Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 26,
2005
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
January 25, 2005
In Good Conscience
An
Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan Delgado
By
SCOTT FLEMING
Editor's
Note: The following interview
with Spc. Aidan Delgado, a conscientious objector who spent six
months of a one-year tour of Iraq at Abu Ghraib prison, appears
in the Spring 2005 issue of LiP Magazine. Delgado will be presenting
a slideshow and talk about his experiences on Sunday, Jan. 30,
2005 (Iraqi election day), in San Francisco at the Beta Lounge,
1072 Illinois at 22nd Street, at 7:30. For more information
contact boal@sonic.net.
A idan Delgado, 23, was a Florida college
student looking for a change when he decided to join the army
reserve. It was his misfortune to sign an enlistment contract
on the morning of September 11, 2001. After finishing the paperwork,
he saw a television broadcast of the burning World Trade Center
and realized he might be in for more than one weekend a month
of low-key service. In the ensuing months, Delgado became dedicated
to Buddhism and its principles of pacifism. By April 2003, when
he began his yearlong tour in Iraq, he was openly questioning
whether he could participate in the war there in good conscience.
Having grown up in Cairo, Delgado spoke Arabic and had not been
steeped in the racism that drove many of his fellow soldiers.
When he surrendered his rifle and declared himself a conscientious
objector in the middle of 2003, he was punished by his officers
and ostracized by his peers. His unit, the 320th Military Police
Company, spent six months in the southern city of Nasiriyah,
and another six months helping to run the notorious Abu Ghraib
prison outside Baghdad. Now out of the army, Delgado says the
prison abuse that has been covered by the likes of 60 Minutes
and the New Yorker was the tip of the iceberg: Brutality, often
racially motivated, infected the entire prison and the entire
military operation in Iraq.
Why did you decide to
join the army?
It was not for high-minded reasons. I was in school, but I wasn't
doing all that well. I was stagnating. I wanted to get a change
of scenery, do something different. I signed up for the reserves,
because in the pre-September 11 world, the reserves meant you
work just two days a month; you get to be in the army, but you
don't have to do anything. I signed my contract the morning of
September 11 and then all of a sudden my reserve commitment meant
a whole lot more.
How did you feel about
your decision to join the army in light of what happened that
day?
At the time, the whole country
was riding high on this surge of patriotism, so I felt vindicated,
that I had made the right decision. Because I joined before September
11, I felt morally superior-I joined before it was popular to
do so. Afterwards, when I saw the September 11 feelings being
redirected-Afghanistan was one thing, but then they started turning
it toward Iraq-my feelings of patriotism waned.
It wasn't long after
9/11, maybe six months, that the Bush administration started
publicly building the case for invading Iraq.
Yeah, that's what I thought
was very striking. I felt like they had made a very strong case
for attacking the Taliban and the whole Afghanistan campaign.
But when they started talking about Iraq, I said, "Wait,
there isn't any proven connection, and there are several facts
that seem to indicate they were not connected."
How did Buddhism influence
your feelings about the army and the war in Iraq?
My Buddhism developed parallel
to being in the army. I wasn't a Buddhist before I joined the
military, but after I signed on I had a couple of months before
I went to basic training. That's when I started studying Buddhism
intensely, doing research to cope with the stress of being in
the army.
I went into advanced training
the next summer, and that's when I became really serious about
Buddhism. I became a vegetarian. I started talking to my sergeants,
saying, "I'm not sure the army's right for me; I'm a Buddhist
now."
Within a few months of arriving
in Iraq, I told them that I wanted to be a conscientious objector
and I wanted to leave the military because of my religious beliefs.
It ended up taking over a year to get my status, so I served
in the whole conflict as a conscientious objector. I finally
got conscientious objector status after my unit returned to the
US.
How hard was it to get
conscientious objector
status?
Extremely difficult-there's
a huge burden of proof. You have to do an interview with an
investigating officer who grills you on your beliefs to find
out if you're just making it up or if you've really thought it
out. You have to have some kind of documentation. I think one
of my strongest points was that I had a lot of military paperwork
showing that I had gradually identified myself as a Buddhist.
I also had a lot of conversations with my superiors where I talked
about being an objector and being a Buddhist, and they went on
the record and said, "Yes, he's talked about it progressively
throughout the deployment." That really did a lot to establish
my sincerity.
