\/p>\r\n And with such views come the dangerous hopes that a U.S.\r\ninvasion might (perhaps, somehow) prove to be a \"good thing\"\r\n(especially for those with \"failed states,\" or harsh governments or\r\ndesperate crises of famine and genocide). Such false hopes are\r\nreinforced, every day, by this government, the media and the\r\ndemocratic opposition.<\/p>\r\n After it became clear there were no weapons of mass destruction\r\nin Iraq (and so the invasion was not some act of preemptive\r\n\"self-defense\")--the White House then claimed that the invasion was\r\nto \"liberate\" the Iraqi people from the horrors of their past\r\ngovernment. And now, every discussion of these atrocities is\r\naccompanied by disclaimers that none of this (\"of course\"!)\r\nreflects the larger U.S. mission, or its role in the world, or its\r\nmotives, or the usual behavior of its troops.<\/p>\r\n These are illusions. And the evidence of Abu Ghraib shows how\r\ndangerous those illusions are.<\/p>\r\n Here is the sharp contradiction playing itself out before our\r\neyes: The troops of the great \"democratic superpower\" storm into\r\nIraq and carry out the most outrageous fascist atrocities. They\r\nlabel anyone who falls into their hands \"terrorists\" and then\r\narrogantly proclaim that none of the rules of war or basic humanity\r\napply. On one level the torturers of Abu Ghraib were determined to\r\nidentify the networks of resistance in Baghdad, but on another\r\nlevel the outrages of this prison and similar prisons were designed\r\nto simply brutalize the many thousands of prisoners who passed\r\nthrough their hands--to terrorize the whole larger population\r\noutside.<\/p>\r\n This shows, in a profound way, the nature of this war--which is\r\nnot a mission of \"freedom and democracy\"--but an imperialist\r\ninvasion to dominate Iraq and the surrounding Persian Gulf, to\r\nseize control of the labor, wealth and strategic territories of\r\nthis region, in direct opposition to what the people living there\r\nneed and want.<\/p>\r\n\r\n And on an even deeper level, it reveals that the political and\r\neconomic system of the U.S. (including the democratic trappings of\r\nits political system) rest in fundamental ways on the continued and\r\nexpanded exploitation of people all over the world--and on fascist\r\nterror in the oppressed nations.<\/p>\r\n Sometimes this reality comes to the surface.<\/p>\r\n This is just such a time.<\/p>\r\n The real guarantor of the stability and capitalist \"democracy\"\r\nin the U.S. is not the stacks of laws or pompous courtrooms. It is\r\nthe calculating bomber pilot dropping bombs on Fallujah, the secret\r\nDelta-Force death squad invading the Philippines, the brutal CIA\r\ntorturer of Abu Ghraib and a dozen other prisons around the world.\r\nThey are there to defend the U.S. domination over vast stretches of\r\nthe globe, and they do it through the most brutal and ruthless\r\nsuppression of the people--because both history and the current\r\nsituation teaches these killers--and the ruling class that commands\r\nthem--that this is the only way that their ugly mission can be\r\ndone.<\/p>\r\n The victims of Abu Ghraib, at great risk, are stepping forward\r\nto speak. Whistle-blowers at various levels in the U.S. have dared\r\nto expose these photos and events. People all over the world have\r\ndemanded to know more, and are piecing together the facts that\r\nemerge. All this has created a rare glimpse into the usually\r\nclandestine and secretive workings of an empire.<\/p>\r\n Everyone needs to take a clear-eyed look at the hard truths this\r\nbrings to the surface.<\/p>\r\nWhat America Has Done\r\n\"This does not represent the America that I\r\nknow.\"\r\n President George Bush, May\r\n5<\/p>\r\n\r\n During the U.S. invasion a year ago, Iraqi people stormed the\r\nnotorious Abu Ghraib prison. They freed the prisoners and left a\r\nruined, empty shell behind. Now we know that the U.S. occupation\r\nauthorities rebuilt this prison.<\/p>\r\n While they talked of \"liberating\" Iraq's people, their troops\r\nand interrogators were busy torturing, raping and murdering Iraqi\r\npeople. The majority of these prisoners, according to the\r\nPentagon's own report, were civilians caught up in the military\r\nsweeps of Baghdad neighborhoods and held without charges or\r\ntrials.<\/p>\r\n When the U.S. high command learned in January that photographic\r\nevidence of torture was circulating on CDs-- they quickly tried a\r\nmassive cover-up. They secretly transferred some low-level\r\nsoldiers, retired their commander, commissioned a secret internal\r\nreport on the potential damage, and then tried to prevent CBS from\r\nreporting on the pictures.