Redacted History for the Record

I SPENT this semester teaching creative writing at Lehigh University. I’ve been a soldier, a police officer and an interrogator.

[...]

But the course’s title, Writing War, kept me from straying too far from the memories that have haunted me over the last decade. I am grateful to Lehigh for the opportunity to teach the course. The school’s willingness to put a veteran in the classroom is the very thing this country needs to be doing in order to collectively process what the last 13 years of war have wrought. But teaching a class about war reminded me daily that I am no college professor.

I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I tortured.

[...]

When I asked the students to share their memories of the release in 2004 of the Abu Ghraib photographs showing the abuse of detainees, I received the sort of looks students give when they think they should know something and are too embarrassed to admit they don’t. Most avoided eye contact, some gave a sort of noncommittal nod, while others went for pure honesty and just yawned.

[...]

I don’t fault them. They were in elementary school at the time.

[...]

As I looked at their blank faces, I realized I could let myself feel a powerful sense of relief. Abu Ghraib will fade.

[...]

I’ve published articles in newspapers detailing our abusive treatment of Iraqi detainees. I’ve done interviews on TV and radio. I’ve spoken to groups from Amnesty International, and I’ve confessed everything to a lawyer from the Department of Justice and two agents from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command.

[...]

I stood before the class that day tempted to let apathy soften the painful truths of history. I no longer had to assume the role of the former interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I was a professor at Lehigh University. I could grade papers and say smart things in class. My son could ride the bus to school and talk to his friends about what his father does for a living. I was someone to be proud of.

But I’m not. I was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib. I tortured.

[...]

Today, the Senate released its torture report. Many people were surprised by what it contained: accounts of waterboardings far more frequent than what had previously been reported, weeklong sleep deprivation, a horrific and humiliating procedure called “rectal rehydration.” I’m not surprised. I assure you there is more; much remains redacted.

   Eric Fair: NYTimes

Never Forget

In “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” James Risen holds up a mirror to the United States in the 13 years since 9/11, and what it reveals is not a pretty sight. Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-¬winning reporter at The New York Times, documents the emergence of a “homeland ¬security-industrial complex” more pervasive and more pernicious than the “military-industrial complex” Dwight Eisenhower warned against.

[...]

[Risen] brings home the costs by providing detailed accounts of specific operations and the individuals caught up in the counterterror gold rush. His focus is not on the ravages of war wrought in the countries invaded by the United States and its allies, but on the United States itself. This is a story of war profiteering, personal ambition, bureaucratic turf wars, absence of accountability and, always, secrecy.

  NYT Book Review

And check this out...then wonder why the governments of the US and Iraq are content to leave $2 billion in stolen US dollars hidden in a bunker in rural Lebanon.

Read "Pallets of Cash," an excerpt from Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, the new book by New York Times investigative reporter James Risen.

Click here to watch our extended interview about the book. Risen won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his stories about warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency. He has been pursued by both the Bush and Obama administrations as part of a six-year leak investigation into his previous book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.

Excerpt from Pay Any Price by James Risen. Copyright © 2014 by James Risen. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  Democracy Now

Detainee Portraits

Why do they hate us?

Down the Rabbit Hole

A group of 256 Iraqis originally sued CACI International in 2004 accusing the company of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, sexual assault, participating in torture and a variety of other allegations at Abu Ghraib prison.

Publicity around the torture, fueled by graphic pictures of soldiers and contractors humiliating Iraqi detainees, led to calls for US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation and is widely considered one of the most disgraceful events of the US war in Iraq.

A federal judge dismissed the prisoners’ case in June 2013, ruling that because the alleged abuse took place overseas the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia had no jurisdiction.

  RT

But that was not good enough for CACI.

CACI has now filed suit against prisoners who accused the company of wrongdoing in 2004, asking the accusers to pay a $15,580 bill for legal expenses.

What nightmare world have we entered?

And just as a side note....they filed this suit in 2004, and it took the US government until 2013 to decide to rule that the court didn't have jurisdiction?

And...a US contractor overseas cannot be held to account for its actions in a US court?

We have not simply lost our compass, we have gone down the rabbit hole where the laws of nature that dictate the activity of a compass are nonexistent. 

Meanwhile, in Liberated Iraq

[On July 21, ] around 9 p.m. that night, as detainees were being counted on the way back to their cells after dinner, the mortars began to fall.

A barrage of more than 40 rounds hit the grounds in rapid succession -- some counted as many as 100 explosions. As guards and detainees scrambled for cover, two car bombs exploded outside, punching a hole in the walls of the massive prison compound.

More than 50 gunmen wearing tribal robes then entered the grounds, wielding pistols, AK-47s, and hand grenades.

[...]

The gunmen opened fire on any officer they saw. "The prisoners rioted. Some burned mattresses and clothes, others had stored homemade explosives to hurl at the guards. The infiltrators handed weapons to their jailed comrades. There was screaming and chaos," one of the guards at Abu Ghraib recalled. "We were surrounded."

[...]

When the assault ended, 71 prisoners were dead but hundreds of hardened militants had been freed in a stunning attack by al Qaeda's local subsidiary. The exact number is still unclear: The Iraqi government estimated anywhere from 300 to more than 850 detainees, including some arrested by U.S. forces years ago, had been busted out. The fact that the Iraqi security apparatus still does not know exactly how many militants escaped is a stunning admission of incompetence -- and a testament to how badly it was knocked off balance by the assault. It's not just this one prison break -- there are signs that militants are gaining momentum across the country. Iraq just witnessed its deadliest month since the end of its civil war in 2008: The United Nations announced last week that 1,057 Iraqis had been killed in July.

[...]

The Abu Ghraib prison break was not only a counterterrorism disaster, it laid bare Iraq's political dysfunction. Al Qaeda in Iraq has dashed the hopes of U.S. and Iraqi officials who banked that the 2007-2008 "surge" destroyed the movement, taking advantage of the country's poisonous sectarian politics to regain its strength.

  ForeignPolicy.com

Military (In)Justice

[Robert Bales' defense] team has made little progress on the ground in Afghanistan. “When we tried to interview the injured civilians being treated at Kandahar Hospital, we were denied access and told to coordinate with the prosecution team,” it said.

The next day, prosecutors interviewed the injured civilians, but Browne’s office found out shortly afterward that “the civilians were all released from the hospital and there was no contact information for them.

“In addition, we are being denied access to the injured civilians medical records that are in the possession of the government which makes it even more impossible for us to try to locate and interview these crucial witnesses,” it said.

“The prosecution is withholding the entire investigative file from the defense team while the potential witnesses scatter into unknown and potentially inaccessible areas in Afghanistan.”

  

Which makes it all the more suspicious that Robert Bales did not act alone, and the US military/government does not want any witness testimony to that effect revealed. Perhaps the defense team will have to spring for some investigators to go to the actual villages where the slaughter occurred. It will not be an easy discovery, nor a cheap one, but if they are going to defend their client, they're going to have to come up with the resources. Otherwise, he's going to take the fall for a very likely common policy. Another bigot patsy like Lynndie England.  Or maybe he can have a never-ending trial which never gets resolved because eventually those witnesses will die and nobody here really cares anyway.  Other than the fact that he'll have to spend some confinement time: win-win, as they say.  Lynndie who?  And by the way, what was the name of her bigot, prisoner-abusing boyfriend?  Anybody remember? 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.