The command was extremely hostile
to me, and there were all kinds of punitive measures. They wouldn't
let me go on leave. They took my ballistic armor away-they told
me that I didn't need the hard plate that goes inside your flak
jacket, the part that actually protects you against bullets.
They said that because I was an objector and I wasn't going to
fight, I wouldn't need it. This proved not to be the case; when
we got to Abu Ghraib, there was continuous mortar shelling. I
did the whole year's deployment without that plate. I really
feel that was more maliciously motivated than anything else.
Also, I was socially ostracized.
A lot of my fellow soldiers didn't want to eat with me or hang
out with me or go on missions with me. They felt I was untrustworthy
because I was critical of the war and I was a Buddhist. My command
"lost" my conscientious objector paperwork or misdirected
it. They'd say, "We lost your copy, you'll have to do it
again."
I eventually got my home leave
back because I threatened my commander that I was going to have
them prosecuted for discriminating against me on religious grounds.
My company commander, my company first sergeant, and my battalion
commander had all decided they were not going to let me leave-they
said I couldn't go home on a two-week leave because I wouldn't
come back. I was going to get the ACLU and the World Congress
of Buddhists involved. Ultimately, they decided it wasn't worth
the headache.
You were a mechanic,
right? Were you going out on patrols?
Yes, I was a mechanic and I
primarily worked on vehicles. But because I spoke Arabic-I was
the only one in my company who spoke any Arabic-I ended up, especially
in the south, doing a lot of mission support with military police
to speak to local people, usually to buy things or trade or exchange
money. I got to meet a lot of local Iraqis and see a different
side of things. After Nasiriyah, I didn't do any more translating
because by that point I had made my conscientious objector status
request. I had been very critical of the war and the command
knew I was not going to play ball, so they kept me far away from
Iraqis and prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
Let's talk about Abu
Ghraib. When you first arrived there in November 2003, wasn't
that right around the time all the abuse that eventually made
the papers was taking place?
We heard about that in late
December or early January. We heard that someone had sent a tape
to CNN and they had been abusing the prisoners in some way. We
didn't know how, so the nature of the abuse was a shock. But
that they were abusing prisoners was not news to us-we had known
about that for a long time.
What kind of abuse did
you witness?
There were prisoners who were
beaten severely-to within an inch of their lives-for various
infractions like disrespect or refusing to move. They were horribly
brutal beatings.
There were a number of prisoners
that I know of who were killed for throwing stones during a riot.
I shouldn't say riot; it was more like a disturbance. I talked
with a guy who shot several of the prisoners. The prisoners were
protesting the conditions-lack of food, lack of cigarettes-and
they were marching around the yard. Some of them started picking
up stones and throwing stones at the guards. They deployed extra
military police to quell the disturbance. At first, they had
rubber bullets and tear gas, but they ran out of that, and it
wasn't really effective. At some point-I'm not sure who authorized
it-the guards requested the right to use lethal force and opened
fire with a machine gun, and ultimately killed several prisoners
for throwing stones. The guards testified that they felt they
were in danger, so they opened fire. The military accepted that.
There wasn't any inquiry, and no one batted an eye at the dead
prisoners. This was for throwing stones. The world community
has roundly condemned Israel for shooting Palestinans for throwing
stones. And that happened at Abu Ghraib.
Did you personally witness
the incident in which the prisoners were shot?
Actually, I wasn't there. I
was segregated in the motor pool when it happened, but I ended
up getting photos from people who shot the prisoners-the photos
were treated as trophies and were circulated in our company.
It was not a secret; everyone knew about it. All the members
of the unit were passing photos around, and they posted them
in the command center for everyone to see. This was something
they were proud of. One guy was a local hero for the week because
he'd killed X number of prisoners. One of the prisoners he had
shot in the groin had taken three days to die. This was something
people were laughing and joking about. This guy was strutting
around after having killed these prisoners and I remember just
being utterly sickened. We were soldiers, and to shoot an unarmed,
caged prisoner was not something to be proud of. Abu Ghraib and
all the prisoner abuse [came out of] this atmosphere of brutality.
Tell me more about the
day-to-day brutality at Abu Ghraib.
