Robo-Tripping at Abu Ghraib

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=robotripping_at_abu_ghraib

Robo-Tripping at Abu Ghraib

Soldiers' videos and photos show how obscene games and simulated violent acts became part of everyday life and led to a culture of abuse in Iraq's detention facilities.

Tara McKelvey | June 15, 2007 | web only


snip//


He belongs to a small group of individuals who alerted the world to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib and in U.S.-run detention facilities in Iraq. From September 2003 to February 2004, Provance says he saw how detainees were mistreated at Abu Ghraib: A 16-year-old boy, for example, was hooded, shackled, and interrogated not because he knew anything about the insurgency but because it would upset an Iraqi general, Hamid Zabar, who was his father. Provance also heard about beatings and assaults of other detainees. He reported the abuses, but he says no one aggressively pursued the leads. Out of frustration, he agreed to appear on ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings on May 18, 2004.

Three days later, Provance was reprimanded, he told lawmakers on Capitol Hill at a briefing, "Protecting National Security Whistleblowers in the Post-9/11 Era," for the House Committee on Government Reform on February 14, 2006. "There were all sorts of intimidating acts against him," says Scott Horton, a human-rights lawyer who met with Provance in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2004. "His commander wanted to court-martial him."

Timeline of a Scandal

Provance is not the only Abu Ghraib whistleblower. Specialist Joseph M. Darby handed over a CD containing the photographs to a military investigator at the prison sometime in late December 2003 or early January 2004. He received a Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston on May 16, 2005, for his actions. A military investigation was begun after Darby turned in the photos, and the images appeared on network television on April 28, 2004. Soldiers implicated faced courts-martial and, in some cases sentencing, as early as May 2004.

And in October 2005 Captain Ian Fishback, a West Point graduate, told members of Congress that soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners between September 2003 and April 2004 at Camp Mercury, a detention facility near Fallujah. Fishback was named a 2006 Time magazine person of the year.

Provance has not received the attention of Darby and Fishback -- though he has much to tell. He was honorably discharged on October 13, 2006, and came home to Pennsylvania. He took with him mementos from Abu Ghraib -- dozens of jpegs, diary entries, unexpurgated sworn statements obtained for the military investigations, and 18 homemade films. Segments from one of the films, entitled The Shanksters Reloaded, appear in a PBS Frontline program, "The Torture Question."

Dozens more of the films and photos have never been seen by the public. Nor has Provance spoken with the media, or anyone, really, at length about the incidents he saw at the prison -- until now. The individuals he describes who were involved in the acts of alleged abuse constitute only a small percentage of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. Yet I have chosen to write about them because their parties and sexual antics were not unusual. Nor were their actions condemned. In this way, the soldiers were part of a semi-lawless culture at the prison that may have contributed to the climate of abuse.

more...

...asap:

<deep snip>
"When I came back here, I got 21 questions. People were trying to tell me they know more about Abu Ghraib than I do. I'm like, 'You work at Value City.' One of them -- well, she was like, 'There are people who want to get on with their lives and, there are people like you who want to keep bringing this shit up.'"

"I'm like, it's not just Abu Ghraib. It wasn't just a few bad apples or an outbreak of sadism. It was policy. Those MPs thought what they were doing was acceptable. So acceptable that they would use them as wallpaper for their laptops. It wasn't just mischievousness. A kid goes over there and busts glass out -- " he points to the First Federal Savings across the street -- "and he's not going to take a picture of himself doing it and mail it to his parents."

"Generals were shooting at the feet of the interrogators and telling them to dance," he says. "But for all eternity, the only thing people are going to say is, 'Oh, it was that one little girl.'"

He is describing Lynndie R. England, the soldier who became the symbol of criminal wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib. There were individuals higher in the chain of command who were responsible for the abuse, he says, but they were not punished. His descriptions of women in the army may sound sexist. But similar observations could be made of the male soldiers -- at least in his version. The soldiers were objectified as "muscle" and got lavish attention (boxes of fancy computers); they indulged themselves (beating detainees and treating it as a joke); and found their reputations in the gutter (some are serving time).

It looks like a rave party on the computer screen.. The lights flicker in the dark prison cell and create a mesmerizing neon glow. "I always tell people Abu Ghraib was Apocalypse Now meets The Shining," Provance says. He puts his elbows on the table and stares at the light display. "A surrealist combat zone with the horror and haunting of The Shining."
<end of snip>

First thing I read this morning

:hi:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1123444&mesg_id=1123444

...all the more laughable. And pathetic, too.

"Mental institution, Michael?" pales when compared to US involvement in child torture...