Another Abu Ghraib Bombshell?

Posted on July 14, 2004

Remember when Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Committee investigating Abu Ghraib scandal that there was a lot worse evidence to come and that if "these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse"? Well, it seems as if we're about to find out what else is on those torture tapes. According to Salon, reporter Seymour Hersh, the reporter who broke the Abu Ghraib story, the most disturbing tapes show "children being sodomized in front of women" -- presumably their mothers.

Today on CNN, Senator John Warner (R-Virginia), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that he will resume the investigation into the Abu Ghraib scandal, because his committee is receiving new evidence daily. And he didn't look happy about it. Asked if holding the inflammatory hearings during the election season would hurt the Republicans, Warner (himself a decorated veteran) replied: "I will not let politics deter me," he said.

Here's exactly what Seymour Hersh said at a recent speech he gave to the ACLU: "...at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

So, where are these tapes? Why doesn't Hersh write about them? Has he actually seen them?

The Abu Ghraib scandal is an absolute disgrace which has seriously hurt American's image and standing all over the world. The reports coming out clearly show that most of the people in Abu Ghraib were not terrorists, but petty criminals and innocent victims who were picked up in the dragnet after the war. Now we find out there were children being tortured?

Aside from the moral and legal issues which surround the torture issue, there is another issue which makes the torturers' actions inexcusable: it's not practical. Anyone who reads memoirs of old spies and veterans of the Cold War or interviews with psy-ops experts knows that torture doesn't work. If they want information out of a captured spy, there are much easier ways to get it than by waterboarding or sodomizing someone. Victims under torture will say anything --it's simply not reliable information. Sodium pentathol and its newer pharmaceutical cousins are the preferred choice for getting reliable information out of spies, quickly and cleanly. There is no way that what went on in the basement at Abu Ghraib helped make Americans safer. In fact, the opposite is true. The Geneva Conventions were enacted for a reason: to provide some protections for American soldiers who become prisoners of war. As Senator Joe Biden emotionally said to John Ashcroft at the Senate hearings, "By allowing this, you have put my son (a member of the Armed Forces) at severe risk of torture." Ashcroft looked a little shocked, but quickly resumed his normal poker face.

On the political front, this is a PR disaster for the White House. As Senator John McCain said, it is very damaging to have this information come out in dribs and drabs. Release all the information at once, so we can get to the bottom of it and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Amen to that.