2004: Contrasting words from scenes of Abu Ghraib torture. One man alarmed, one said he enjoyed it.

[madfloridian]

From a 2004 NYT article: Only a few spoke up on Abu Ghraib torture, many remained silent.

I think we are being distracted from this issue by the swine flu media coverage. It is not like our country has never had a flu crisis before. There have been many. The coverage of this one is over the hill, it is just totally taking off the news any efforts to hold those who tortured accountable.

Almost everyone I have spoken to feels like this is just media overkill, though the threat of flu is real. The media is doing what the media does so well. It is taking the unpleasant issue of torture off the news, and replacing it with fear.

I somehow missed this New York Times article in 2004. It is quite powerful.

Only a Few Spoke Up on Abuse as Many Soldiers Stayed Silent

Specialist Joseph M. Darby had just arrived at Abu Ghraib in October when his friend Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. showed him a picture on his digital camera of a naked prisoner chained to his cell with his arms hung above him.

"The Christian in me says it's wrong," Specialist Darby would later tell investigators Specialist Graner had said. Specialist Darby said Specialist Graner then said that as a corrections officer he enjoyed it.

..."In alerting criminal investigators, Specialist Darby, a 24-year-old from from Maryland, stood out from other soldiers who learned of the abuse. According to documents obtained by The New York Times, many other people, including medics, dog handlers and military intelligence soldiers and even the warden of the site where the abuses occurred saw or heard of similar pictures of abuse, witnessed it or heard abuse discussed openly at Abu Ghraib months before the investigation started in January.

Mistreatment was not only widely known but also apparently tolerated, so much so that a picture of naked detainees forced into a human pyramid was used as a screen saver on a computer in the interrogations room. Other soldiers easily stumbled onto photographs of naked detainees left on computers in the Internet cafe at the prison. Some soldiers saw detainees being left naked for days, screamed at, threatened with dogs and beaten with furniture. A few tried to report abuse or stop it, but nothing came of their efforts.

Specialist Darby wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. Guess it did not work out that way.

This paragraph shows the involvement of doctors, or perhaps I should say the lack of their involvement. They turned a blind eye to it, they let it continue.

Much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents. Records and statements show doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals. Two doctors recognized that a detainee's shoulder was hurt because he had his arms handcuffed over his head for what they said was "a long period." They gave him an injection of painkiller, and sent him to an outside hospital for what appeared to be a dislocated shoulder, but did not report any suspicions of abuse. One medic, Staff Sgt. Reuben Layton, told investigators that he had found the detainee handcuffed in the same position on three occasions, despite instructing Specialist Graner to free the man.

So many people knew. So many know now. But except for Keith Olbermann's show it appears to be off the news. Well, I admit I have not turned the TV on today, so can't swear to today's news.

Andrew Sullivan has been a strong voice in this area. His op ed in Time Magazine in 2006 told us how doctors probably got involved in this torture business.

How Doctors Got Into the Torture Business

One of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's first instructions for military interrogations outside the Geneva Conventions was that military doctors should be involved in monitoring torture. It was a fateful decision — and we learn much more about its consequences in a new book based on 35,000 pages of government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The book is called Oath Betrayed (to be published June 27) by medical ethicist Dr. Stephen Miles, and it is a harrowing documentation of how the military medical profession has been corrupted by the Bush-Rumsfeld interrogation rules.

One of those rules was that a prisoner's medical information could be provided to interrogators to help guide them to the prisoner's "emotional and physical strengths and weaknesses" (in Rumsfeld's own words) in the torture process. At an interrogation center called Camp Na'ma, where the unofficial motto was "No blood, no foul," one intelligence officer testified that "every harsh interrogation was approved by the and the Medical prior to its execution." Doctors, in other words, essentially signed off on torture in advance. And they often didn't inspect the victims afterward. At Abu Ghraib, according to the Army's surgeon general, only 15% of inmates were examined for injuries after interrogation.

Doctors signing off on torture in advance based on medical history? And we are allowing the media to get this tragedy off the news so easily?

This paragraph gives some examples that are very hard to read and comprehend. Yes, our country did this.

Some of the medical involvement in torture defies belief. In one of the few actual logs we have of a high-level interrogation, that of Mohammed al-Qhatani (first reported in TIME), doctors were present during the long process of constant sleep deprivation over 55 days, and they induced hypothermia and the use of threatening dogs, among other techniques. According to Miles, Medics had to administer three bags of medical saline to Qhatani — while he was strapped to a chair — and aggressively treat him for hypothermia in the hospital. They then returned him to his interrogators. Elsewhere in Guantanamo, one prisoner had a gunshot wound that was left to fester during three days of interrogation before treatment, and two others were denied antibiotics for wounds. In Iraq, according to the Army surgeon general as reported by Miles, "an anesthesiologist repeatedly dropped a 2-lb. bag of intravenous fluid on a patient; a nurse deliberately delayed giving pain medication, and medical staff fed pork to Muslim patients." Doctors were also tasked at Abu Ghraib with "Dietary Manip (monitored by med)," in other words, using someone's food intake to weaken or manipulate them.

Probably there are sighs of relief all over our congress on both sides of the aisle about the fact that the pressure is off this subject now by the media. The vote for the Military Commissions Act in 2006 included some of our own. It even went so far as to do away with Habeas Corpus.

Habeas Corpus was restored by the Supreme Court. I don't know the status of the rest of the Act at this point.

In effect it gave President Bush great freedoms to torture.

Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

Powerful Democrats voted for it. For what reasons I don't know.

