How Did America Become a Country That Tortures?
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 by RLRFrom Information Clearing House
By Cynthia Fuchs
In December 2002, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar was picked up and delivered to the Bagram Air Force Base prison. Five days later, he was dead. Sgt. Thomas Curtis, one of the Military Police at Bagram, remembers, “There was definitely a sense of concern because he was the second one. You wonder, was it something we did?”
As detailed in Alex Gibney’s devastating documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, Dilawar’s demise was officially termed a homicide, like the first detainee to die at Bagram, Habibullah. Captured by a warlord and handed over to the U.S. just days before Dilawar, Habibullah as deemed “an important prisoner,” hooded, shackled, and isolated, periodically beaten for “noncompliance.” Autopsies showed that Dilawar and Habibullah suffered similar abuses, including deep bruises all over their bodies; according to the Army coroner, Dilawar suffered “massive tissue damage to his legs… his legs had been pulpified.” And yet, despite initial concerns among the guards and interrogators at Bagram over an investigation, instead, the officer in charge of interrogation at the prison, Captain Carolyn Wood, was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor and, following the Iraq invasion in 2003, she and her unit were sent to Abu Ghraib.
Methodically, relentlessly, Gibney’s Oscar-nominated film assembles stories, evidence, and testimony from witnesses and experts (its deliberate structure recalls that of Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight, both films suggesting that, if the Bush Administration had not already put in place legal protections, more than one member might be subject to criminal charges). The many decisions and oversights that produced the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would be used at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and other sites have several points of departure, each chilling in its own way. Not least among these is the pronouncement by Dick Cheney that motivates Taxi‘s title, made during an appearance on Meet the Press during the week after 9/11. Describing imminent changes in interrogation policies, the vice president asserted,
We have to work sort of the dark side, if you will, spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. It’ll be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.
Read more Anything Goes
First of all your picture is BS. We did not have those uniforms in 2002! In-fact, we did not have those until late in 2006! Your photo is just another in a long list of BS lies! By the convention, all wounded insurgents must receive medical aid. Knowing that the US will transport wounded (they sure as hell will not) to a medical facility, they will often hide explosives and must be striped and searched BEFORE you transport. When they are being searched, they will not just lie there and let you search. Note the pressure bandage on the guy’s leg? Yea, that is a bandage. If you are going to torture someone, would you bother to bandage a wound dumb ass? Did you know that medics and medivac helicopters are a number 1 target regardless of the many grateful Afghanistan people the help each day? Where are the pictures of the many Afghanistan families that were shot in the head in there homes on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2006 by the Taliban? Of course, since you have not been there and seen it first hand, you have the luxury of sitting fat and happy here in the US making this shit up. Post this one if you dare as it exposes you as just another propagandist for the Taliban you true blue ass hole! But hey, this must make you happy knowing that you helping the Taliban’s cause by promoting the anti-american BS.
My son just got hit in afgnaistan. For all anyone should care they want to see allah, we have the capability to grant that request. Pull our guys out, and tactical nuke them. The area is a wasteland anyway. How do you give human rights to people who have no humanity. And if you disagree with that hop a plane to kandahar and when I see the video of you being beheaded, then I will say I told you so
Hmm, lets see…
Vic: The picture is never tied to any of the article. Read it again and actually use that gray matter for once. It is “just” a picture of US military torturing someone. Which I suppose you are fine with since you ignore that point, somehow using outmoded military fashion as the distraction from the fact that THE US TORTURES PEOPLE.
Fernando: I am extremely regretful your son got hit. If we weren’t there, he wouldn’t have gotten hit. It has been how many years and we are still militarily occupying other nations. What would you do if China or Russia came and occupied your town… for six years? GET BLOODY PISSED OFF AT THEM!
The lack of people’s ability to think rationally when they are in fear is driving this nation into collapse.
PS- “Al Queda” (literally ‘the database’) is a CIA construct created to instigate trouble in Afghanistan for Russia decades ago. It was a database of Mujahadeen soldiers recruited and trained BY US.
First off the uniform is standard issue woodland camoflauge, everybody has those. Second, it’s not a picture of someone being tortured. it shows a man on the floor with his knee bandaged and someone in military style clothing standing over him. There is also someone else in the picture who appears to not be in military style clothing. Persons unknown, location unknown, facts about the picture or circumstances unknown. You are all making up scenarios to support your own propaganda and political beliefs, possibly not related to this picture at all.
