This is how we treat American citizens.
One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.
American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.
The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.
Not to worry though. We would never abuse random Muslims as harshly as an American with full rights of citizenship.
ThymeZone
When the full history of the ill-conceived American “War on Terror” is written, and available to future citizens, it’s going to be a sobering and embarassing experience for them.
How to explain how this great country fell into acting like a bunch of frightened and hysterical old women? How to explain how we who are not frightened and hysterical old women let that happen?
Zifnab
Just a bunch of loud music and bright lights, right? I’ve been through worse at a Britney Spears concert, right? We served that man roasted chicken for 97 days straight on the tax-payer’s dime and he has the nerve to complain. That place was a country club. He should be thanking us for his little vacation. And how dare you accuse the military of anything, ever!
Why do you hate America?
mrmobi
Thank you, Zif. I believe you have encapsulated most of the upcoming posts from Gruppenfuhrer Darrell et al.
This is beyond embarassing, we have entered the land of, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Pixie
I travel a lot, and I recently got to talk with a right-winger on the plane during a 2 hour flight. He was a very pleasent person, but when I brought up the issue of detention and interrigation, his immediate response was “Well this doesn’t happen to American citizens. Do you mean to tell me you think they should have the same rights as an American?” To which I indicated forcefully that everyone should be granted the right of due process regardless of nationality. Unfortunately, people like him and the ones in power at the moment seem to think merely labling someone as a suspect or detainee means that it’s ok if their rights simply evaporate into thin air. I could see this happening in China or Cuba maybe, but never in a million years did I think it would happen here. Is this all part of the winning hearts and minds campaign?
Jake
Gee. You don’t think his whistle-blowing activities…nah!
I’m glad he did speak to the press, though I suspect this man will be on the DNF list until 2009.
Dave
I’m sure Darrel or someone will be along soon enough to brand that guy a “traitor” and justify the “interrogation tactics” used…
Wow, I don’t know what I’m shocked, but I am. Disgusted at the people running this mess and shocked.
EL
Pixie,
I find this part of a disturbing frame mind that seems to be getting worse among certain quarters. Americans (and I am one) have historically prided ourselves on being a bit special because we have a robust democracy, because the government is limited by law.
After the Watergate debacle, those who denied any problem initially could salvage pride at the end by saying “the system worked.”
Now, the pride seems to have changed from pride in our system to the feeling that we are somehow divinely entitled to do whatever we want to anyone. Because we are AMERICAN we should carpet bomb and flatten Iraq if some Iraqis don’t like our style of liberation. Because we are AMERICAN and other nationalities (well, maybe excepting the British, but not anyone who didn’t send a good contingent to Iraq) don’t count, if there’s a 0.1% chance that certain persons may know anything at all about someone who doesn’t like us – do anything you can think of to the poor sucker.
We have gone from pride to institutional arrogance to outright thuggery on the part of some. Hubris comes before a fall. I fear the Roman Empire will have to move over to make room for us.
Larry
I’d like to know more about the rationale for the treatment. Unless there is empirical evidence for the effectiveness of this treatment, then we’d have to just label it “mean.”
blackfrancis
I noticed the heavy coverage this is getting at redstate.
/sarcasm.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
War is hell, dude. Sorry. Accidents and mistakes happen. Sorry again. Innocent people (especially those consorting with criminals/the enemy) get detained and damaged every day, and have been in every war since the beginning of time. Incidentally, you were aware you were signing up to work for a company based in Iraq, right?
Now write your book, and we can evaluate your claims to see how much truth is there.
ThymeZone
However, that’s not a good reason to accept a government that can’t seem to do much of anything except cause accidents, and make mistakes.
Americans aren’t going to settle for general shoulder-shrugging fecklessness as a standard for their government.
cleek
fixed.
jenniebee
Gulp.
Visions of a future WH gaggle:
SNOW: No, they’re detention centers. I think that when most people hear the word “gulag” they understand it to be something in a very cold weather climate, with anti-communist inmates. The terrorist suspects we have are not motivated by anti-communism. If they were, we probably wouldn’t need to detain them. (laughter)
Zombie Santa Claus
There will undoubtedly be some unfortunate collateral damage, but if we’re ever going to make the world safe for children and their toys, we cannot balk at the duties bestowed on us by God. We owe it to the spirit of Christmas to torture random Muslim men from time to time, men who clearly have no conception of the spirit of the season of good cheer, rummed-up eggnog, and crass consumerism on a global scale. That these men hold American citizenship is of no consequence to me, as I am a citizen of the North Pole and am unconstrained by the meaningless hand-shakery that constitutes both customary international law and the very concept of collective security. I exist for Christmas, and will purge from the surface of the Earth all who oppose the spread of that doctrine. Having suffered a temporary death at the hands of Canadians, I must concede that all did no go as planned in 2006; luckily, in 2007, I will wean myself from mojitos and consign my bejarred brain utterly to the inevitable victory over the allied forces of Darwinism, secularism, Islamism, Communism, and liberalism.
