The Shock Doctrine: Body Shocks page 365

As resistance mounted, the occupation forces fought back with escalating shock tactics. These came late at night or very early in the morning, with soldiers bursting through the doors, shining flashlights into darkened homes, shouting in English (a few words are understood: motherfucker," Ali Baba," "Osama Bin Laden". Women reached frantically for scarves to cover their heads in front of intruding strangers; men's heads were forcibly bagged before they were thrown into army trucks and sped to prisons and holding camps. In the first three and half years of occupation, an estimated 61,500 Iraqis were captured and imprisoned by US forces, usually with methods designed to "maximize capture shock." Roughly 19,000 remained in custody in the spring of 2007. Inside the prisons, more shocks followed: buckets of freezing water; snarling, teeth baring German shepards; punching and kicking; and sometimes the shock of electrical currents running from live wires.



Three decades earlier, the neoliberal crusade had begun with tactics like these-with so-called subversives and alleged terrorists grabbed from their homes, blindfolded and hooded, taken to dark cells where they faced beatings and worse. Now to defend the hope of a model free market in Iraq, the project had come full circle.



One factor that made the surge in torture tactics all but inevitable was Donald Rumsfeld's determination to run the military like a modern, out-sourced corporation. He had planned the troop deployment less like a defense secretary and more like a Walmart vice president looking to shave a few more hours from the payroll. Having whittled the generals down from their early requests for 500,000 troops to fewer than 200,000, he still saw fat to trim; at the last minute, satisfying his inner CEO, he cut tens of thousands more troops from the battle plans.



Althought his just-in-time forces were capable of toppling Saddam, they had no hope of handling what Bremer's edicts created in Iraq-a population in open rebellion and a gaping hole where Iraq's army and police used to be. Lacking the numbers to bring control to the streets, the occupation foces did the next best thing; they scooped the people off the streets and put them in jails. The thousands of prisoners were brought to CIA agents, US soldiers and private contractors-many of them untrained-who conducted aggressive interrogations to find out whatever they could about the resistance.



Previous thread... Dismantling democracy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2564230

The Shock Doctrine: Dismantling Democracy pg 361
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2564230&mesg_id=2564265

The Shock Doctrine: Disaster Apartheid/ if they can't pay, let them die!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2527827

The Shock Doctrine: Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2525753

The Shock Doctrine: Setting up South Africa/Screwing Mandela.. chapter 10
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2523705

The Shock Doctrine: Clinton and Bosnia page 328
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2492912

The Shock Doctrine: The Clintons and the Cheneys
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2533968

The Shock Doctrine: Torture as Curing.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2561149

The Shock Doctrine: The Anti-Marshall Plan page 346
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2563105

I don't know if this is one of them, but there was a story (on DemocracyNow, perhaps) that it was becoming common in Iraq for people to tattoo themselves with their own name or identifying family so that they had a better chance that, if they died, their families would be able to retrieve the body, and wouldn't be left agonizing over what happened to a disappeared loved one.

In any case, the tattoo looks very fresh. You can tell because the hair is clean shaven and the tattoo looks red and angry.

Coalition forces.

that a whole lot of us tried to stop this.

Now go shopping and pay no attention to the government's war crimes. :sarcasm:

:kick: :kick: :kick:

These Americans doing this make me ashamed of my country, and I hate them for that!

"CIA Detainee Torture, Memory Loss, and the Bush Administration's Falsification of History" (archived leveymg thread started 12-13-2007)http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2462592

Everyone should read it.

You are doing a great service. Every single citizen of the U.S. needs to read this well documented book. In my county's libraries, the holding list to check out Naomi Klein's book is a mile long.