Senate:

* Thomas Carper (D-DE)
* Tim Johnson (D-SD)
* Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
* Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
* Joe Lieberman (D-CT)
* Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
* Bill Nelson (D-FL)
* Ben Nelson (D-NE)
* Mark Pryor (D-AR)
* Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
* Ken Salazar (D-CO)
* Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

House:

Andrews, Bean, Barrow, Bishop(GA), Boren, Boswell, Boyd(FL), Brown(OH), Chandler, Cramer, Cuellar, Davis(AL), Davis(TN), Edwards, Etheridge, Ford, Fox? (not sure), Gordon, Herseth, Higgins, Holden, Marshall, Melancon, McIntyre, Michaud, Moore(KS), Peterson(MN), Pomeroy, Ross, Salazar, Scott, Spratt, Tanner, Taylor(MS)

On Countdown last night Keith Olbermann doggedly pursued the topic. I applauded him for it.

Flu is a dangerous thing. We need our news to cover it. But it does not have to push off the pages something so vital to our country's healing and self-respect...holding accountable those who allowed these things to go on. Whoever they may be.

[madfloridian]

1. From ACLU...details on the Military Commissions Act

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/29145res20070322.html

"Eliminates due process.
This law removes the Constitutional due process right of habeas corpus for persons the president designates as unlawful enemy combatants. It allows our government to continue to hold hundreds of prisoners more than four years without charges, with no end in sight.

Rejects core American values. (Habeas Corpus)
Habeas corpus, the basic right to have a court decide if a person is being lawfully imprisoned, is what separates America from other countries. To do away with this American value makes us more like those we are fighting against. It is time to restore due process, defend the Constitution, and protect what makes us Americans.

The last Congress was asleep at the wheel.
The only thing scarier than a government that would take away our basic freedoms is a Congress that would let it happen. Congress must correct that mistake and restore habeas corpus and due process, and define enemy combatants as only those who engage in hostilities against the United States.

Permits coerced evidence.
The act permits convictions based on evidence that was literally beaten out of a witness, or obtained through other abuse by either the federal government or by other countries.

Turns a blind eye to past abuses.
Government officials who authorized or ordered illegal acts of torture and abuse would receive retroactive immunity for their crimes, providing them with a ‘get out of jail free' card.

Makes the president his own judge and jury.
Under the Military Commissions Act, the president has the power to define what is — and what is not — torture and abuse, even though the Geneva Conventions already provide us with a guide.

Congress must fix the Military Commissions Act.
By giving any president the unchallenged power to decide which non-citizen is an enemy of our country — and eliminating habeas corpus due process for them, we allow the government to imprison people indefinitely without charging them with a crime. It is time for Congress to restore due process, defend the Constitution and protect what makes us Americans."

[barbtries]

2. it's dropping off

and you're right, the subject must be kept alive. i wrote to AG Holder again yesterday and plan to do so every other day until prosecutions have commenced, or i die, whichever comes first.

[madfloridian]

3. I wrote once, guess I should again.

To Holder, I mean.

[PatSeg]

4. K&R

This must not be swept under the rug again.

[madfloridian]

12. You are right.

It must not be swept under the rug.

[Uncle Joe]

5. If the tortured prisoners had contacted Swine Flu instead of dying from their treament,

maybe that would garner more attention from the corporate media.

Thanks for the thread, madfloridian.

[madfloridian]

9. It's real but distracting.

There is room on the news for all these things. It's sensationalism to push one thing all day every day.

[madfloridian]

6. More words from Sullivan's article:

"Another certificate claimed a 63-year-old prisoner had died of "cardiovascular disease and a buildup of fluid around his heart." According to Miles, no mention was made that the old man had been stripped naked, doused in cold water and kept outside in 40 cold for three days before cardiac arrest.

Other doctors just looked the other way, their military duty overruling the Hippocratic Oath. One at Abu Ghraib intervened to ask guards to stop beating one prisoner's wounded leg and quit hanging him from an injured shoulder. He saw it happen three times. He never reported it. In Mosul, according to Miles, one medic witnessed guards beating a prisoner and burning him by dragging him over hot stones. The prisoner was taken to the hospital, treated and then returned by doctors to his torturers. An investigation into the incident was closed because the medic didn't sign the medical record and so he couldn't be identified.

After a while, you get numb reading these stories. They read like accounts of a South American dictatorship, not an American presidency. But we learn one thing: once you allow the torture of prisoners for any reason, as this President did, the cancer spreads. In the end it spreads to healers as well, and turns them into accomplices to harm."

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1207633,00.html

I remember some of the Life Magazine articles and pictures after WWII ended and the atrocities began to come out.

This reads a little like that.

[tanyev]

7. Darby lost his anonymity because of Donald Rumsfeld.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2448916


:grr:

[madfloridian]

8. Thanks for that....I did not know that.

Rumsfeld has much to answer for.

[madfloridian]

10. I notice the original link is dead

I sure would like to find the original article. May try later.

This part:

"NEW YORK (AP) - The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.

Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland."

Forced to leave home for telling the truth.

[madfloridian]

11. Found another link with the complete article about Darby.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/08/10/national/a104347D91.DTL&hw=abu&sn=001&sc=1000

"Darby said he was still being interviewed when Graner and two others were brought in, and the agents had to smuggle him out wrapped in rugs and blankets to conceal his identity.

Stunned when Graner and the others returned for a month's duty at the prison, he slept with a loaded pistol. "They'd be walking around with their weapons all day long, knowing somebody had turned them in and trying to find out who. That was one of the most nervous periods of my life," Darby said.

His worst moment, he said, came on May 7, 2004, during lunch with 10 fellow MPs in a mess hall filled with 400 troops.

"It was like something out of a movie," he recalled. Rumsfeld appeared on television, dropped Darby's name, "and the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I got up and got the hell out of there."

Only later did he learn he had been named in a New Yorker magazine article a few days earlier, he told AP in the telephone interview."