Trump wants to use waterboarding and stuff, he says, that's
much worse than waterboarding on prisoners. Cruz wants to skip torture altogether
by going to what he construes as the source, and just carpet bomb the Middle
East.
Unbelievable that this is the twenty-first century and that it's
likely that one of these ignorant thugs will be the candidate of the Republican
Party for President of the United States.
It won't stop them from glorying in violence but they should read the superb account by an ex-torturer in Iraq about what it felt like to do the deed.
An afterthought: how often do torturers step up? None I know
of among the Nazis, since they were too busy digging themselves into German woodwork.
There was, notably, "The Act of Killing," a documentary about the mass
murder in Indonesia, with those implicated speaking up. But that event was
decades in the past.
Eric Fair's piece speaks to the present.
NY Times 3/20/16
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/owning-up-to-torture.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region
Eric Fair
Owning Up to Torture
IN March 2004, at Forward Operating Base St. Mere outside
Falluja, Iraq, I was walking home from work. Ferdinand Ibabao, my close friend
and fellow contractor, was walking with me. It had been a long day of
interrogations, so we were looking forward to checking emails, and hearing
about what our families were up to back home.
As we walked through a large open field on the base, the
distinct sound of incoming mortar rounds interrupted our conversation. We’d
been talking about finding new contracting jobs in Iraq. Conducting
interrogations at places like Abu Ghraib and Falluja was beginning to take a
toll. We both agreed it was time to move on to something less complicated,
something that didn’t force us to set aside our humanity in order to go to
work.
As the mortars detonated nearby, Ferdinand, always one to
joke, ran around like a baseball player trying to catch a pop fly shouting “I
got it, I got it!” He said it would be a mercy killing.
I found myself thinking about Ferdinand and his dark humor
after Ted Cruz and Donald J. Trump unapologetically endorsed the use of
waterboarding at a Republican debate early last month. “I’d bring back
waterboarding,” Mr. Trump said, “and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than
waterboarding.”
I don’t know what drives a man to say such things. I just
know that when they do, men like Ferdinand and me will be forced to shoulder
the consequences.
In my role as a civilian contractor for the Department of
Defense, I spent the first three months of 2004 torturing Iraqi prisoners. At
the time, we were calling it enhanced interrogation, but that’s a phrase I
don’t use anymore. Stress positions, slaps to the face and sleep deprivation
were an outrage to the personal dignity of Iraqi prisoners. We humiliated and
degraded them, and ourselves.
Ferdinand and I spent the early months of 2004 implementing
the country’s interrogation program, we struggled to contain the growing sense
that we had shocked our consciences and stained our souls. Our interrogations
used approved techniques. We filed paperwork, followed guidelines and obeyed
the rules. But with every prisoner forced up against a wall, or made to stand
naked in a cold cell, or prevented from falling asleep for significant periods
of time, we felt less and less like decent men. And we felt less and less like
Americans.
I’ve been speaking publicly since 2007 about my time as an
interrogator. I’m often asked when was the first time I knew I had gone too
far? When did I know I had crossed a line? I’ve offered conflicting accounts in
response to this question over the last decade. For a time, I said I had
crossed the line when I participated in the sleep deprivation of a prisoner in
Falluja. But I’ve also wondered if I didn’t cross the line the first time I was
in the “hard site” at Abu Ghraib, or the first time I used a stress position,
or the first time I told an Iraqi prisoner that he’d never see his family
again. Maybe I crossed the line the minute I decided to be an interrogator in
Iraq. I change the answers not out of a desire to deceive, but out of an
inability to make sense of just how easy it was to become an American torturer.
When Donald Trump and Ted Cruz suggested that waterboarding
and other abhorrent interrogation tactics should not be considered illegal, I
was tempted to exonerate myself. I did not waterboard anyone in Iraq. I’d like
to think that’s a line I would never cross. But I have no right to think that
way. My behavior in Iraq forces me to confess that if I’d been asked to
waterboard someone at Abu Ghraib in early 2004, I most likely would not have
hesitated. I’d have crossed that line, too.
If I had the opportunity to speak to other interrogators and
intelligence professionals, I would warn them about men like Donald Trump and
Ted Cruz. I would warn them that they’ll be told to cross lines by men who
would never be asked to do it themselves, and they’ll cross those lines long
before they consider anything like waterboarding. And I would warn them that
once they do cross the line, those men will not be there to help them find
their way back.
Ferdinand eventually found a new job in Iraq. He also
eventually caught that pop fly. He was killed by a suicide bomber in the Green
Zone in October 2004. Three other American contractors were killed with him.
I returned to Iraq in 2005, and while I never caught that
pop fly, there are still days I wish that I had, that I’d received my mercy
killing. As an interrogator, torture forced me to set aside my humanity when I
went to work. It’s something I’ve never been able to fully pick back up again.
And it’s something we must never ask another American to do.
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