Rebuilding Saddam's Dictatorship







The claim that the United States invaded Iraq to liberate it was never credible.  The United States supports many brutal dictatorships with horrible human rights records, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and others.  If the American government really wanted to promote "freedom and democracy" they would not be supporting these dictatorships.  Torturegate, the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers - military police - and private contractors in Abu Ghraib (a prison infamous for torture under Saddam) and elsewhere, puts the nail in the coffin of this pretext.  The apologetics offered by many conservatives prove they don't really value "freedom and democracy."  Bush's claim that these are just a bunch of "bad apples" is simply false; extensive evidence indicates that torture and other human rights abuses are systemic and not a few isolated incidents.  The United States is simply replacing Saddam's dictatorship with another dictatorship obedient to Washington.  The old trappings of Saddam's dictatorship are being rebuilt, just with different people on top.

Many conservative commentators have attempted to downplay or excuse these tortures.  Rush Limbaugh openly defended them, saying on his May 6th radio show, "this is pretty good intimidation ... Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got physically injured." Jonathan V. Last, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard online edition, said on CNBC's Dennis Miller, "I hope these guys are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law ... but at the same time, let's not get too crazy and call them Nazi-like. ... Worse happens in frat houses across America ... bad pictures with some guys playing naked Twister."

According to the Army's Taguba report more than one prisoner has been raped.  In addition, several dozen prisoners have died in American custody and the United States admits at least two were murdered.  That goes far beyond mere "fraternity pranks."  For Limbaugh to claim that "Nobody got hurt" is a lie and puts him in the same category as Stalinists and holocaust revisionists.

Another conservative response is to blame the victim, to claim that they're the bad guys ("terrorists"/"murderers"/"goons"/"criminals"/etc) and so either deserve what they got or, even if the tortures were wrong, the victims aren't as innocent as they're made out to be.

According to the Red Cross 90% of those imprisoned were arrested by mistake (of course when it reaches 90% it's not a mere "mistake" but a systemic problem).  So these tortures aren't even getting the so-called "bad guys," they're just indiscriminately arresting & torturing people.

And the insurgents aren't really the bad guys here.  They are defending themselves from foreign aggression.  The vast majority of their targets are military targets and many of the exceptions (such as the beheading of Nick Berg) involve mysterious circumstances and many unanswered questions as to the role of the US in it.  Most of what the media calls "civilian contractors" is actually private mercenaries.  Some even helped torture Iraqis.  It is the United States that invaded on false pretenses and is now committing human rights abuses on a systemic scale, not Iraq.

The Bush administration prefers to portray the torture of Iraqis by American troops as the work of a few "bad apples" that is in no way the result of US policy, but this claim is false.  Every single soldier in Iraq may not be involved in it, but not every soldier/police in Saddam's government was involved in torture or other atrocities, either.  They don't need to be for it to be policy.

The Red Cross and many human rights organizations have been complaining about this for a year.  Criticisms from human rights groups were made publicly but the American government took no action to stop it and the media paid little attention.  It was not until disgruntled members of the military and/or state department started leaking pictures that this scandal erupted.  In a recent press release Amnesty International claimed there are "double standards and double speak on human rights" going on in Iraq and that their "extensive research in Iraq suggests that this [torture] is not an isolated incident. It is not enough for the USA to react only once images have hit the television screens."  Amnesty has also:

"received frequent reports of torture or other ill-treatment by Coalition Forces during the past year. Detainees have reported being routinely subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during arrest and detention. Many have told Amnesty International that they were tortured and ill-treated by US and UK troops during interrogation. Methods often reported include prolonged sleep deprivation; beatings; prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music; prolonged hooding; and exposure to bright lights. Virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities."

The soldiers who tortured Iraqis were following orders.  All that have been charged explicitly said so.  Private Lyndie England, the female soldier shown in a photograph holding a leash tied to a prisoner's neck and featured in many other photographs, said, "everyone in the company from the commander down knew what was going on."  She also said, "We did what we were told" and that, "Personnel from MI [military intelligence] and OGA [Other Government Agency, or CIA] would tell us to keep it up, that we were doing a good job."