<\/p>\r\n The pictures leaked out anyway--including sexual tortures,\r\nforced masturbation, handcuffing naked men to each other in piles.\r\nFemale soldiers had been brought in to mock the naked prisoners\r\nand, in one case, hold an Iraqi man on a leash, like a dog, as he\r\ncurls up naked on the ground in agony. More leaks followed--of how\r\nprisoners were kept naked in tiny isolation cells, without\r\nventilation or toilets. And how prisoners were forced to beat each\r\nother.<\/p>\r\n The internal (and previously suppressed) Pentagon report was\r\nthen revealed by reporter Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker<\/i>\r\nmagazine.<\/i> This report on Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Antonio\r\nTaguba documents \"sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal\r\nabuses\"--including using attack dogs on prisoners and \"sodomizing a\r\ndetainee with a chemical light and perhaps with a broomstick.\"<\/p>\r\n Now, unable to deny such crimes, the U.S. government is doing\r\ndamage control. On May 7, Rumsfeld said that the tortures of Abu\r\nGhraib were \"inconsistent with the teachings of the military to the\r\nmen and women of the armed forces, and it was certainly\r\nfundamentally un-American.\"<\/p>\r\n\r\n Let's tear off the blinders and illusions--and look at things\r\nthe way they really are!<\/p>\r\n Over and over U.S. forces have carried out the most ruthless\r\nsuppression and torture of resistance forces, and even more widely\r\nthey have hired and unleashed local death squads to do the dirtiest\r\nwork for them.<\/p>\r\n The stories of these atrocities are a history of modern American\r\ninterventions--from the \"tiger cages\" of Vietnam to the death\r\nsquads of El Salvador and the torture chambers in Pinochet's Chile.\r\nThe U.S. has sent its CIA trainers to places like Peru and\r\nNepal--where government torturers daily rape and brutalize captured\r\nMaoist guerrillas. To this day, the U.S. Army maintains its\r\nnotorious \"School of the Americas\" at Fort Benning, Georgia-- where\r\nmilitary torturers, death squad leaders, counterinsurgency experts\r\nand coup-makers are trained for the armies of Latin America.<\/p>\r\n Yet President Bush announced after the pictures of Abu Ghraib\r\ncame out, \"That's not the way we do things in America.\"<\/p>\r\n Right there we have to stop and again challenge his lies!<\/p>\r\n Not only are such atrocities standard<\/i> for the operations\r\nof the U.S. forces around the world, they are vividly familiar to\r\nmany people who live inside the United States itself. The U.S. is a\r\nstarkly divided class society. Perhaps those with privileges and\r\nstatus believe Bush's words, and can't imagine<\/i> themselves\r\nbeing stripped, beaten and sodomized behind bars in the U.S.<\/p>\r\n\r\n But many people here in the heart of the empire<\/i> have a\r\nvery different view of \"the way we do things in America.\"<\/p>\r\n How many of our youth are beaten in courthouse elevators and\r\nordered to give up the names of their posse? How often are limp\r\ncorpses are taken out of police interrogation rooms, with paperwork\r\nthat says \"found hung in his cell\"?<\/p>\r\n Ask the prisoners of America<\/i> about the widespread rape\r\nand humiliation behind bars--and whether it is officially\r\nencouraged as part of the punishment!<\/p>\r\n Ask Abner Louima about police rape with a broomstick. And ask\r\nthe people of Black and Latino communities how often police torture\r\nand murder is covered up, denied, or else blamed on a \"few bad\r\napples.\"<\/p>\r\n Come look in the dark stifling punishment cells of state prisons\r\nwhere prisoners are thrown in naked and then forgotten.<\/p>\r\n Come look at the high-tech hell of California's Pelican Bay\r\nSHU--where prisoners are tortured using sensory deprivation cells\r\nand forced to fight in gladiator contests by their guards.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The photos from Abu Ghraib repeatedly show Spec. Charles A.\r\nGraner Jr. in photographs giving the \"thumbs up\" over piles of\r\nnaked Iraqi men. This same Graner was originally trained as a guard\r\nin SCI Greene--the notorious prison in southwestern Pennsylvania\r\nwhere political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is held on Death Row, and\r\nwhere the racist abuse of prisoners has been scandalous.<\/p>\r\nTorture on Command\r\n\"What took place in that Iraqi prison was the\r\nwrongdoing of a few.