Ho ho ho, bitches!
chopper
what a country.
jenniebee
Since when do pacifists and hawks sound so much alike?
chopper
isn’t it against the law to talk about your interrogation?
man, they really tied up every end, didn’t they.
RSA
We might make mistakesMistakes and accidents may happen, but it’s important to remember that admitting mistakes will only help our enemies. It’s a sign of weakness and flawed character. (You never hear about Jesus admitting mistakes, do you?)Jake
Oh yes. This man tried to help US forces (by stopping the flow of arms to the bad guys who might in turn have used them to shoot US forces). Then this gun moll asks US forces to raid the place. Egads! Get this dangerous man off the streets clearly he is up to something. I guess we need to round up the folks who blew the whistle on Enron, make them pay up since Lay can’t. Hell, let’s scrap the Witness Protection program, many of those people went beyond “consorting” with criminals and actually engaged in criminal acts, so screw ’em.
Zombie Santa Claus
That’s because he never made any, infidel.
The Other Steve
It’s going to take a while to parse this.
On the surface, it seems that he shouldn’t have been held, if they knew he was the informant.
However, the guy was a Merc. So I don’t have a lot of empathy or sympathy.
Sure, maybe he informed on illegal behavior. But the only reason the guy was over there was to make a buck off the suffering of others.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Screw him.
Love,
Kos
Thomas
That’s pretty fucked up. It’s the psychologist that really bothers me–here’s a guy advising a prisoner how to stay sane while he’s purposely being hammered mentally. Also, the psychotic shamelessness of questioning an innocent man as he is being released if he’s going to tell anybody about his imprisonment. I get the feeling that there’s a deep Buttle/Tuttle indifference to humanity in control Iraq. It’s numbers, cover your ass, and blame the rest on the generic terrorist/insurgent enemy.
The really scary thing is that none of this organized sadism is going to just go away if we withdraw from Iraq.
RSA
This the best phrase I expect to read all week.
CaseyL
Indeed, no. The people who, thanks to Bush, have spent the last 3 years satisfying their sadistic tendencies on the government dime will need to find some other outlet once Bush is gone and the gulags decommissioned.
I would strongly advise supporting some national registry, so that former gulag interrogators are forced to alert neighborhoods to their proclivities, just like child rapists.
Zifnab
Yeah. Fuck the po-lice!
:-p Seriously, is that your take on this? “He’s a mercenary so he deserves to get kidnapped and tortured by the US Government”?
Welcome to capitalism, OSteve. If we were to strip the liberties of everyone looking out for themselves and eager to make a buck, we wouldn’t need the Bill of Rights.
And while I agree a number of the contractor-mercenaries out there (*cough*Blackwater*cough*) need to get policed WAY more than they have been, these guys are still human beings. I mean, this guys basically turned in a bunch of gun-runners. He’s a posterchild for the Witness Protection Program (yes, that’s probably an oxymoron). He’s exactly what you want to see in your hired guns getting shipped out into the desert. He is the model mercenary.
If you want to protect anybody out there from blatant abuses of civil rights, it guys like this.
RSA
I have to agree with Zifnab. Fallujah, anyone?
BadTux
The Constitution? That’s just a piece of toilet paper. Rights granted to us by our Creator? What are you, some kinda Commie? Remember, the terrorists want to destroy our freedom, so we must destroy our freedom first, or the terrorists have won!
– Badtux the Zombie Lambchop Penguin
Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe
He made The Party look fallible?
Screw him.
Love,
RedState
Apple Pie
It’s all in the context (and the sincerity). Pacifists are passionate when they say that war is hell. Hawks state it in much the same manner as they’d say, “Looks like rain.”
Rush
Ya see folks, this is the Limbaugh Effect.
What they’re doing is selfish, treasonous, unAmerican, undemocratic, communist, evil, heinous, and will result in the eventual downfall of our great nation. Mercs cannot work for Americans because they’re not Americans.
Tsulagi
Exactly. That’s why Iraq has been so necessary and valuable. It’s a proving ground for the new millennium style of democracy we need here and elsewhere. Sure, there’s bound to be a few snags in the tweaking. Just need more time in Iraq. Then we can export the shit out of it in new freedomizing adventures.
And you thought our loony far right was completely brain dead. See, they can come up with plans. There’s a whole lot of lemon chicken and rice just begging to be served to new detainees yearning to be alternatively interrogated to help build nascent democracies.
The Other Steve
Given that you took what I said, ran it through the Darrelltron-2000 and came up with a strawman to attack, You can kindly GFY.
