Alas, Jay! For us Latin Americans the connection between US foreign
policy and torture is not surprising: just let me remember the infamous
role played by the "school of the americas" in the training of out
militaries...
David
Quoting Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>:
> NOTE: Sent this yesterday, but it got gremlin-gobbled. My mood is
> better
> today, but my view remains.
>
>
> I started today with the stimulating ideas of Morten Nissen in the
> current
> MCA about anti-method and subjectification in social work.
>
> But all my thoughts about the parallels with education were just
> blown
> away, and my mood turned darkest black by reading the new Seymour
> Hersh
> investigative report, to appear in tomorrow's New Yorker, but already
> on
> their website:
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact
>
> It is also the lead story on CNN and BBC online, but I urge you to
> read the
> whole report (not that long).
>
> Evidently the CIA has decided not to get the blame for Abu Ghraib,
> and
> they've been telling Hersh that it was Rumsfeld and his new (2003)
> intelligence chief (Carbone) who really screwed up: they authorized
> the
> rules of interrogation that had been created as a top-secret
> intelligence
> program (i.e. torture) against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Guantanamo
> to be
> also extended to ordinary prisoners in Iraq. They felt it was the
> fastest
> way to counter the anti-US rebellions there. They brought the top guy
> from
> Guantanamo to Iraq, put outside-the-law interrogators in there, and
>
> recruited the poor dumb reservist prison guards to help with the
> dirty
> work. Apart from the link to the top-secret torture program outside
> Iraq,
> evidently everybody knew what was going on at Abu Ghraib: from the
> Red
> Cross to the CIA's and the Army's own legal departments, and they all
>
> objected but were brushed aside by Rumsfeld and his deputy.
>
> This amounts to a deliberate government policy of torture and abuse
> of
> ordinary prisoners, most of whom had no links to terrorism or the
> insurgency (i.e. among the overall population of detainees in Abu
> Ghraib),
> though obviously they were looking for people with info on the
> latter. It
> also amounts to the first time ever that the US deliberately and
> systematically violated the Geneva Conventions as a matter of state
> policy
> in an ordinary theatre of war (Iraq), though the violations in
> Guantanamo
> (which will probably be hitting the news sooner or later, too) were
> also
> against the Convention and contrary to international law.
>
> This is far worse than Watergate, and I hope it is enough to bring
> down
> government-by-hybris in America and send at least a few of the people
> with
> ultimate responsibility to prison. I wonder if it will be enough to
> make
> more of my fellow citizens think.
>
> JAY.
>
>
>
>
> Jay Lemke
> Professor
> University of Michigan
> School of Education
> 610 East University
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>
> Tel. 734-763-9276
> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
> Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
>
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