Tortured

Justine Sharrock

Description

An eye-opening exposé of America's torture regime

Myths about torture abound: Waterboarding is the worst we've done. The soldiers were hardened professionals. All Americans now believe that what we did was wrong. Torture is now a thing of the past. Journalist Justine Sharrock's reporting reveals a huge chasm between what has made headlines and what has actually happened. She traveled around the country, talking to the young, low-ranking soldiers that watched our prisoners, documenting what it feels like to torture someone and discovering how many residents of small town America think we should have done a lot more torture.

Tortured goes behind the scenes of America's torture program through the personal stories of four American soldiers who were on the frontlines of the "war on terror," including the Abu Ghraib whistleblower. They reveal how their orders came from the top with assurances that those orders were legal and how their experiences left them emotionally scarred and suffering a profound sense of betrayal by the very government for which they fought.

• Based on the firsthand accounts of young, working-class soldiers who were forced to carry out orders crafted by officers, politicians, and government lawyers who have never answered for their actions
• The Department of Justice may still launch an investigation into torture under Bush—and Sharrock argues it must be done
• Describes how it feels to torture, and how people back home reacted to the soldiers' revelations

If reading Tortured doesn't make you angry, nothing America does to tarnish its reputation as a beacon of fairness and freedom ever will.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

PART ONE: BRANDON NEELY.

1. Shoot First, Think Later.

2. You Can’t Just Flip a Switch.

3. Blowing the Whistle.

PART TWO: JOE DARBY.

4. The Rat.

5. Torture Town, USA.

6. The Black Mark.

PART THREE: ANDREW DUFFY.

7. A Lot of Gray Area.

8. The Cycle of Rage and Resentment.

9. The Price of Speaking Out.

PART FOUR: CHRIS ARENDT.

10. By the Book.

11. An Origami Bird's Eye View.

12. Not the Country We Thought We Were.

13. Seeking Redemption.

Conclusion: A Nation That Tortures.

Notes.

Index.

Sujets

• Political Science
• Agencia Central de Inteligencia
• Federal government of the United States
• United States Armed Forces
• Tortured
• Central Intelligence Agency

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470593134
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
 
PART ONE - Brandon Neely
 
Chapter 1 - Shoot First, Think Later
Chapter 2 - You Can’t Just Flip a Switch
Chapter 3 - Blowing the Whistle
 
PART TWO - Joe Darby
Chapter 4 - The Rat
Chapter 5 - Torture Town, USA
Chapter 6 - The Black Mark
 
PART THREE - Andrew Duffy
Chapter 7 - A Lot of Gray Area
Chapter 8 - The Cycle of Rage and Resentment
Chapter 9 - The Price of Speaking Out
 
PART FOUR - Chris Arendt
Chapter 10 - By the Book
Chapter 11 - An Origami Bird’s Eye View
Chapter 12 - Not the Country We Thought We Were
Chapter 13 - Seeking Redemption
 
