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The Torture Photographs
Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies, 5 May 2004
"One year later, despite many challenges, life for the Iraqi people is a
world away from the cruelty and corruption of Saddam's regime. At the most basic
level of justice, people are no longer disappearing into political prisons,
torture chambers!."
- president George W. Bush, May 1, 2004.
The humiliation, torture and brutalization of Iraqi prisoners by US troops,
intelligence officials and private military contractors is not an aberration.
Rather, it reflects the racist demonization of Iraqis that has been at the
heart of US Iraq policy since 1990.
The consistent demonization of Iraqis made it possible for the US
government to get away with imposing economic sanctions, in the name of the United
Nations, that were responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis,
particularly children, from 1990 to 2003. It was the basis for Madeleine
Albright's infamous remark regarding the death of 500,000 children as a result of
sanctions, that "we think the price is worth it." After so many years of that
dehumanization, it is not surprising that ordinary American soldiers would find
this criminally sadistic behavior acceptable when the victims were Iraqis,
especially when applauded and urged on by military intelligence operatives.
All troops and officers responsible must be held accountable for criminal
as well as administrative punishments. Those investigated should reach the
highest levels of authority, up to and including Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld,
who should have known about the events, despite any claims that they did not
know. The troops' lack of specific training in international law represents a
further indictment of the military hierarchy. But that lack of training is not
a defense for those who actually engaged in these assaults. It doesn't take
knowledge of the intricacies of the Geneva Conventions to know that forcing
naked, hooded prisoners into simulated or real sexual torture is unacceptable.
This torture scandal provides further evidence why the expanding role of
the 20,000 or so private military contractors in Iraq must be ended. Army
reports on the interrogators employed by CACI International only recommend that
one of those responsible for abusing prisoners be fired, the other disciplined.
The military has no authority over these intelligence mercenaries, and even
the General Accounting Office admits that Pentagon oversight of private
contractors is "inconsistent and sometimes incomplete." These mercenaries must be
held criminally liable for their actions in US courts. If the US had joined
its allies in the International Criminal Court, the ICC would have been able
to hold the private military contractors accountable if the US government
refused.
The reports of similar, if not as well-photographed, abuse of prisoners at
the Guantanamo Bay prison make it unacceptable to replace General Janis
Karpinsky, commander of the Abu Ghraib prison, with General Geoffrey Miller, the
former commander of the Guantanamo facility, as a solution to the problem.
During Gen. Miller's September 2003 visit to Abu Ghraib, he urged that military
police play a more active role in preparing the prisoners for their
interrogation; according to General Antonio Taguba, who wrote the Army's report, such a
role would violate Army regulations.
We should remember that it was photographs of abuse by US soldiers in
Viet Nam that helped convince Dr. Martin Luther King to go public with his
critique of the war in his Riverside Church speech.
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