\"\r\n President George Bush, May 8,\r\n2004<\/p>\r\n\"What we have described is part of a pattern and a\r\nbroad system.\"\r\n Red Cross director Pierre\r\nKraehenbuehl, May 7, on how his teams found abuse and torture in\r\nU.S. prisons in Iraq<\/p>\r\n\"We were told that [Military Intelligence] had\r\ndifferent rules.\"\r\n Sgt. Javal S. Davis, 26, guard\r\nat Abu Ghraib<\/p>\r\n The U.S. government insists--in every possible forum--that the\r\natrocities of Abu Ghraib were just the horrible acts of a few \"bad\r\napples\" (with perhaps some troubling \"laxity\" in the chain of\r\ncommand). But this shameful cover-up theory is shredded from every\r\nside.<\/p>\r\n\r\n The torture process in Abu Ghraib was a carefully constructed\r\noperation. Professional teams of interrogators from the CIA and\r\nMarine Military Intelligence set up a \"hard site\" within Abu Ghraib\r\nprison--where they tortured, interrogated and killed prisoners.\r\nThey trained MPs to \"soften up\" the prisoners first--using the\r\nextreme and brutal means revealed in so many photos. And to do this\r\nthey gathered experienced and sadistic prison guards from the U.S.\r\nand put them in charge of a squad of gung-ho cop-wannabees, and\r\ntrained the crew in psycho- logially targetted brutality and\r\nhumiliation.<\/p>\r\n The Pentagon's own Taguba report documents that the abuses were\r\n\"systematic\" and that interrogators from Military Intelligence (MI)\r\nand the CIA \"actively requested that guards set physical and mental\r\nconditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.\" These\r\nlow-level MPs would never have posed, leering, for these photos of\r\ntorture and swapped them so casually if they didn't see all this as\r\nan approved part of their \"jobs.\" The interrogators told the\r\nguards, \"Loosen this guy up for us,\" and \"Make sure he gets the\r\ntreatment\"--and praised them saying, \"Good job, they're breaking\r\ndown real fast.\"<\/p>\r\n These operations in Abu Ghraib was fine-tuned on orders from the\r\nhigh command. Last summer the high command was reportedly\r\ndissatisfied with the information gotten out of prisoners in Abu\r\nGhraib. They sent Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller (commander of the\r\ntop-secret military prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba) to Abu\r\nGhraib in early September. One general said Miller described his\r\ntask as \"Gitmo-izing\" the operations at Abu Ghraib- -meaning that\r\nthe methods put in place were copied from the U.S. prison camp at\r\nGuantánamo Bay.<\/p>\r\n One of Miller's recommendations (known from the Pentagon's\r\nTaguba report) is that MP prison guards should act as \"enablers for\r\ninterrogation,\" breaking down prisoners through abuse.<\/p>\r\n The torture by low-level MPs was only the opening--in a process\r\nthat led to the real<\/i> interrogation by professional \"human\r\nexploitation teams.\" Very little is known about those<\/i>\r\ntortures, and not a single intelligence officer or \"civilian\r\ncontractor\" of those \"HETs\" has been charged or even named in these\r\nevents. The employers of the contract torturers claim that the\r\nPentagon never made any complaints to them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n One thing that is becoming clear: The methods of the HETs were\r\neven more extreme than the abuse by MPs. The HET in Abu Ghraib\r\nroutinely brought in captives without paperwork, so there would be\r\nno records when such \"ghost detainees\" were tortured to death. A\r\nphotograph shows one of these dead, packed in ice for later\r\ndisposal. The diary of one prison guard refers to this dead man as\r\nan \"O.G.A. prisoner.\" (O.G.A. stands for \"Other Government Agency\"\r\na term used for the often-unnamable CIA.) The CIA moved prisoners\r\naround to hide their actions from Red Cross teams.<\/p>\r\n U.S. Army officials told Reuters that at least 25 prisoners have\r\ndied in U.S. custody. There are investigations into at least 13 of\r\nthese deaths--including several CIA murders of prisoners in Iraq\r\nand Afghanistan.<\/p>\r\nA Global Network of Torture\r\n\"If you don't cooperate, we'll just send you to\r\nGuantánamo.\"\r\n Threat made by U.S.\r\ninterrogators to prisoners all over the world<\/p>\r\n\"A Briton released from Guantánamo alleged that,\r\nas in Abu Ghraib, sexual humiliation was identified by U.S.\r\nofficials as a way of breaking Muslim detainees. Abuse allegations\r\nagainst the U.S. have now surfaced in Iraq, Guantánamo,\r\nBagram, in Afghanistan, and even in Gambia, where a British\r\n\r\nbusinessman told the Guardian<\/span> he was\r\nthreatened with rape and beatings while being questioned by U.S.