Even the Army's Taguba report, which attempts to portray the tortures as the work of a few "bad apples" at the bottom, gives evidence that soldiers were ordered to torture prisoners.  It finds that, "contrary to the provision of AR 190-8, and the findings found in MG Ryder's Report, Military Intelligence and other US Government Agency's interrogators actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses."

In the report specialist Sabrina Harman of the 372nd Military Police Company is quoted saying, "Military Intelligence wanted to get them to talk. It is Grainer and Frederick's job to do things for MI and [CIA] and to get these people to talk."  Sergeant Javal Davis told investigators that, "in Wing 1A we were told that they had different rules and different SOP for treatment."  The reasons things were different in Wing 1A is "the rest of the wings are regular prisoners and 1A/B are Military Intelligence holds... The wing belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse."  Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the American officer in charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison told a senior Army investigator that intelligence officers would sometimes order military police to force Iraqi detainees to strip naked and shackle them before questioning.

Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, relying on anonymous government officials and former officials, found that torturegate is the result of a secret black ops program initiated by Donald Rumsfeld.  Shortly after 9-11 Rumsfeld authorized the use of physical coercion and sexual humiliation during interrogations of high value suspects in the "war on terrorism."  Initially this was used against Al-Qaeda suspects and in Afghanistan but was later brought to Iraq, where it lead to the current abuses.

Sgt. Samuel Provance, who ran the computer network used by military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, told ABC news, "anything [the soldiers] were to do legally or otherwise, they were to take those commands from the interrogators. ... One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear. If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."  He also said, "there's definitely a cover-up" and, "people are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet."  Provance fears he will be singled out for speaking up, complaining, "I feel like I'm being punished for being honest.  You know, it was almost as if I actually felt if all my statements were shredded and I said, like most everybody else, 'I didn't hear anything, I didn't see anything. I don't know what you're talking about,' then my life would be just fine right now."

Similar abuses are committed in America's own domestic prisons.  "In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. ...  At Virginia's Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods ... and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl." (Butterfield, New York Times, 5/8/04)  Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona requires prisoners to wear pink underwear and stripped uniforms and spends more on food for his police dogs than to feed his prisoners.  In the last 25 years over 40 state prison systems were under some form of court order due to brutality, crowding, poor food and/or lack of medical care.

The head of a team that reopened Abu Ghraib after the American invasion, Lane McCotter, had to resign as director of the Utah Department of Corrections because his officers left a mentally ill patient strapped to a restraint chair for 16 hours, resulting in his death.  According to Elizabeth Alexander, director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, "John J. Armstrong, now assistant director of American prison operations in Iraq, was commissioner of Connecticut's prison system and the sole defendant in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit representing Connecticut prisoners shipped to a Virginia super-maximum prison. In the Virginia facility, prison guards routinely punished prisoners for petty offenses like kicking cell doors by strapping them into five-point restraints for up to 48 hours, while binding their wrists and ankles to steel beds and having a strap tied across their chests. One of the prisoners, who suffered from diabetes, died after being restrained and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. A second prisoner committed suicide."  It shouldn't be a surprise that the United States abuses Iraqi prisoners when the United States does the same thing in its own domestic prisons.

Far from being an isolated incident, the tortures in Iraq are part of a broader pattern.  Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights groups have all documented similar abuses by US troops in Afghanistan and Guantanamo bay.  The US and allies have done the same kinds of things in Latin America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere for a long time.  The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas), a US terrorist training camp in Georgia, has been training right-wing Latin Americans in torture and other nefarious activities for years.  The CIA has a long history of torture, both directly and by proxy.  You can find copies of CIA torture training manuals online at http://www.soaw.org  During the '60s in Montevideo, Uruguay the American Dan Mitrione, an employee of the Agency for International Development (which has CIA links), would train Uruguayan police in torture in the basement of his house.  He kidnapped poor people and used them to demonstrate torture techniques, demonstrations that repeatedly resulted in their death.