Actually, Vic is right on several points, even if his words reflect the exasperation many of us over here feel about the fallacies running rampant in the blogosphere. I am an officer serving in Afghanistan near the city of Khost. I can tell you that the pants in the photo are standard woodland greens, but the top is a black fleece jacket that was not issued until around 2006. There’s nothing in the photo that shows conclusively that the wearer is US. Next, the dressing on the leg is a battlefield pressure bandage, carried in every first aid kit here. The wrapper is on the floor, too. And just like in the US, when dealing with a trauma victim, we cut clothing off to insure a more complete assesment of the victim’s injuries. And to say that “The picture is never tied to any of the article” is ludicrous. The photo is embedded in the article and the file name is “TortureNaked”. To assert that the photo even depicts torture is extremely questionable at best.
I agree with the above comment: “You are all making up scenarios to support your own propaganda and political beliefs, possibly not related to this picture at all.” Substitute “most likely” for “possibly”.
Are you related to Cathy Fuchs on euclid Ave.?
This picture is obviously jus another longed hair hippies attempt to get the United States out o f the war over sea’s and have world peace. Fact is that there can never be world peace as long as there are hundreds of religous beliefs out there every battle ever fought has been about religon one way or another. So the false thought of world peace might be nice the harsh reality is that it will never happen. Now this picture is a little ridiculous seeing how we dont have any background of this photo the guy might have been tortured or he attacked the guards and they did what they needed to do to save themself from harm after all they do have familys to come home to and support and I do see a field dressing (bandage) on his leg I dont know of any other country that would bandage a pow after inflicting pain. I am an MP at Bagram I have been here 6 months and have seen NO SIGN WHAT SO EVER of ANY TORTURE so until you have been there I dont think you have the right to be spreading shit like this it is an outrage that this country alows to put stuff like this out in the publics view. And as for the quote at the bottom of the picture it will never happen to US citizens because of the brave men and women over seas right now keeping it from happening killing the ones that killed all those innocent americans on 9/11 and making sure that the rest of the US can lay there heads down in peace. So do us all a favor and just close this sight down reality tv already gives us a fair amount of BS we dont need any more.
Hey USA!! We will never ever leave you till the last day our life. You are the most criminal people of the world. We have got Allah and you have got just only small weapons but that weapon is noting for Allah. Don’t kill innocent muslim people and get out from our beautiful land (Afghanistan).
I disagree, in the beginning I was all gung ho and looking for revenge. After seeing the lies and deceit from our leaders in the movie Taxi To Darkness where SOLDERS admitted to beating the snot out of prisoners, your responses of woosy-ness are baseless brah. The shit DID happen, no matter how you wanna candy coat it. These assholes in DC seem like the same ones running my employers, (huge telephone company) in that they are asking for the impossible by looking only at numbers. If someone is innocent, they HAVE nothing to ell you and beating there asses wont change it. No one is a soldier for life, my only advice is do not do anything that when you rotate back to the world is gonna upset your spirit or have karma come looking for you.
DC is lying to the citizen as well as the soldiers, look who took the blame, not 1 suit got sent to the can, the grunts did though. Pull yer heads out of yer asses brah.
Shit happens!!!
Is an American human being, why kill like evil….enemy for whom ?
The aspects you folks don’t hear about is the rape and consentual sex with other inmates in front of female soldiers, throwing of fecal matter and urine at guards, among other things, so the nude photos are a completely moot point. Meanwhile these guys are treated better than any US civil prisoner.
E, what you don’t understand is we are not there for a military take over, we are there to break the back of a faux military that have been attacking other nations for 30 years on the basis that they don’t think Israel has a right to exist.
Whatever you want to blog, the association of this image titled “TortureNaked” with your claim of abuses is irresponsible at best. As a Soldier trained in basic combat care, I can see that this is clearly an image of a detainee who has received an emergency field dressing for trauma to his knee. He may have been shot, he may have been stabbed, or he may have been fighting and gashed himself on any number of things that could pose a hazard in the makeshift environment he appears to be in. Judging by the position of the two Soldiers and their relatively light grips, they appear to be trying to calm him down. No knees to the chest to subdue him- in fact it looks like they are trying to prevent him from rolling over. He is naked likely per protocol to clear him for transport or detention. So…exactly what should we be concerned about happening to US citizens as suggested by the red foot note? You are making assumptions and until you can admit that your arguments are without merit.