Torture In Iraq
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Foreign Policy, War
But it’s not us. It’s the Iraqi Army we’ve trained.
In one of the new joint American-Iraqi security stations in the capital this month, in the volatile Ghazaliya neighborhood, Capt. Darren Fowler was heaping praise on his Iraqi counterparts for helping capture three insurgent suspects who had provided information he believed would save American lives.“The detainee gave us names from the highest to the lowest,� Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers. “He showed us their safe houses, where they store weapons and I.E.D.’s and where they keep kidnap victims, how they get weapons, where weapons come from, how they place I.E.D.’s, attack us and go away. Because you detained this guy this is the first intelligence linking everything together. Good job. Very good job.�
The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that before handing over the detainees to the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front of the other two, the Iraqis said. The stripes on the detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of a whipping with electrical cables, were later shown briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to take a picture.
Welcome to the new Iraq.
And what’s more, they aren’t trying to hide the fact that they beat the prisoner. In fact, they seem to be proud of it because it seems to be standard operating procedure….
“I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession,� Capt. Bassim Hassan said through an interpreter. “We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate.�
I think Captain Ed says it best…“All of this will make American soldiers safer in Iraq, but at what cost?”
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 and is filed under Foreign Policy, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 22nd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
They seem to be proud of it because it has yielded useful intelligence. I know, I know…beating them does not work as well as, say, giving them cookies & milk and asking the “pretty please with a cherry-on-top, where are the bomb making materials?”, but honestly – Am I to really be stridently opposed to IRAQIS doing what is necessary in IRAQ to IRAQI insurgents that are killing US soldiers? You exactly are your routing for here, Justin? (oh uh, I think I just asked one of those taboo Democrat questions that one is never, ever, ever suppose to ask…oops)
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I think perhaps we should all oppose any action that reinforces the notion that what’s expedient trumps respect for the dignity of other individuals (including criminals and enemy soldiers), which I understand as one of the assumptions on which democracy rests. Of course it is EASIER to beat information out of someone, provided that they have the information and are not just saying whatever they have to to ensure that they don’t get beaten. But this country and the constitution are based on principles that make it harder, not easier, to get information in ways that infringe the basic dignity of others. You don’t have to be a democrat to think this; you just have to remember the underlying principles of a democratic government, where even the worst criminals are protected from forced confessions.
Such events demonstrate why it is that bringing democracy to Iraq was probably always a pie-in-the-sky aspiration. Before you can instill the structure, you have to prepare the soil and lay the foundation. People who live in a culture where leaders have routinely used violence to ensure efficient responses haven’t yet had the foundation prepared.
To put it another way: yeah, it is sickening.
April 22nd, 2007 at 4:46 pm
As I commented on Captain Ed’s piece, torture by our side would be hard enough to swallow if there were a real sense that our national well-being depended on the outcome of the war. Maybe it does, but you sure wouldn’t know it by looking on the homefront, where the attitude has been more or less business as usual – with the Bush administration’s encouragement, no less – almost since September 12.
If there’s not enough urgency in this war to require real, broad-based sacrifice from the American people, it’s pretty much impossible to argue that there’s enough to warrant the use of torture.
April 22nd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Saddam Hussein tortured Iraqis, too. What good did it do him?
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:21 pm
I’m rooting for a real democracy in Iraq, which won’t come about if Iraqis are torturing their prisoners. You know…the tactics of the guy who got hung a couple months ago…
So since you seem to embrace the tactics of dictators, who or what are you rooting for?
April 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
That is fantastic Justin. I was under the impression that you wanted to get out of Iraq sometime in the next 20 years. Hell, I thought that you were one of those so splenetic on very feasibility of that very mission.
Well, now that you’ve joined the delusional neocons, I’m with you — we should stick around, institutionalize Miranda and put video cameras in all the interrogation rooms.
I’m for finding a firm-handed potentate that can establish security without resorting to genocide. But hell, since you’re in favor of sticking it out to the bitter end, someone needs to get to work organizing the Baghdad Gay Pride Parade.
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Same as the old Iraq. If we’re actually focused on bettering Iraq, we need to do all we can to stop them from slipping back into the evil habits of Saddam.