I’m not even going to respond to the rest of your post, because you’ve already poisoned the debate with your Darrellness.
Barry
IMHO, what happened to these guys wasn’t accidental. We’ve seen Rumsfield claim inability to prosecute contractors a while back (sorry, no links), but now they’re fair game? This is an example of how the administration treats whistle-blowers when they can do as they please. If the guys weren’t Americans citizens, or the snatch had been done with good deniaibility, they’d have never seen the light of day again. An Iraqi whistle-blower would probably have been turned over to the Shiite Department of Torture, for ‘final settlement’.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Actually, people who acknowledge the rigors of war are realists who understand how the world has worked for millions of years. Pacifists are generally too stupid to realize that they live in bongwater dreamland.
BadTux
Quick, what Commie pacifist said this?
“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”
Obviously a terrorist-lovin’ pacifist Bush hater, whoever this mystery man was… dangerously naive, and probably should be hung as a traitor…
— Badtux the History Penguin
Otto Man
It was either William T. Sherman or Roscoe P. Coltrane. One of them. I always get the two confused.
jenniebee
Which is what makes pacifists Dirty Fucking Hippies who nobody needs to listen to, and Hawks Reasonable Wise People. It’s the same way with pacifists and anti-abortion activists: the rhetoric is almost identical, but if the life in question is post-partum and not named Terri then the rhetorician is secular and therefore immoral, even using the exact same words that would, if applied to someone who could start drooling any second now, be Christian and moral.
I’ll tell you, it feels sometimes like I’ve spent the last three years and nine months shouting from my soul, “these are real people and real lives and they don’t get do-overs and they won’t stand up when it’s over and go back to their mothers and children and husbands crying in the cold desert night because they’re dead dead dead and gone and they were so beautiful before and we never knew them but they were still real, and then we took reality away.”
And do you know what I don’t get? What I really don’t understand? I don’t get how some people can, at one and the same time, write commentary about how the media should be more careful because in this age, global information, emboldening the terrorists, blah, blah, blah, and then go on to publish or broadcast comments dismissing Iraqi deaths or criticizing Islam or making light of human rights abuses in Iraq because my God, in this age of global media, comments like that are guaranteed to enrage Iraqis against us and convince them that Americans don’t give two shits about them and are invading their country because we’re just a bunch of asshat busybodies who think we know better than them how they ought to live and worship and govern, which is all the fucking aid our enemies need.
The Other Steve
But that doesn’t make sense.
Here we have a Mercenary firm who is selling out to the enemy, and a whistle-blower who blows the lid.
I can certainly understand the military being very resentful of what amounts to treason, and wanted to string those bastards up. But I can’t understand why they would be resentful towards a whistle-blower who helped them.
I think what we have here is classic Bureacratic fuck up that occurs when nobody is in charge.
If you have nobody in charge, who will step in and say “Do this, do that”, what you get are bureacrats who are afraid of their own shadows. See, because the only time the commanders are talking to them is when they’ve fucked up. So they’re so afraid of that, that they just do nothing.
This is how Big Business functions, so I would not be at all surprised to see the same type of behavior in a military situation where the commanders have abandoned the field.
Tsulagi
It was Sherman.
Hear ya. Thank God there are only two more years of Bushfuck and Cheney who have no clue.
Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe
Zifnab
Maybe I had my Darrell-tron2000 running and didn’t realize it, but it sure as hell looked like you just said “I don’t care if he got dehumanized because he was a Merc and I don’t care about Mercs.” To which I replied, “Maybe they’re not the nicest guys, but they’re just trying to earn a living like everyone else. And if you are going to stick up for ANY merc, you should stick up for this one in particular.”
I’m not sure how that’s a Darrelization.
jg
I don’t think I understood that movie at all.
mrmobi
Fuck you very much, Lambchop. Your kind of idiocy is why Americans continue to watch “American Idol” while Chimpy McFlightsuit precipitates a Constitutional crisis. Go peddle your ghoulish bullshit somewhere else, we’re mostly human beings here.
TOS: I completely agree with you that what happened to this merc is most likely just a plain-old bureaucratic screw-up. It is revealing, though, that all detainees are treated the same, regardless of country of origin. It’s that whole “your with us or against us” mentality.
I guess the moral of this story is, if you see someone doing something that could harm the American army, it’s none of your concern. Go about your business.
DougJ
What about all the American citizens Clinton detained and tortured? Isn’t that what Socksgate was all about?
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
That’s the single dumbest thing I’ve ever read. But thanks for the guffaw.
Pardon me if I don’t grant you the moral superiority you so obviously cherish. Moron.
Zombie Santa Claus
Damn straight. Are you listening, Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers? Fuck you guys. You suck.
