05-28-2009, 08:30 PM
Quote:The criminal behavior at Abu Garib was not "enhanced interrogation". It was a rogue group of ill disciplined and badly trained soldiers acting as prison guards and having their jollies at the expense of their prisoners. Unfortunately, the brass in charge of that fiasco got away with a hand slap, while the soldiers committing the atrocities faced court martial and most received sentences, although light ones in view of what they did to their prisoners. The interrogations at Gitmo were handled by professionals, which is scary in the whole Gestapo sense.
I'm sure that you, the entire middle east, and others interested in disinformation will associate Abu Garib and Guantanamo as equal, but in fact they are not.
You seem here to be commiting the fallacy of assuming it's an "either-or" thing.;)
Just because Abu Ghraib is not the same as Guantanamo, does not means it's unnconnected. I would say all these things --- CIA torture, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib etc. flow from the same set of polices, originating at the highest level of the government and the military, and are part and parcel of the same problem.
I could write a lot about this, but I'll just make a couple of small points.
First, sexual humilation was used at Guantanamo. For example, one of the "professional" female interrogators smeared what was (likely fake) menstrual blood on a prisioner --- something that's extraordinarily insulting to a Muslim especially (and I think it might have been during Ramadan). I found it interesting in Khalid Sheik Mohammed's account how conerned he was about the presence of female interrogators (he almost sounded more insluted about that than being waterboarded). David Hicks also reported being sexually abused while at Guanatanamo. I'm too lazy to look for other reports. Anyway, my guess is that the ideas for sexual humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib came from the outside, where they were taken to extremes by some sadistic guards with less than average intelligence, and ignored by their officers because the rules books had been thrown away.
Second point: the report notes that the pictures of rape and sexual abuse come from six other prisons in Iraq, not just Abu Ghraib. That alone shows you it was a systemic problem not just a few guards getting their jollies and a few commanding officers who failed to control them.