Sick discourse on torture

Two kinds of sick: US torture theory and the ignorant media mouthpieces who support it


``You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me.'' --Rush Limbaugh, on his radio program, May 3, 2004. (SELF-INFLICTED PAIN and SENSORY DISORIENTATION: Alfred McCoy has a very different interpretation of what is going on here.)

Following public releases last week of large new batches of Abu Ghraib photos and a devastating UN report calling for the closure of the Pentagon dungeon at Guantanamo Bay, the US has once again dismissed any criticism. Mealy-mouthed Scott McClellan once again was sent out to dissemble.

McClellan (Feb. 16 briefing):I think that what we are seeing is a rehash of allegations that have been made by lawyers representing some of these detainees. We know that these are dangerous terrorists that are being kept at Guantanamo Bay. They are people that are determined to harm innocent civilians, or harm innocent Americans. They were enemy combatants picked up on the battlefield in the war on terrorism. They are trained to provide false information. And al Qaeda training manuals talk about ways to disseminate false information and hope to get attention.

But the International Committee for the Red Cross has been provided full access to the detainees. The military treats detainees humanely, as directed by the President of the United States. And the United Nations should be making serious investigations across the world, and there are many instances when they do, when it comes to human rights. This was not one of them. And I think it's a discredit to the U.N. when a team like this goes about rushing to report something when they haven't even looked into the facts. All they have done is look at the allegations.

However, the stalest old news here is the notion that these are just the unfounded allegations of dangerous terrorists.

At this point, we could expect a skeptical press corps to point out to McClellan that his assertions are entirely false. A brief perusal of the UN report shows that it is based on voluminous amounts of evidence found in various documents released by the Pentagon itself, and observations recorded by US law enforcement personnel. Not only that, the UN report attacks the notion that all or even most of those persons housed at the dungeon are inhuman monsters picked up in the course of a gallant battlefield effort to stamp out terrorism. In fact, the UN says, US detention practices are arbitrary:

25. Many of the detainees held at Guantánamo Bay were captured in places where there was – at the time of their arrest – no armed conflict involving the United States. The case of the six men of Algerian origin detained in Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 2001 is a well-known and well-documented example,[24] but also numerous other detainees have been arrested under similar circumstances where international humanitarian law did not apply. The legal provision allowing the United States to hold belligerents without charges or access to counsel for the duration of hostilities can therefore not be invoked to justify their detention.

But it was way too much to expect that US media would care to look under these covers, even though the path is well worn by the ACLU and CCR.

Media Matters has an excellent analysis of an example of sickening failure of skepticism on torture by NBC correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, who ``provided McClellan's dubious defense of Guantánamo without challenge,'' despite the fact that ``McClellan's claims had previously been undermined by both the International Committee of the Red Cross and internal U.S. government emails.''

This is a superb Media Matters post that refutes fully McClellan's falsehoods.

Meanwhile, the ignorance just piles up at the news channels. An example there was MSNBC's Scarborough Country for Feb. 16. The host stood up against the tainted UN and for all the American lives being protected by US humanity-robbing torture techniques in the ``gloves off'' Terror War:

And I have just got to say to all you, friends, the reason that I don‘t understand why anybody listens to the United Nations anymore is, you just look at their track record over the past 10 years. A million people killed in Rwanda, the U.N. does nothing. Two million killed in Sudan, the U.N. does nothing. Kosovo, the U.N. stays on the sidelines.

Bosnia, U.N. stays on the sidelines. Torture in Iraq, more people killed in Iraq than any other country in the Middle East, under Saddam Hussein, the United Nations does nothing.

And these people are going to come to us and lecture us about trying to figure out what happened on 9/11 and what is happening right now with people that are trying to kill you, your families, and your neighbors in America today. They‘re trying to do it. And because we‘re trying to get information from these terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, we are the target of attacks from a corrupt bureaucracy that shouldn't even be able to stay in New York City another day.

Sadly, this passes for a reasonable argument in America today. Well gee, they're the worst of the worst, so whatever we do to them is okay. Scarborough just dodges the very serious issues of law and basic rights to a fair trial raised by the report, and makes the issue about some unspecified general failings of the UN, rather than the inhumane policies of the UN's most-influential member.

My news for Scarborough is that there is nothing American about imprisonment without trial--the main point of the UN report. And what on Earth can guys kept in a tiny box for four years still be telling that can protect anyone?

Alfred McCoy and history of US-sponsored torture
Sickening media mouthpieces like McClellan, Limbaugh, Scarborough, and the pussy-cat reporters like Miklaszewski enable the Bush Administration to lie about US engagement in torture without challenge. Yes, you better believe it. This is torture the US is perpetrating.


Read this astonishing book and you'll understand much about the torture photos

University of Wisconsin history professor Alfred McCoy explains much about the roots of this torture in his new book, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Here's the flavor of it from a striking Feb. 17 Democracy Now! interview:

McCoy: ...if you look at the most famous of photographs from Abu Ghraib, of the Iraqi standing on the box, arms extended with a hood over his head and the fake electrical wires from his arms, okay? In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of C.I.A. torture. It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental C.I.A. techniques, developed at enormous cost.

There you have it. The US-sponsored torture illustrated by the photos is clearly, most certainly not just the work of a few deranged pranksters on the night shift playing out harmless Britney Spears fantasies. Rather, it is the product of the entire history of the CIA throughout the Cold War, and now the Terror War under the orders of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

Also go here for additional segments with Alfred McCoy. (Look for Feb. 14 and Feb. 16 Flashpoints programs.) I implore all readers to listen to the interviews cited. McCoy describes a sickening history. It's understanding is essential for any chance for future redemption of America's soul.