\r\nagents.\"\r\n\r\n Guardian<\/i> , May 6<\/p>\r\n The U.S. is holding prisoners in a network of prisons across the\r\nworld--and these operations are wrapped in intense military\r\nsecrecy.<\/p>\r\n In Guantánamo, Cuba, the U.S. government has held more\r\nthan 700 prisoners from 44 countries--without charges, trials or\r\npublic evidence--and claimed that the facilities are outside the\r\nreach of U.S. courts and not covered by the Geneva Conventions. The\r\nGuantánamo Bay camp is literally a \"law-free zone\" where the\r\nU.S. president and his agents claim the right to do whatever they\r\nwant--including executing them after secret \"military\r\ntribunals.\"<\/p>\r\n In Iraq, the U.S. holds at least 10,000 prisoners, with very\r\nlittle accounting. There are no charges or trials. Often their\r\nfamilies know nothing about them. But now we are all starting to\r\nfind out the kind of treatment they have gotten.<\/p>\r\n In Iraq too the U.S. is creating \"law-free zones\"--operations,\r\nincluding interrogations, are increasingly performed by \"private\r\ncontractors\" who are outside Iraqi law and U.S. military law.<\/p>\r\n In Afghanistan, the U.S. has held large numbers of prisoners in\r\na network of secret camps--also usually with no charges, trials,\r\nlegal access, or family notification. Human rights organizations\r\nhave charged widespread abuses here-- including beating and\r\nexposure to freezing temperatures. At least two deaths are being\r\ninvestigated as murder.<\/p>\r\n And meanwhile, there is a global system of \"rendering\" U.S.\r\ncaptives to allied countries for torture-- including Egypt, Jordan,\r\nSaudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Morocco.<\/p>\r\n\r\nResolve, Arrogance and Crisis\r\n\"The United States has been humiliated to a point where\r\ngovernment officials could not release this year's international\r\nhuman rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the\r\nrest of the world.\"\r\n New York Times<\/i>\r\neditorial, May 7<\/p>\r\n\"We are in danger of losing something much more\r\nimportant than just the war in Iraq. We are in danger of losing\r\nAmerica as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the\r\nworld. I have never known a time in my life when America and its\r\npresident were more hated around the world than\r\ntoday.\"\r\n Thomas Friedman, major Middle\r\nEastcolumnist and expert, May 6, 2004<\/p>\r\n Everywhere across the planet, people reeled in horror over the\r\nphotos of leering U.S. torturers and their victims. Opponents of\r\nU.S. domination feel emboldened. Victims of the U.S. feel\r\nencouraged to speak out and fight back. Supporters of U.S.\r\ndomination feel betrayed and isolated.<\/p>\r\n Overnight a heated debate has erupted in the ruling class over\r\nhow to recover, and how to press ahead. The divisions within the\r\nU.S. ruling class are sharpening. There have been open calls, in\r\nthe Congress and editorial pages, for the resignation of Secretary\r\nRumsfeld. There is open talk in some ruling class circles that the\r\nU.S. presence in Iraq may now be too \"radioactive\" to pull off its\r\nown victory over the resistance. And there is a sickening mix of\r\napology and arrogant resolve from Bush and Rumsfeld and their top\r\ngenerals--who claim, of course, that they did not know and will not\r\ntolerate. And yet in the middle of all this, the U.S. military has\r\nlaunched new bloody attacks in Shiite strongholds across southern\r\nIraq.<\/p>\r\n The tremendous turmoil of this period, what Chairman Avakian\r\ncalls that \"cauldron of contradictions,\" is churning fiercely. The\r\ndesperate attempts by the U.S. to suppress resistance in Iraq has\r\nproduced these monstrous crimes--but then they have come to light\r\nin a way that allows millions of people to catch a glimpse of the\r\ntrue face of U.S. domination. Opposition is both broadening and\r\nhardening, even while the crisis has intensified some rather deep\r\nfractures within the U.S. ruling circles.<\/p>\r\n\r\n It is a moment to seize.<\/p>\r\n *****<\/p>\r\n\"If one is conscious of the reality that the world is\r\ndominated by imperialism, and if one has any inkling of the\r\nconsequences of this for the great majority of the world's people,\r\nthen one should feel compelled to help shatter the whole\r\nimperialist system and its entire framework, to remake social\r\nrelations on an international scale.\"\r\n Bob Avakian, Democracy:\r\nCan't We Do Better Than That?<\/i><\/p>\r\n
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