plover
Sep23-04, 05:27 AM
...the Hooded Man [i.e. from the Abu Ghraib photo] has taken his place among the symbols calling forth, in some parts of the world, a certain image of the United States and what it stands for. Sheik Bashir, who said of the occupying soldiers that "no one can punish them, whether in our country or their country," has thus far been proved right. Only those at the lowest rung of the ladder have so far been punished and the matter of what was actually happening within the interrogation rooms of Abu Ghraib, not to mention in the secret detention centers of the CIA, has hardly been debated. The Iraqis know this, even if many Americans do not. Meanwhile the political damage to US interests in the world has been very great. As the military strategist Anthony Cordesman put it,We need to understand that this image is going to be used for years to come. We are dealing with an ideological climate in which the extremists are the threat, not the moderates. And they are going to use these images for years to come, and they are going to couple them to images like Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and find ways of tying this to all their conspiracy theories and hostile images of the West. And the end result is that they will be tools for insurgents and extremists and terrorists.There is no weighing such ongoing damage against the intelligence that these techniques may have gained. How can such things as these be quantified? According to the Schlesinger report,There were five cases of detainee deaths as a result of abuse by U.S. personnel during interrogations.... There are 23 cases of detainee deaths still under investigation....The words are blunt, though a writer less fond of euphemism might have put the matter even more plainly: "American interrogators have tortured at least five prisoners to death." And from what we know, Mr. Schlesinger's figures, if anything, substantially understate the case.
It has become a cliché of the Global War on Terror—the GWOT, as these reports style it—that at a certain point, if the United States betrays its fundamental principles in the cause of fighting terror, then "the terrorists will have won." The image of the Hooded Man, now known the world over, raises a stark question: Is it possible that that moment of defeat could come and go, and we will never know it? From Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17430), by Mark Danner – an analysis of the Abu Ghraib reports of James R. Schlesinger and Major General George R. Fay. (These are the concluding paragraphs.)
It has become a cliché of the Global War on Terror—the GWOT, as these reports style it—that at a certain point, if the United States betrays its fundamental principles in the cause of fighting terror, then "the terrorists will have won." The image of the Hooded Man, now known the world over, raises a stark question: Is it possible that that moment of defeat could come and go, and we will never know it? From Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17430), by Mark Danner – an analysis of the Abu Ghraib reports of James R. Schlesinger and Major General George R. Fay. (These are the concluding paragraphs.)