Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs

From the Washington Post courtesy of the Daily Kos:

The circumstances that led up to Mowhoush's death paint a vivid example of how the pressure to produce intelligence for anti-terrorism efforts and the war in Iraq led U.S. military interrogators to improvise and develop abusive measures, not just at Abu Ghraib but in detention centers elsewhere in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mowhoush's ordeal in Qaim, over 16 days in November 2003, also reflects U.S. government secrecy surrounding some abuse cases and gives a glimpse into a covert CIA unit that was set up to foment rebellion before the war and took part in some interrogations during the insurgency.

The sleeping-bag interrogation and beatings were taking place in Qaim about the same time that soldiers at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, were using dogs to intimidate detainees, putting women's underwear on their heads, forcing them to strip in front of female soldiers and attaching at least one to a leash. It was a time when U.S. interrogators were coming up with their own tactics to get detainees to talk, many of which they considered logical interpretations of broad-brush categories in the Army Field Manual, with labels such as "fear up" or "pride and ego down" or "futility."

Other tactics, such as some of those seen at Abu Ghraib, had been approved for one detainee at Guantanamo Bay and found their way to Iraq. Still others have been linked to official Pentagon guidance on specific techniques, such as the use of dogs.

And

"The interrogation techniques were known and were approved of by the upper echelons of command of the 3rd ACR," Cassara said in a news conference. "They believed, and still do, that they were appropriate and proper."

Click here for the rest.

Three important points. First, American torture is far more widespread than Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; indeed, it seems to be everywhere. Second, the Pentagon lies about it until they're caught, and simply cannot be trusted when it comes to information about torture, or anything else for that matter. Third, the first two points make it more clear than ever that torture is US policy, and not the result of "a few bad apples," which continues to be, against all logic, the rhetorical defense employed by the White House and Pentagon. Never mind that torture is problematic at best as an intelligence gathering tool--psychologists have observed that, generally, people being tortured will say whatever their captors want to hear in order to end their torment. What's important here is that torture is wildly immoral. Consequently, our nation is now wildly immoral: as Republican Senator John McCain recently observed, it's about "who we are," and what is now obviously an intentional national policy of brutality and evil is making "who we are" heinously wicked on a massive scale.

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