This could get interesting. Earlier today, I posted what I consider a definitive statement on why we care about the treatment of detainees. It is written by Larry Johnson, a longtime CIA/State Dept. analyst and contributor to the Counterterrorism Blog.
Late today, Andrew Cochran (bio), the founder and editor of the Counterterrorism Blog, posted this retort to his blog contributor:
Shall we point out the obvious problems with this challenge by Mr. Cochran? More below:
Cochran goes on:
This is a chilling, horrific discovery. I watched the CNN report last night. CNN showed footage of the rooms and of an unseen person cutting the handcuffs off of the supposed torture victims. (If the person cutting the handcuffs off were a U.S. soldier, wouldn’t the camera show that? Even if the soldier’s face had to be obscured, his uniform could be shown.)
Mr. Cochran, can you name the group that supposedly committed the crimes?
Mr. Cochran, can you independently verify the torture as documented by qualified human rights investigators, not U.S. soldiers?
Mr. Cochran, can you verify that the footage on CNN and the story reports on NYT actually took place on the claimed date and at the claimed location?
I’m not suggesting the report is false even though its timing — given the broohaha over Guantanamo — could give one prudent pause. It’s probably highly likely that the resistance force may be torturing and murdering victims of kidnappings.
But, from what I’ve observed about human rights groups, their leadership generally waits until it can investigate and properly verify information before issuing press releases.
So, Mr. Cochran, when you ask …
… please pause, Mr. Cochran, and consider that some prudent verification and investigation first needs to take place.
And, as for your last question, Mr. Cochran …
… you should note that Mr. Johnson posted his comments on June 18, days after the latest reports of detainee abuse, weeks and months after the first reports of detainee abuse.
Mr. Johnson, unlike you, had at his disposal a wealth of independent information, FOIA documents, detainee and attorney statements, countless news reports, and human rights investigations by numerous organizations.
are really making me sick.
Susan, you and I are American citizens, right?
While we care about the mistreatment of human beings anywhere in the world, we care about what our government does with our tax dollars more.
We post and promote articles about injustice all over the globe. But I honestly cannot see ANY logical connection between what Iraqis do to Iraqis, and what we do to Afghans, Arabs, and other detainees.
WHO THE FUCK CARES whether we found a torture chamber in Iraq that is not being run by our guys and gals?
Would it make Germans feel better about themselves if they discovered that America gassed a few Japanese during the 40’s?
I don’t think so. Or, if it did, they would be taking false comfort.
I caught a couple minutes of Juan Williams attempting to describe the maltreatment and torture at Guantanamo, to which Brit Hume gave one-word replies; “Hilter.”
my wife won’t allow it anyway, and it’s for the best.
Maybe we should make t-shirts that say: ‘I Love Gitmo: Bring on the Zyklon B’.
Is it really so far from Rush’s t-shirt?
Criminy! We know that there are some very, very bad people who have taken up arms against the occupation of Iraq. We have all been horrified by the beheadings. No one has turned a blind eye to any of the barbarity that has occurred on either side. If this latest “torture room” is verified, I’m sure AI and HRW will have something to say about it.
But that’s not the fucking point.
We’re supposed to be better than that. Any torture – even just one case – is unacceptable because we’re supposed to be better than that. And I, as a citizen can’t hold “insurgent” torturers accountable for their actions (and I do hope that there is a way to hold them accountable for such barbarism). But I can work to hold accountable the liars and misanthropic bastards who decided that the U.S. could use any means necessary to gain information. We’re supposed to be better than that!
By the way, has anyone else taken a break from the outrage to be sickened by the neocons’ and their cheerleaders’ ironic moral relativism. The next time any wingnut brings up the squishy moral values of the left, we have our gotcha – “a little torture is ok!” Oh wait – the fuckers have actually embraced that line of thought!
</head spinning>
I posted an article about the Times story early this morning at my blog.
From the fifth paragraph:
“”They kill somebody every day,” said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. “They’ve killed a lot of people.””
From the sixteenth paragraph:
“Mr. Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.”
To spell it out:
Mr. Fathil was blindfolded the whole time and didn’t know that he was sharing a “torture chamber” with other hostages, but he was able to tell that they killed someone every day.
