Two Friends Write...

Two must-read pieces today from two friends of mine.

Journalist and old buddy Frank Smyth was arrested by Saddam’s regime in 1991 and tossed into Abu Ghraib prison. Some of us gave him up for dead and even started putting together a scholarship fund in his name. Frank, fortunately, survived to tell the tale. In Sunday’s L.A. Times he draws some eerie parallels between Abu Ghraib then and now:

“Then, as now, the authorities who governed Abu Ghraib wanted information from suspected insurgents, and the methods they used to extract it weren't pleasant. Hussein's official interrogators questioned prisoners during the day. If the answers weren't what they wanted, the guards punished their Iraqi subjects. I saw one questioner repeatedly poke a crying man on the side of the head with a long, thick dowel like a pool cue.

I saw another interrogator hose down a man standing outside on an overcast spring day. As the prisoner stood shivering, the official asked him questions, and when unsatisfied with the answers he zapped him with a hand-held electroshock device…

One night [the guards] took [another] victim to the second floor and placed him behind a steel railing. All through the night, the prisoner made a strange noise, as if he was trying to bleat like a sheep. A guard yelled at him to do it louder, and when the man failed to bleat loudly enough the guard swung at him with a long, flat board.

The guards took turns holding the board and ordering the man to make the animal outbursts, punishing him with another swat after each bleat. Hours into the game, the prisoner was so exhausted that he could no more than gasp, but the guards kept swinging. As dawn broke, after a long, sleepless night, I could see that his feet were flat on the ground while his wrists were tied to the ceiling. Soon after, a rooster crowed somewhere in the farm country outside Abu Ghraib. Only then did I realize which animal the guards had wanted him to imitate. They all broke into laughter, and a few were guffawing so hard that they fell to the floor. I feel certain the torture we witnessed was tame compared with what transpired elsewhere in the prison. Occasionally, we heard faint but chilling cries coming from deep inside the large prison: These were not the sharp cries of pain we heard so often in our area but, rather, sustained wails of agony I hated to contemplate.”

The other piece today comes from Roger Morris, who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award-winning investigative journalist and historian, he is the author of several books, including "Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician."
In today’s piece for Salon, Roger calls upon American diplomats to resign over the disastrous Bush foreign policy:

“You know that showcase resignations at the top -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or flag officers fingered for Abu Ghraib -- change nothing, are only part of the charade. It is the same with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who may have been your lone relative champion in this perverse company, but who remains the political general he always was, never honoring your loss by giving up his office when he might have stemmed the descent.

No, it is you whose voices are so important now. You alone stand above ambition and partisanship. This administration no longer deserves your allegiance or participation. America deserves the leadership and example, the decisive revelation, of your resignations.”

Comments

[steve]

I thought the story of the Iraqi who was imprisoned and tortured in AG under Saddam for distributing anti-Saddam leaflets and then reimprisoned by the US by the US and tortured in AG was even more interesting was even more relevant. Interviewed on NPR recently, back in the United States, and able to only speak a little while recovering from the trauma stated that the difference between Saddam and the US was clear in his book [and he hated Saddam keep in mind], 1) Saddam's guards tortured him, but didn't take off his pants or force him to engage in sexual acts and 2) he knew why he was arrested under Saddam, he had no idea why the Americans arrested or tortured a former opponent of Saddam who responded to American calls for uprising by distributing antisaddam leaflets.

[steve]

one other story, relayed by a reporter who has sent dispatches to The Nation recently:

"Men, women and crying children congregated at this dire patch of barren earth, expressing bewilderment and outrage at their continuing inability to visit or gain information about loved ones held inside.

Sitting on the hard packed dirt in his white dishdasha, his head scarf languidly flapping in the dry, hot wind, Lilu Hammed stared at the high walls of the nearby prison. It was as if he was attempting to see his 32 year-old son Abbas through the tan concrete.

He sat alone, his tired eyes unwaveringly gazing upon the heavily guarded Abu Ghraib. When my interpreter Abu Talat asked him if he would speak with us, several seconds passed before Lilu slowly turned his head to look up at us.

“I am sitting here on the ground now, waiting for God’s help.”

His son had been in Abu Ghraib for 6 months following a raid on his home which produced no weapons. He had never been charged with anything. Lilu held a crumpled visitation permission slip in his hand that he had just obtained which allows for a reunion with his son ... on the 18th of August.

Lilu, along with every other person I interviewed there, had found consolation neither in the recent court martial or the recent release of a few hundred prisoners."
http://blog.newstandardnews.net/iraqdispatches/archives/000431.html#more

[lefty redux]

Gosh, I like Roger Morris' biography of the young Nixon, but the diplomats who resign at his suggestion might come home without assured work and medical care. Then they could encounter Bush-Nixon types who would blackball them when they seek new positions. Morris should know: his book shows vividly how the young Nixon learned to destroy his "enemies."

[steve]

Does the book have any comments on how they learned to play vicitm when criticised by their detractors? that they could both pummel those who attacked them and at the same time claim victimhood when criticised, it's a rare art form hard to come by.

[rosedog]

If anyone missed Gen. Anthony Zinni just now on "60 Minutes" (perhaps because they were busy watching the Timberwolves kick the Lakers' butts instead), please don't miss reading the transcript: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml

Among the money quotes: "In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption."

[steve]

Get ready for massive slam jobs on the warlovers' blogs tomorrow. They'll have us believing Zinni is worse than Ussam and Sodom Hoosein all in one! I wonder who'll be the first one to pin the troops' 800 deaths and thousands of serious injuries on Zinni?

[Mork]

Steve - unfortunately, this is one case where your paranoia and inclination to attribute evil motives to your opponents may result in a factually accurate prediction!

[steve]

nfortunately, this is one case where your paranoia and inclination to attribute evil motives to your opponents may result in a factually accurate prediction!

--paranoia? any examples of that, or is that just a charge made without any apparent reference?
I don't recall writing 'paranoid' comments here.
But it will be interesting to see how the war bloggers attack Zinni's patriotism, credibility, etc.

[tim]

could this steve person possibly not take up three-quarters of the space on this website?

[topo gigio]

So what's the point, Marchetto? As my Italian friends would say, "hai inventato l'acqua calda" -- if you catch-a my drift-a. Saddam and his Gomorrhites were sadistic human rights violators? Well, I'm shawcked!

You want torture? Anyone can log on to Amnesty's site. Or does the outrage become real only when some journalist is tangentially affected by it?

Following the Nixon train a thought, let's make one thing perfectly clear. Saddam and his Gomorrhoid fiends at least professed and practiced their fascist ideas; the US and its poodles deliberatly violate the fundamental principles of that civilization which they claim it is their mission to bring to the rest of the world.