Tortured Reasoning

The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment is aimed any governmental body that tortures or sends prisoners to countries where they know such prisoners are likely to be tortured. As of the fall of 2012, 151 nations were signatories. The United States is one of the few countries that did not sign that treaty, and given our history of interrogation techniques, it is little wonder.

Examples are constantly being produced (e.g., see the scenes in Zero Dark Thirty purportedly based on fact) of how we extracted essential information about terrorists that led to saving lives or apprehending the worst of the worst. What they don’t talk about is the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” justification in torturing American soldiers when they are captured. It’s not a liberal vs. conservative issue. Former American POW (in North Vietnam) John McCain (U.S. Senator, R-Arizona), once the Republican standard bearer, is one of the strongest opponents of our using clearly established torture techniques in our interrogations of… anyone.

That we actually imposed the death sentence (by hanging) on Japanese soldiers convicted by the International Military Tribunal of water-boarding our troops during WWII suggests that this non-lethal interrogation technique violated that U.N. treaty, but as horrible as that method is (the opening scenes in the above-noted film), what the U.S. government actually condoned in Iraq during that war in infinitely worse.

The BBC and the Guardian UK recently researched coalition torture in Iraq during that war. What they found out should make most Americans cringe, at least those with the slightest element of empathy. “The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the ‘dirty wars’ in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country's descent into full-scale civil war.

“[U.S.] Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows… After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

“A second special adviser, retired [U.S.] Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding… Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

“The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse… Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus's ‘eyes and ears out on the ground’ in Iraq… ‘They worked hand in hand,’said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. ‘I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there ... the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.’

“Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. ‘Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,’ claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units… ‘Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.’” Guardian.co.uk,  March 6^th.

I am deeply ashamed at my country’s actions, and the marginal results that we might have achieved through torture can never make up for the seemingly universal hatred of America that we generated. We have swelled the ranks of those sworn to destroy us and kill people from a country who could ever condone such a violent and despicable practice... and filled them with a “terrible resolve."

I’m Peter Dekom, and I hope and pray that we cease from ever engaging in this unjustified, savage, immoral and illegal activity forever.