Guest Post by Morbo
Do me a favor: Read the two paragraphs below, which come from a front-page Washington Post story by Josh White, then answer a short question.
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.
It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.
The question: Are you proud to be an American?
We are told constantly by the right wing that “aggressive interrogation” — a euphemism for torture — is needed to save lives. They always spin the most outlandish hypothetical situations: What if terrorists plant bombs at Sea World to blow up a busload of disabled children! If we didn’t use torture to find out where the bombs are, everyone will die.
It might make a nice plot for “24” but has little connection to reality.
Let’s consider Mowhoush’s case. The military claimed he was captured during a military operation. In fact, he walked into a U.S. military facility in Qaim, hoping to secure the release of his sons, who had actually been captured in a raid. Under questioning, Mowhoush admitted that he had helped plan insurgent attacks in the area. But the army wanted more, so it turned Mowhoush over to CIA operatives and a specially trained group of Iraqis called “Scorpions.”
It’s unclear to me what else the interrogators expected to get from Mowhoush. They seemed to think he could stop the attacks. How he was supposed to do this while chained upside down to a wall in the middle of the desert is unclear.
In fact, the torture just made Mowhoush more stubborn.
In a document obtained by The Post, an unnamed interrogator said, “I asked [Mowhoush] if he was strong enough a leader to put an end to the attacks that I believed he was behind. He did not deny he was behind the attacks as he had denied previously, he simply said because I had humiliated him, he would not be able to stop the attacks.”
After Mowhoush’s death, military officials issued a press release stating that he had died of “natural causes.” But an autopsy report quoted in classified documents exposed that lie. Mowhoush died of “asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression” and his body showed “contusions and abrasions with pattern impressions” all over his body. He had six fractured ribs and it’s likely that he had been beaten with a “long straight-edge instrument” as well as an “object like the end of an M-16” rifle.
Two soldiers are now being tried for his death. They are little more than convenient fall guys. Yes, the two might have stuffed Mowhoush into the sleeping bag, but it’s obvious they got the idea it was okay to do that from a military culture that sanctions such abuse. Sticking those two in the brig won’t change a thing.
I know Mowhoush was a bad guy. He led attacks against U.S. soldiers and killed innocent people. He did these things because he is a terrorist, and that’s what they do.
The United States, by contrast, is supposed to be better. We set such a high standard that we even treat suspected terrorists according to the rule of law — at least we used to.
I understand the need to put down the insurgency in Iraq. But if this is the price — that we start behaving no better than the enemy we’re fighting — it’s time to sit down and do some serious soul searching. We had better do it now. A few more years of tolerating, and in some cases, applauding, behavior like this and we’ll no longer be capable of it.