The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos - by News


"If you are going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill

If you're going to talk about torture, you have to start with Abu Ghraib. No one was accused of waterboarding and it might not represent the first instance of American military/CIA/government-sanctioned torture in this century, but it's the most well known and best documented so far.

There are pictures and statements and Official Explanations. And there are scapegoats already doing time. The soldiers prosecuted and imprisoned for their roles in the Abu Ghraib scandal were by all accounts ordinary men and women caught in extraordinary circumstances.

"[War] is a grim, dark business, and no matter how noble the cause for which it is fought, no matter how valiant the service, many veterans spend much of their subsequent lives trying to forget not only what was done to them and their comrades, but some of what had to be done by their hand to prevail." Senator John McCain, 2005, in support of a torture ban

It's all well and good for politicians and pundits sitting safely at home to self-righteously decry their actions, but with few exceptions (most notably Sen. McCain) we are all clueless. And we weren't there.

We're told the soldiers were normal human beings. God-fearing, church-going, patriotic servants of their country. I believe that. Just as I believe they started their assignments with honorable intentions ... at the top of an extremely slippery slope. Down which many were pushed. And the rest helplessly slid.

At first they followed orders. Not by blindly persecuting innocent citizens like the Nazis and their collaborators. But as good soldiers carrying out directives from superior officers against prisoners of war, avowed, sworn enemies of our country. That's what they were told.

We were all told that. We knew from Iraqi public broadcasts and manifestos and ongoing attacks that though not responsible for 9/11, there existed a huge cohort of brainwashed automatons in Iraq eager to destroy our soldiers and our country at any cost to themselves.

Think about it. America's at war. Many of the enemy are religious extremists willing to kill anyone who doesn't believe exactly as they do. To any rational human being that kind of thinking is irrational and barbaric. Ironically, just as were the acts perpetrated at Abu Ghraib.

War is Hell
War doesn't foster rational thought or "Christian" behavior -- especially this war. American soldiers were confused, repulsed and frankly endangered by factions of an alien culture whose members committed hideous suicides and homicides for the promise of 72 virgins and Eternal Bliss.

Our fighting men and women knew all about Saddam Hussein's heinous treatment of his own people in the name of sins against Allah. They were well indoctrinated --from the Top down-- with the concept of America Vs The Barbarians, at any cost.

Is it any wonder that some, when let loose by orders from On High, clearly dissociated from their own humanity? They'd lost friends and comrades. They were trapped in a foreign country fighting a war of politics and lies.

Then they're offered up the despised enemy on a silver platter. Not just encouraged but ordered to torture them. Of course they let loose.

Serving in Iraq is Hell
That's the real irony: our dedicated, self-sacrificing, hardworking soldiers, universal defenders of Truth, Freedom and the American Way were reduced to their own basest instincts under the influence of the Bush-Cheney 'Might-Makes-Anything-Right' policies -- and by an enemy whose battle cry is still Death by Martyrdom.

It's no wonder when faced with members of a fanatical army, many of whose members would blow up their own children in furtherance of The Cause, sadly, horribly, some of our Best and Bravest sank to the lowest common denominator to channel their overwhelming fear and rage.

Their military superiors --including their Commander in Chief-- made it known that torture is acceptable behavior in war. What individual soldier, or even group of enlisted personnel, is going to stand up and say This is madness? In the movies, maybe. It would never happen in real life.

Should we excuse them? Absolutely not. But we should help them, counsel them, seek out their craven superiors and make them pay an even higher price. Especially now that we have sane leaders who've instituted a considerably higher moral imperative for America than the Bush Administration's wartime religion of Money, Lies and Torture.

Gitmo
On a personal note, I know someone who's a military psychiatrist recently returned from an assignment at Guantánamo Bay. I don't know any details. I don't know if he was there to counsel soldiers or interrogate prisoners. I can only speculate it was the former. 

He's a physician, a medical doctor. A psychiatrist. Not only "do no harm" but more, "aid the troubled." He is kind, intelligent, decent, humane, patriotic, a man of integrity. It's inconceivable he would allow himself to participate in torture.

Here's the thing. That's what the parents, friends, loved ones of the soldiers now serving time for torturing prisoners would say about them. It's most likely true.

Plus, you'd think that with the eyes of the country firmly on Gitmo, the battle of wills over its imminent closing, torture's not happening there. But. We. Don't. Know. And we must find out the truth. The WHOLE truth.

The soldiers deserve it. The prisoners deserve it. Our country needs it. We as citizens must demand it. Because even as observers, we're all being tortured by the inhumanity of our recent past. 

At least I hope it's in the past.