We talk about the Geneva Conventions
a lot, but most people haven't read the Geneva Conventions and
don't know what they say. One thing they say is that prisoners
can't be held in an injurious climate. Abu Ghraib was extremely
cold, and one of the ways guards used to control prisoners was
to remove their clothing and tents, leaving them exposed to 30-degree
weather. That's a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Another provision of the conventions
is that prisoners have to be protected. We were taking constant
mortar and artillery bombardment from the insurgents outside
the prison. Of course, the prisoners weren't protected; they
were in open tents, and over 50 of them were killed because they
were out in the open, they couldn't flee and they had no cover.
I remember fearing for my life many times-and I had a flak vest,
a helmet and shelter. I can't imagine being a prisoner, hemmed
into a barbed-wire lot with no overhead protection, no protective
clothing and no air raid shelter. When there were bombs falling,
they just had to sit and hope they didn't get killed.
I'm not really interested in
naming names or getting culprits caught; I'm just interested
in letting people know that what happened in Abu Ghraib was not
an anomaly. It was virtually standard operating procedure.
Another incident I heard about
was that a prisoner had shot a guard in the chest with a smuggled-in
handgun. The guard didn't die, but other guards retaliated by
shooting the prisoner in the leg and the side with a shotgun.
His leg had been broken by the shotgun blast and was hanging
off by an odd angle. They were taking this guy to a hospital
to get medical treatment for his broken leg, and dragged him
on his snapped leg and then threw him into the back of a truck.
Granted, this was a man who had attempted to kill a guard. There
was no question that he was a dangerous individual-but he was
not dangerous at that moment, handcuffed, with a bag over his
head and a broken leg. To drag him on that broken leg and to
toss him in the back of a truck was additional brutality that
wasn't professional and wasn't humane.
What else did you witness?
I worked in the radio headquarters
of Abu Ghraib for a while. They were once again trying to punish
me by putting me in an undesirable job. While I was there, I
ended up reviewing the prisoner records and looking over the
offenses of the people who were in Abu Ghraib. I found out that
most of them were actually not there for anti-coalition offenses.
They weren't insurgents. Most of them were there for petty theft,
drunkenness, forged documents, really minor crimes.
Who would arrest them
for these kinds of crimes?
We were the depository for
the Iraqi justice system; they didn't have their own prisons.
Iraqi judges would sentence criminals, and a lot of them would
end up coming to Abu Ghraib prison. The military would also do
random sweeps if they received fire or were attacked from a certain
area; they would just arrest everyone of a certain age in that
area and take them to Abu Ghraib for questioning. Most of them
would be cleared, but the process took so long that you'd end
up being in Abu Ghraib for six months to a year before being
released. I felt very vindicated recently when a report came
out from the Pentagon that talked about the reasons the Iraqis
are so upset. One of the reasons had to do with these random
sweeps and detentions. Family members or friends would get taken
to a military prison for a year, for nothing. That was definitely
highly immoral, if not illegal and counterproductive, because
of the animosity it generated.
How many prisoners are
at Abu Ghraib?
I can't say exactly, because
I might get in trouble with the army, but several thousand. It
would fluctuate on a daily basis. There was a shuffling going
on between Abu Ghraib, Basra, Umm Qasr and lesser prison camps
along the way. There was a continual shifting of prisoners. That
would really upset the local Iraqis because sometimes relatives
would be shuffled around between these prisons. Someone who was
arrested in Baghdad might be sent out to Basra in the far south
of the country and be out of contact with their relatives and
in the process of being shuffled around. A lot of the paperwork
got mishandled or mismanaged, so people wouldn't know where their
relatives were. I encountered that routinely in the operations
command. Relatives would come, trying to track down a prisoner,
but we didn't know where he was.
How many of the military
personnel working at Abu Ghraib are prison guards or police officers
in the United States?
A relatively high percentage.
Out of my unit of 140, I would say at least 30 were police officers
or correctional officers.
Do you think a connection
can be drawn between the criminal justice system and the prisons
in the United States and the people who were working at Abu Ghraib?
I don't have much direct experience
with corrections in the US, but what I hear from news reports
is that the corrections system in America is rife with brutality
and misconduct as well. So I'm not really surprised that they
transplanted the misbehavior from American prisons overseas.
At least in America there's some sense of responsibility; a prisoner
has some recourse to seek redress. In Iraq, they are literally
anonymous prisoners, and there is nothing they can do. The guards
have absolute authority---life and death authority.