—
And I notice now that the Times claim that Mr. Fathil was a former member of the Iraqi Army…while CNN (who had an embedded reporter) maintains that they currently worked with the border police.
well which is it then? this story smells. The Times also said nothing about the “torture chamber” also being a car bomb factory.
the story doesn’t smell – the spin does. There have been regular stories about what the insurgents do to prisoners. Does anyone really have any illusions about the nature of the insurgents? Or the Taliban and al Qaeda?
But that’s not the point. These people are monsters – so what? Does that mean that it’s ok for us to be monsters as well? That’s what always drives me up the wall. Sure we’re not as bad as Saddam or Zarqawi, but since when did they become the benchmark for morality? I mean the logic is crazy. By that token you could start arguing that Saddam wasn’t that bad – after all, he wasn’t as murderous as Stalin or Hitler.
Back in WWII we were facing an utterly horrible enemy which in addition to its evil nature also posed such a grave risk to the US that toppling it was worth the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives – and more if it had been necessary. Hitler also faced another enemy, almost as evil as him. The Soviets put Wehrmacht POW’s in extermination camps, just like the Nazis did with Red Army POW’s. The Red Army also encouraged a campaign of mass rape and murder among the occupied German civilian population. For our part, while occasional atrocities did occur, they really were the exception, the bad apples if you will. For the most part we treated both POW’s and German civilians in our occupation zones humanely. Do the apologists for torture believe that we were cowardly defeatist weaklings in WWII, that the Stalinist Soviet Union had the right moral code?
I don’t agree that all the insurgents are monsters just like I don’t agree that all the insurgents are jihadists.
The story does smell.
Why torture people for no reason for over a month and then leave them alive to tell their stories? Why conveniently leave “how to torture” books behind? There’s plenty more questions about the story that haven’t been answered.
When I say that not all the insurgents are monsters that certainly doesn’t mean that I’m rooting for them in any way. I support our troops and want them to come home tomorrow safely. But some of the insurgency is justifiable in some way because their country was invaded and their resources are being looted and their citizens are being killed and many innocents have been tortured.
We’ve been lied to in the past about what’s going on…so there’s plenty of reasons to be skeptical when a story comes out like this which basically seems to be saying that the torture some of our troops and independent contractors are committing is more benign than the evil torture practiced by the enemy. Surely you can see that?
First a little historical digression:
Back in WWII about eighty percent of the Polish resistance was part of an organization known as the Home Army (AK). Politically it was an umbrella group ranging from hard left socialists to semi-fascists. To their left was the stalinist People’s Army (AL) and to their right the hardcore fascist Independent Armed Forces (NSZ). As the war was drawing to an end, Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union, the same country which had murdered hundreds of thousands of Polish civilians in 1939-41, which was installing a brutal puppet dictatorship, and which was continuing to kill anyone who they deemed to be an opponent, including the leadership ranks of the AK. Yet the AK decided that resistance would be futile, leading only to even more deaths. The NSZ disagreed and fought the Soviets and their Polish puppets for several years. Some perfectly decent people joined the NSZ because they were the only option around. Yet that didn’t change the nature of the organization, they remained what they had always been – Polish Nazis, monsters if you will.
Similarly in Iraq, while some people join the insurgency for understandable reasons, it doesn’t change what that insurgency is – organizations devoted the radical fundamentalist Sunni Islam, Baathism, or, at best, Sunni domination of Iraq – domination of 80% of the population by a privileged minority. And what they are fighting is, whatever its faults, a hell of a lot better than the NKVD and its Polish counterparts.
Seeing and condemning the evils committed by us and our allies doesn’t mean ignoring the fact that not only is the enemy horrible, it is also worse than we are. That doesn’t mean that the war was worth it or even that it is worth continuing it. And it certainly doesn’t justify acting like monsters ourselves. But one shouldn’t allow oneself to be blinded by the disgust one feels at the policies of the Bush administration.
To me it looks like a set up, the typical right wing excercise in trying to switch the focus. See “they are worse so don’t look at what we are doing”.
If this turns out to be a fraud it will be interesting to see if the NYT was part of the plan or just victim to it.
Of course it could be true, but I am betting against it.
So, if we are to believe the veracity of this report (psyops spring to mind), the so-called “terrorists” torture people. Does that mean we should all jump on the bandwagon and get on out there with electrodes? Oh I forgot we already do that. So the “terrorists” are now equally as bad as the US. Now i feel so relieved.