All this shows that torturegate is not just a few "bad apples" acting on their own, but that soldiers torturing Iraqis were following orders from individuals higher in the hierarchy. That doesn't mean they aren't responsible for their actions or should not be punished.  "I was just following orders" wasn't valid when the Nazis used it and it's no more valid when Americans use it.  As the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal put it, "Individuals have international duties which transcend national obligations of obedience ... therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."  However, the fact that they were following orders shows that responsibility for this extends further up the hierarchy.  It is only a few on the bottom of the hierarchy who are being punished.

The US government is not acting to actually fix the problem and stop these tortures but merely to fix its image problems.  There will be a few show trials and some symbolic measures, but no more than is necessary for PR purposes.  Abu Ghraib will be demolished, but a new prison serving the same purposes will be built in its place, making the act nothing more than symbolism.  Bush and Rumsfeld knew about these tortures months before the scandal broke, if they were motivated by humanitarian concerns they would have put a stop to them.  The only reason some soldiers are being charged is because the scandal damages the government's image.  They're scapegoats who will take the fall so people higher in the hierarchy don't have to.

These abuses aren't limited to tortures at Abu Ghraib.  The Army's elite Delta Force carried out similar abuses at a site near Baghdad.  Numerous other human rights abuses have been committed by the US in Iraq as well, including shooting on demonstrations, censoring newspapers and arresting Iraqis without charge.  Former staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey, previously stationed in Iraq, told the Sacramento Bee, "we killed a lot of innocent people ... The order to shoot the demonstrators, I believe, came from senior government officials ... I killed innocent people for our government. ... [because of this] I chose to get out."  Journalist Dahr Jamail of the New Standard reported that during the fighting in Fallujah US forces targeted civilians and intentionally shot at ambulances.  Jo Wilding, a British human rights activist in Iraq, has reported the same thing as has Rahul Mahajan and the Arab news network Al-Jazeera.  In a report issued a year after the invasion of Iraq, before torturegate broke, Amnesty International claimed that:

"The past year has seen scores of unarmed people killed due to excessive or unnecessary use of lethal force by Coalition forces during public demonstrations, at check points and in house raids. Thousands of people have been detained, often under harsh conditions, and subjected to prolonged and often unacknowledged detention. Many have been tortured or ill-treated and some have died in custody. ... Scores of civilians have been killed apparently as a result of excessive use of force by US troops, or have been shot dead in disputed circumstances. For example, US soldiers have shot and killed scores of Iraqi demonstrators in several incidents, including seven in Mosul on 15 April 2003, at least 15 in Falluja on 29 April and two outside the Republican Palace in Baghdad on 18 June. ... No US soldier has been prosecuted for illegally killing an Iraqi civilian. Iraqi courts, because of an order issued by the US-led authority in Baghdad in June 2003, are forbidden from hearing cases against US soldiers or any other foreign troops or foreign officials in Iraq. In effect, US soldiers are operating with total impunity. ... Ever since the war began, Amnesty International has been receiving reports of Iraqis who have been taken into detention by Coalition Forces and whose rights have been violated. Some have been held without charge for months. A number of detainees have been tortured and ill-treated. Virtually none has had prompt access to a lawyer, their family or judicial review of their detention. ... Many detainees have alleged they were tortured and ill-treated by US and UK troops during interrogation. Methods reported often include beatings; prolonged sleep deprivation; prolonged restraint in painful positions, sometimes combined with exposure to loud music; prolonged hooding; and exposure to bright lights. Virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill-treatment has been adequately investigated."

The US is also recruiting former members of Saddam's intelligence services for a new secret police force.  As one Iraqi remarked, "we hope [they] will be an improvement on American intelligence - I'd hate to have us invade a country on false pretenses."  Former Baathists are also being brought into the American puppet regime, including former generals in Saddam's military.

The US is torturing Iraqis in the same prisons Saddam tortured Iraqis in, imposing censorship, suppressing opposition demonstrations, arresting Iraqis without charge, rebuilding Saddam's secret police and putting Baathists back in government.  In short, Saddam's old dictatorship is being rebuilt, under new management.  The United States is simply trading one dictatorship for another, more obedient dictatorship.

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