One of the things that disturbed
me about Abu Ghraib was that the soldiers claimed they didn't
know it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. They said
they didn't know that it was wrong, they didn't have experience
in handling prisoners. But if my company was indicative of the
rest of the guards at Abu Ghraib, there was a high percentage
of police officers and correctional officers. There was plenty
of experience with felons. They knew what the standard was for
humane treatment of prisoners. That sort of defense rings hollow.
Did you ever try to report
these kinds of incidents?
No, I never did-I didn't have
good credibility in my unit, because I was known to be a liberal.
I was a pacifist, I was against violence, and I was very critical
of the war, so no one took me seriously. My command was very
hostile to me because I was in the process of trying to get my
conscientious objector status. I thought that what they did was
immoral, but I decided that nothing would happen if I spoke out
because the command accepts what they did. There was no outrage
about what they did, so there was not going to be any punishment.
What I needed to do was to go home and try them in the court
of public opinion.
How did the post-9/11
increase in racism affect the army?
This is really key to understanding
the Iraq conflict. There is so much anti-Arab sentiment in America
after September 11, and we don't want to talk about it or think
about it. I don't think the soldiers knew any words for the Iraqis
besides "haji," which is a term like "Charlie"
or "gook" for the 21st Century. There is such disdain
for them as individuals and as prisoners.
I think racism is a key motivating
factor in the war. We witnessed a Marine kick a 6-year-old child
in the chest for bothering him about food and water. People in
my unit used to break bottles over Iraqi civilians' heads as
they drove by in their Humvees. A senior enlisted man in my unit
lashed Iraqi children with a steel antenna because they were
bothering him.
The only way people can do
these sorts of things-which would never be acceptable in America-is
the notion that Iraqis are somehow related to terrorists and
9/11. We completely dehumanize them. I used to come into conflict
with other members of my unit who were doing these things, and
tell them it was wrong. It made me really unpopular, the radical
notion that you should treat Arabs or Iraqis as human beings.
Did you find the dehumanization
and the racism to be different between the white soldiers and
the soldiers of color?
No. I think it's interesting
that groups that might have racial tension in America can successfully
coexist in the army. There are much higher percentages of different
minorities, but racial tensions among Americans simply dissolved
in favor of a united front against Iraqis. Their unified hatred
of Iraqis was a sick form of harmony.
When I was in Iraq, it
was pretty early in the occupation, and things hadn't gotten
quite as ugly as they did later. A lot of the soldiers I talked
to really wanted to believe that they were there to give the
Iraqis democracy. How do those two things go together? How can
you, on the one hand, be there to give these people their god-given
rights as human beings, and on the other hand be breaking bottles
over their heads because they're different from you?
I think that one played off
the other. At first there was a sense of liberation, getting
rid of a dictator, freeing people. As the insurgency got stronger,
there was a monstrous feeling of ingratitude. Americans felt
like, "We're here helping these people and look how they
treat us." What I think fed a lot of this animosity toward
Iraqis was the sense that they were rejecting our help and our
support.
When I was there, I used to
ask soldiers routinely why we were in Iraq, and most people told
me-pretty uniformly-that we were here because of September 11.
I remember asking at the time, "Don't you understand that
these are not the people who attacked us and they had nothing
to do with Al Qaeda, and that in fact this regime was the enemy
of Al Qaeda"? That never really sunk in. They really wanted
to believe that this was somehow a response to 9/11. I think
the democracy element was something that the politicians played
up, and some of the higher-ups in the army tried to play up,
but on the ground, I think the real driving force was a sense
of retribution about September 11.
How did people react
when you told them that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?
It was just disbelief. In the
best-case scenario, they'd say, "Well, that's your opinion
and we'll agree to disagree." In the worst case scenario,
it would be, "Well, you're just a sympathizer," or,
"You're against George Bush." In my mind, it wasn't
political to say that they weren't connected; it was just a statement
of fact. Even the president has now admitted that. Al Qaeda had
been opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime for a long time. Hussein's
regime was very secular and had been an enemy of Al Qaeda. I
knew this as a layman before going into the Iraq war, and I thought
it was just unbelievable that soldiers were not more informed
about why they were fighting.
What was the feeling
among the troops when it became clear that there were no weapons
of mass destruction?