Conclusion: A Nation That Tortures
Notes
Index

Copyright © 2010 by Justine Sharrock. All rights reserved
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Sharrock, Justine, date.
Tortured: when good soldiers do bad things
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-45403-9 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-470-59281-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-59312-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-0-470-59313-4 (ebk)
1. Torture—United States. 2. Iraq War, 2003—Prisoners and prisons, American. 3. Prisoners of war—Abuse of—Iraq. 4. Prisoners of war—Abuse of—Cuba—Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. 5. Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp. 6. Abu Ghraib Prison. I. Title.
HV8599.U6S53 2010
956.7044’3-dc22
2009037588
Acknowledgments
This book could not have been possible without the help of my parents, Juliet and Nigel Sharrock; my sisters, Emily and Penelope; and my brother-in-law, Leo. Thank you for your constant support and encouragement.
It was Dale Maharidge who helped me with the initial vision of this project and saw its potential as a book. He pushed me to be a better writer and, as he put it, kept me climbing that ten-thousand-foot wall of ice. Without Dale’s guidance and mentorship, I would not be where I am today.
My editor, Eric Nelson, was extraordinary with his feedback, insight, and encouragement. My agent, Amy Rennert, had faith in this project when others thought torture was a passing issue. My eternal gratitude to you both.
I want to thank everyone else at Wiley, including production editor Lisa Burstiner. My thanks also to Nikki Gloudeman and Taylor Wiles for their excellent fact-checking.
I am especially grateful to the soldiers themselves, particularly Chris Arendt, Joe Darby, Andy Duffy, and Brandon Neely, without whose candor, bravery, and answers to my endless questions there would be no book. This project was in many ways a collaborative effort. I am honored to have had the chance to help tell their stories.
I would also like to thank the many people who welcomed me into their homes and their lives, especially Kari and Tim Vivoda, Sarah Schulte, and Wendy Neely.
Introduction
On April 28, 2004, the infamous photos of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. were broadcast to television sets around the world. We saw the now iconic image of the black-hooded detainee standing on the box with his arms outstretched, electrodes attached to his body. We saw naked men wearing women’s underwear on their heads, chained in contorted positions to metal beds; naked prisoners stacked into pyramids; and prisoners on all fours wearing dog collars and leashes. For many, it was a moment of American shame, our moral standing now tarnished in the eyes of the world.
But for a large portion of Americans, especially those with military ties, the whole thing was blown out of proportion. In an ABC/Washington Post poll in the wake of the scandal, 60 percent of respondents classified what happened at Abu Ghraib as mere abuse, not torture. Keeping detainees naked and awake all night? That’s no big deal. Making them stand for hours? Who cares? Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in approving a 2002 list of “counter-resistance techniques,” scribbled an addendum asking, “I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?” As late as 2007, 68 percent of Americans told Pew Research pollsters that they sometimes consider torture an acceptable option when dealing with terrorists. While traveling across the country, speaking with ordinary Americans, I heard a common refrain: “At most, we are embarrassing them. What we did was nothing compared to what those terrorists did to us.” Repeatedly I heard, “If we don’t fight dirty, we will be fighting the war over here.”
Particularly in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Americans’ thirst for revenge knew no bounds. People argued that having to abide by the Geneva Conventions when the enemy wasn’t doing so meant that we were tying our hands behind our backs. Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, who used “harsh interrogation techniques,” once told me, “Having played sports all my life, I apply the adage that if you are going to play, you better play to win. When you are at war and people are dying, there is no more appropriate time or place to apply that sentiment.” It almost makes sense, until you find out that Welshofer killed an Iraqi insurgency leader by suffocating him in a sleeping bag during an interrogation.
 
 
When I first read the reports about the abuses, I wanted to hear the story from the perspectives of the men and the women involved, not from redacted documents and military representatives. My first inclination as a journalist was to seek out the soldiers who had committed the most heinous acts. I wanted to get the “good stuff”—the kinds of gruesome stories that make headlines. I interviewed Gary Pittman, who was charged with assault in connection with the death of a former Baath Party official. This official was found dead in an Iraqi prison, lying in the dirt, handcuffed, hooded, and covered in feces, with several ribs broken. I spoke with Damien Corsetti, who was dubbed “the King of Torture,” for his role as the “bad cop” called in to rough up detainees during the notoriously abusive interrogations at the Bagram prison. I interviewed Alan Driver, who had been charged in relation to the deaths of two detainees at Bagram. They had been chained to the ceiling and beaten repeatedly, so it was hard to prove which individual was responsible for the fatal blow. I wrote letters to Charles Graner, who was serving a ten-year sentence for his role as the so-called ringleader in the infamous photographed Abu Ghraib abuse. I exchanged e-mails briefly with Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, the officer convicted of suffocating that Iraqi insurgency leader. I traveled around the United States, visiting small college towns, suburbs, big cities, rural plains, the hills of Appalachia, and sprawling no-man’s lands of strip malls. I spoke with dozens of soldiers who had worked in prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Yet it wasn’t the high-level officials making the policy decisions or the intelligence officers inside interrogation rooms who taught me the most about America’s relationship to torture. It was the low-level soldiers working on the blocks, mostly using techniques that have been dismissed as so-called “torture lite.”
There are CIA agents waterboarding al Qaeda suspects in black sites, but just as crucial are the regular low-ranking soldiers, the working stiffs, who are waking up detainees throughout the night, shackling them to the floor, and throwing sandbags over their heads.
It was strange to think that these young all-American men could be counted as our country’s torturers. They were run-of-the-mill blue-collar folks—the guy next door, the kid in the back of your high school classroom, the teenager bagging your groceries. They seemed so ordinary, and what they described often sounded so banal—and they represented the most common experience of life inside the prisons.
Euphemisms like “torture lite,” “harsh techniques,” and “softening up” are used to describe the kinds of things these soldiers were doing to the d