You too, Jesus. Asshole. I only work for you because I like your Dad’s style. He’s the one that got me this toy-making gig in the first place, not your Hippie ass. Fuck you, guy. Go peddle your Hippie creed in Canada; we North Polers aren’t gonna take it anymore.
jh
This is obliquness masquerading as profundity.
It fails.
Miserably.
ThymeZone
Not yours to grant.
Njorl
Not necessarily.
The Shiite militias working for the Interior Ministry are technically doing things outside the law. However, we don’t know what informal agreements exist between our intelligence services in Iraq and the Iraqi government. Those Shiite militias are doing exactly what the Iraqi government want them to do, and rarely come into conflict with our troops. We have intentionally leaked the idea that we might openly take sides with the Shiites against the Sunnis. It is certainly possible that we have already taken sides covertly. It may be that this whistleblower skunked a covert deal to supply arms to militias that had the informal approval of some US entity. I can easily see some spook being mightily pissed off about it and nailing the guy.
LorSpi
Vance was not a whistleblower but a common criminal engaged in procurring illegal weapons. His “company” was him, Trimpert and Ekert – all three mercenaries not associated with any legitimate company.
The government of Iraq – and the Ministry of Interior – have the legal authority to purchase weapons from whoever they want. The Ministry of Interior controls the police, border guards, prisons and a whole list of law enforcement personnel who are armed in every country in the world.
Vance’s dealing with the FBI occurred in Chicago, not Baghdad. Vance went to the US, talked with the FBI about the sovereign government of Iraq purchasing weapons, then returned to Baghdad and his apartment which contained a major cache of illegal weapons. Vance did NOT go to the FBI in Baghdad. They came to him – investigating his and his buddies’ claim of being kidnapped.
When his apartment was raided, the illegal weapons cache seized and Vance and his buddies picked up as security risks, Vance was detained by Coalition Forces. It was determined that he and his buddies were engaged in criminal activities – and were not security risks but comon criminals. They were not turned over to Iraqi officials and more the shame for that.
The article in the New York Times was a piece of self serving fluff with no fact checking. Vance was never a prisoner – nor was he ever in prison. He had freedom of movement and association. His problem was that as a mercenary, he did not bother to learn Arabic or local customs during his time in Iraq. He lived and worked in the Red Zone without obtaining the correct visa for the purpose. He and his buddies treated Iraqis and the law of Iraq with contempt. When caught in their crime spree, Vance declared himself an “informant for the FBI”. The FBI immediately met with him, as did officials from other US agencies. This was never about the US miltary – they wanted him out of their custody once it became apparent he was a two bit criminal.
The NY Times inveighed Vance’s lies with respectability by never questioning his absurd story or seeking both sides of the event. Vance, a man several bricks short a full load, having failed to make any money killing Iraqis as a mercenary, is now trying to make money in a law suit. He was unemployable in Iraq. One should always ask the profession of anyone making claims about torture. In Vance’s case, it would be “liar”.
Dan
Amen to that Lorspi,
Donald Vance is an idiot, I know members on the QRF team that raided their Compound in the Red Zone and also CID task members who interviewed all 3 Americans while detained. I’m not sure what was going on in his mind or Ertels. The Truth is there was no kidnapping hostage situation. God forbid some of the truth ever becomes unclassified. It will show that SGS fired Nathan Ertel on April 15, 2006 (There was a letter of termination from SGS) Ertel managed to use the Jedi Mind trick on Vance who then had Don Vance jump in bed together and cook up a story of hostage taking by SGS. True there was a large weapons cache on property of their compound. However there was No Evidence that weapons were being sold to insurgents in the area. All the computers at SGS were confiscated, along with Ertels,Trmpert, and Vance. If this there was such illegal arms dealing going on, hello ? One would think that all 3 Americans would be still be – being held in Camp Cropper. Donald Vance has become a Tool vice versa the Media winning the hearts and minds of the liberal and human rights activists. All 3 former Detainees are guilty at trying to make a buck. Nothing new regarding weapons trading, selling, other security companies such as Blackwater USA do much more criminal activities (shooting up civilians) backed by the U.S. State Department than the petty crime if you can even call it that regarding the events that happened at SGS. Anyone that believes this liar’s stories are only Tools to him. Also anyone who goes to Iraq as an American can still travel around Iraq without a CaC card, I know a lot of NGO’s in the red zone that don’t have access to the Green Zone facilities, but come on base from time to time using a valid American Passport and a valid U.S. Driver license. And it is not uncommon for companies to confiscate terminated employees. I know HR staff at KBR in Iraq who say they take their former employees CaC Cards once they have been fired from the company. You don’t need such a CaC card to move around Iraq, it does help out at American and Coalition forces check points that’s about it.