Torture Policy Ordered
by Rumsfeld

Abu Ghraib Not Exceptional

by Rebecca Gordon

A policy of widespread and systematic torture in Iraq , Afghanistan and elsewhere was approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, reports Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in the June 1, 2004 issue of The New Yorker.

Based upon information from numerous top level military and intelligence contacts, Hersh and other journalists have uncovered that President Bush himself knew about the policy, as did National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Reports now document torture in Iraq , Afghanistan , Guantánamo and the British territory Diego García Island , as well as in secret CIA-run detention centers around the world. The Army admits it is investigating the deaths of at least 37 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan alone.

Use of extreme and painful interrogation tactics, in violation of longstanding international laws and conventions, was also uncovered by the U.S. Inspector General investigating the treatment of those detained in the aftermath of Sept. 11, and historically has been exposed as a common occurrence in U.S. prisons.

'SADISTIC AND CRIMINAL'

The abuse of Iraqi prisoners goes beyond the vivid pictures of sexual humiliation that have grabbed international attention. Major General Antonio Taguba's official report on U.S. detention facilities in Iraq details “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses.”

He describes savage beatings, prolonged isolation with sensory deprivation, exposure to extreme cold, sleep disruption, attacks by dogs, threats of electrocution, rape and forced anal penetration with foreign objects.Prisoners have been forced to maintain fixed positions for many hours, causing severe pain without leaving marks.

In late 2001, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave secret approval to a “special access program” directed against suspected members of Al Qaeda, according to Hersh. This program permitted the assassination, capture and/or forceful interrogation of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan --or anywhere in the world. President Bush was briefed on the program, as was Rice.

Last year, Rumsfeld gave the order to expand the Al Qaeda special access program to prisoners detained in Iraq . This new project, code-named “Copper Green,” involved the use of physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees, to extract information about the activities of anti-U.S. forces.

British citizens released from the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo in Cuba have detailed their experiences of “beatings, forced injections, sleep deprivation and shackling in painful positions” at the hands of U.S. interrogators, according to the London Times.

TORTURE IN U.S. PRISONS

The CIA has admitted using “stress-and-duress” tactics in its interrogation of people held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan . One of the soldiers facing court martial for Abu Ghraib, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, wrote in his diary about a prisoner interrogated there by the CIA, “They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away.”

The U.S. also frequently sends prisoners to countries where they can legally be tortured, a procedure known as “rendition.” In September 2002, the FBI arrested Maher Arar, a Canadian businessman, and deported him to Syria , where he was tortured for 10 months before being released.

Within the U.S. , a 2003 report by the Inspector General of the Justice Department documented the systematic abuse of both U.S. and foreign nationals held in U.S. jails after Sept. 11. Another exposure dates back to the 1990s when then-Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun decried “various kinds of state-sponsored torture and abuse” throughout the prison system.

Blackmun wrote that the practices were “of the kind ingeniously designed to cause pain but without a telltale ‘significant injury.’” They included “beating [prisoners] with naked fists, shocking them with electric currents, asphyxiating them short of death, intentionally exposing them to undue heat or cold, or forcibly injecting them with psychosis-inducing drugs.”

Violent rape of both men and women in U.S. prisons is still common,according to Amnesty International.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote on May 31, 2004 that "inmates at prisons in the U.S. are frequently subjected to similarly grotesque treatment" as at Abu Ghraib. "Very few Americans have raised their voices in opposition to our shameful prison policies. And I'm convinced that's primarily because the inmates are viewed as less than human."

Abu Ghraib victim Saddam Saleh Aboud, tortured until he confessed to being Osama Bin Laden in disguise, told The New York Times: "I was only afraid that they would take me back to the torture room. I would prefer to be dead."

Rebecca Gordon is a doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley , Calif. and is finance coordinator of War Times.

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