20 October 2005

Maura Stephens: "Why torture is OK"

From openDemocracy:
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Imagine that you are on your way to work, coffee in hand, one December morning when three men in United States military uniforms, armed with guns, approach you. They say your name; you acknowledge it.

One of them slams you in the chest, knocking your briefcase and coffee to the ground, but not before the hot beverage spills on your hand, burning you. The men throw a heavy plastic black hood over your head. You can see nothing. It is very hard to breathe. You are confused and scared out of your mind. You do not have any idea what these men might want. What happened to the quiet day you were expecting? How can you get word to your family? Nobody knows where you are. They will be paralysed with worry.

You are helpless: this cannot be. This is a free country, not a totalitarian state. This is “the greatest country in the world.” Things like this happen in other places, not here. Innocent people are protected here; innocent people are not jailed and abused for no reason, not here.

You are thrown into the back of a pickup truck with a lot of other people. Even through the hood you can smell the fear of others bound and hooded like you. You call out: “This is a mistake! Why am I here? I have done nothing!” You are punched hard in the stomach; it knocks the wind out of you. The truck moves; you are jostled against those next to you.

Eventually the truck stops and you are hauled off, stumbling. You go down hard on one knee because your arms are tied behind you. You are hauled up, twisted by the elbow on your already swollen arm, then herded along with the others; all are quiet except for the occasional cough or sneeze as you shuffle along, prodded in the side occasionally by something sharp and metal, and eventually you hear a huge metal door open. You are tossed inside a room, your hood removed. Your handcuffs are still very tight. Your scalded hand and your bruised knee are throbbing. The other people in the room look as terrified as you are; you count at least thirty-five other prisoners. There is no sink or running water other than one toilet, which already reeks of human excrement and urine.

Soon you are brought in front of a gang of armed men in an office sitting behind a desk. You are made to strip completely naked while being asked questions you don’t understand about people you do know and care about. You cannot answer; you don’t have a clue what the questioners are getting at. They hood and handcuff you again without letting you don even your underwear. Next they force you to crawl a hundred yards and then climb a set of stairs on your knees, naked, your arms behind you, unable to see, struggling for breath the entire time. Your panic is rising, you see no way out.

There is no way out. Over the next five and a half months you are kicked, beaten, stomped, punched, hung backward by your hands, made to go days without sleep, starved, left uncovered in the cold, sprayed with freezing cold water, your teeth chattering so hard you think your brains will simply turn to pulp. Men take turns pissing on you. They poke the barrel of a gun up your anus. They electrocute you. They gleefully pummel your infected hand. They take your photograph as they mock you. Not one of them treats you in any way like a human being. You hold onto your sanity by a thread.

No protection

Put yourself in the position of this prisoner. It could very easily have been you. If you’re a United States citizen, it could still be you in the not-too-distant future. Or it could be someone you love with all your heart, someone you would die to protect.

There is no protection in the current US law for any innocent person who undergoes such treatment. You could be treated thus just for sport, really, and your abusers could claim they “suspect” you of some sort of terrorism, thus leaving them free to do as they will with you, without oversight or accounting.

The story just touched on above is that of at least one man in Abu Ghraib – an innocent man who was tortured and abused at the hands of US military personnel in such unimaginable ways it makes me sick to contemplate them.

His abusers, remember, were liberating his country from an evil dictator. Their commander-in-chief claims to be on the side of good versus evil.

[...]

I have also spoken to US citizens who think along the same lines as one reader who wrote in response to a brief article I published on a talk by Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist. The reader stated: "I don’t really have much of a problem with the 'torture' [Hersh] uncovered at Abu Ghraib. Throwing hoods over their heads and only letting them sleep a couple of hours at a time is nothing, compared to the fate the victims of 9/11 suffered. Do critics of the military really think you just nicely ask suspected terrorists for information, and they’ll tell you?"

This man, no doubt, loves his parents and his wife and children, and donates to his church and to hurricane victims’ funds. I imagine that in September 2001 he gave money to New York City relief efforts. His friends probably say about him: "He’s a great guy – he’d give you the shirt off his back."

I wonder how the people of a nation that considers itself the epitome of enlightenment and education, a so-called "civilised society," can draw such bizarre distinctions and tolerate the inhumane treatment endured by the people in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay and other US – and probably UK – prisons.

I wonder how. But I must point out that we could not have expected otherwise.
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