FRONTLINE: ‘The Torture Question’
19 October 2005 1:33 pm by Taylor Marsh
via videosift.com
They described it as “animal house on the night shift.”
Frontline
called it “The Torture Question.” But after all I’ve
read, then watching it put together in sequence by Frontline, there is little
question that we are guilty. Most of you know the story, but here it is according to Frontline.
Capt. Fishback was mentioned. Then Rummy was seen talking about
“allegations” offered by sources that, so far, were only hearsay.
But when former Military Intelligence officer Tony Larouanis was allowed to speak, our culpability became clear, not just to the few,
but all the way up the ranks. Larouanis talked about using military dogs against
blind-folded detainees who believed they were going to die. Watching the men
urinate and defecate on themselves. It goes on and on.
More was testified to by military men in silhouette who were also
at Abu Ghraib. They were scared to be identified. Fishback knows about this
all too well.
However, the torture didn’t begin at Abu Ghraib. It was introduced and perfected
at Gitmo, under General Jeffrey Miller, whose tour there started out sweet.
Then the inevitable occurred. The intelligence wasn’t coming and the pressure
from the Pentagon was ratcheted up.
That’s when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld signed
off on what would be the harshest military treatment ever authorized against
an enemy in U.S. history. M.P.s were to have “unlimited power,” “use
all necessary means,” which amounted to using torture as a means to an
end. It’s the moment when we became our own worst enemy.
It all really started, according to Frontline, with “the
20th hijacker,” prisoner 063.
The F.B.I. eventually walked away, on orders, washing their hands
of it all. F.B.I. agents wrote volumes on what was happening: female soldiers
grabbing Muslim men’s genitals; detainees left for 18-24 hours with no food,
no water. The horrors go on an on and the big boss not only knew but gave the orders.
It was techniques used through General Miller that led al-Libbi to crack under pressure, handing the U.S. its first, but
not last, bit of faulty intelligence. However, this man’s intel would ruin another
man’s reputation. That man would be Colin Powell, who falsely used al-Libbi’s
fantasies to make the case for war in front of the world at the United Nations.
I won’t go through it all because you’ve heard it before: Gonzales saying Geneva
was silly; the Bybee memo; the dumbing down of rules due to the need to get
intelligence, which we still don’t have in spite of our deal with the devil.
Then Frontline turns to Iraq, where torture turned to American sadism.
And if you’ve ever known anyone wound too tight, whose been turned loose, with
power and authority to burn. You can imagine what came next. One home video
shows military intelligence men having an off duty freak out for the camera,
where they attack a package of some sort, jump on a mattress with all their
might, each taking terms using cushions as stand-in detainee targets, we are
to presume. It was obvious. The grainy composition of the home movie turning
to horror when you realize that we created this chilling narrative through national
policy. You couldn’t keep from visualizing it all complete with a bound Muslim
man as the target. How can this do anything but create more terrorists, while making the Muslim world hate us?
However, it was the mention of “the hard site” that made your imagination
spin out of control. Trying to keep your Christian perspective engaged as a defense, as it
was obliterated by the haunting possibilities of what went down in a place where
Frontline said the really bad stuff happened.
It happened at night.
It was called “1a and 1b” and it is described as hell.
The story is legend, detainee “07″. The man who was
sodomized… fill in the blank of every horror you can imagine here.
Tony Larouanis said dogs were standard operating
procedure at Abu Ghraib. So was keeping prisoners “hovering at hypothermia.”
Larouanis in the end saw the hand writing on the wall: “I’m screwed. Donald
Rumsfeld is gonna walk away from this.”
Rummy may never stop walking.
And let’s not forget General Sanchez, who is in the middle of it all too, as are “a
lot of high ranking officers,” said another soldier in silhouette.
Colin Powell pushed back, so did the J.A.G. lawyers and every
other military lawyer around. Rummy pulled back some, but it was way too late
by then. The line between M.P. and military intelligence had been blurred, the
pictures were out and the rest is history.
Today, the Bush administration, through their surrogates, are launching a campaign
to defeat Senator
McCain’s efforts to stop the torture.
This evil, suicidal bill –
if implemented – would expose Americans to the greatest danger in the
history of our nation: The planting of explosives on our subways. Suicide
bombers killing American women and children. Airline hijackings. Assassinations.
That’s what could and will happen without accurate intelligence? Do
you realize that not a single terrorist attack has occurred on American soil
since 9/11 – despite the dark, dire predictions of the political know-it-alls.
You know why? Because our worldwide intelligence operation has discovered
and exposed plot after plot to kill Americans, both abroad and at home. You
may be alive today because some interrogator wasn’t too fastidious about
how he got his information from some proud, smirking jihadist.
HUMAN
EVENTS MAGAZINE
President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that includes
what Senator McCain and 90 other senators, military lawyers, Capt. Fishback
and most of the American people support.
The terror question lingers.