There was almost a black humor
about it, kind of an irony, like, "We'll find them someday."
As the days drew on and it became more and more clear that we
weren't going to find them, the media did a little switch-very
successfully-where the focus went from finding WMDs to liberating
the Iraqis. The soldiers also transitioned. They thought, "Well,
we didn't find WMDs, but we're still bringing democracy."
No one really was taken aback by it unless they were already
critical of the war. They didn't really skip a beat when we didn't
find any WMDs.
I was waving the newspaper
in people's faces, saying, "You see, even the White House
admitted there were no WMDs." It really didn't register
with people.
Where do soldiers get
their news and information?
The most common source is Stars
and Stripes, which is an armed forces newspaper. My opinion
is that Stars and Stripes was definitely biased towards
the military. It's directly overseen by the military; its purpose
is to boost the morale among soldiers. Obviously, it's one-sided.
They did a series of on-the-ground interviews with soldiers about
conditions in Iraq. I remember reading the results of the survey
and laughing when they said, "Oh, the soldiers are happy
with the conditions and morale is high, and everyone still believes
in their mission." Our response was, "Who the hell
did Stars and Stripes talk to?" It was the only newspaper
that was widely available so we had to rely on it for what it
was worth, but I think even already-conservative people took
it with a grain of salt. It was not an objective news source
at all.
We did not have much TV. In
Abu Ghraib, we had CNN and some American newspapers.
Was there internet access?
At Abu Ghraib there was. There
was limited internet access in Nasiriyah, but it was so bad and
so infrequent it almost wasn't worth using. At Abu Ghraib there
was pretty solid internet access. I think that's why a lot of
stuff at Abu Ghraib got out, because there was good communication
with home.
How would you describe
yourself politically?
Liberal Democratic, but I'm
really not rabid. I'm not one of these demagogues who is just
crazy about Bush and the war. I am very critical of the war but
I'm critical for what I think are objective reasons that demonstrated
that there was no need for the war, such as the absence of WMDs.
These were the things that made me critical of the war.
Why do you think the
US invaded Iraq?
It's complicated, but I think
that one thing we can all agree on is that they did not invade
for the reasons that they said. I think that oil was definitely
a factor, but I wouldn't say it was the primary factor. Strategic
value was a huge factor: We're now building the largest CIA center
in the world and establishing permanent bases in Iraq.
I also think there's a huge
element of pure racism, equating Arabs with September 11 and
Al Qaeda, in the sense of, "We can't get Osama bin Laden
and we can't get Al Qaeda, but we've got this other Arab group
and that's just as good." I think that's a huge motivation-that's
the only way you could sell it to the people, that feeling of
outrage. There's a whole slew of reasons why they went in. It
was anything and everything except WMDs, liberation and democracy.
Why did you decide to
speak out about your experiences in Iraq?
At first, I just wanted to
live quietly and leave the whole experience behind me. But then
people started asking me about my war experiences. In a way,
my first discussion was a response to all these people. I thought
I would have a forum and talk to everybody at once and I would
never have to tell anyone else ever again. As I went along, it
snowballed and I gave a talk to my community-and that's when
400 people showed up.
After I spoke, people were
really moved by what I had said. I received several offers to
speak on college campuses in Florida. I don't think the American
people are bad or willfully making wrong decisions. I think they're
making misinformed decisions. If they had some more information,
they wouldn't support the war and their views would change. That's
really my goal, to create a sense of critical thinking, of disbelief,
a sense of responsibility for the negative consequences of the
war.
Have you made any links
with other veterans who feel the way you do?
Yes. St. Pete for Peace is
a group I've worked for, also Iraq Veterans Against the War and
Soldiers for Common Sense. My concern is that some of these groups
haven't been very effective in creating a cogent movement. I
feel that if I can personally draw 400 people with a slide show,
there's no reason why a group like Iraq Veterans Against the
War shouldn't be able to draw an audience of thousands. I look
around America and am dismayed by how the war is on the back
burner for people-it's not in their consciences. I want to make
it something that's on the forefront of peoples' minds every
day, rather than something you see occasionally on the news when
something particularly bad happens.
Scott Fleming is a criminal defense lawyer and writer
from Oakland, California. In 2003, he reported from Iraq as a
special correspondent for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He
can be reached at scott@prisonactivist.org.
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