Torture, Rape and Supporting the Troops

Well, it was predicted in some of the comments to the earlier post about the CIA tapes. ABC is interviewing a former CIA operative who was a witness to the torture sessions on those destroyed tapes. You can see the interview here. The man defends waterboarding while admitting that it is torture. He claims the information they got from torture enabled them to foil several attacks. But we have only the torturers' word for it. Can we trust people who use torture to extract information, keep that information secret and then, when they are criticized for using torture, say "Trust us. A bunch of attacks that never happened never happened because of the torture of this guy." At one point in the interview the CIA guy says that he's changed his mind some about torture as time has passed since 9/11/01. So he's saying that he was engaging in torture because he was mad about 9/11.

Another story ABC news is reporting about is the case of a Kellog Brown and Root employee who was gang raped by her co-workers, then imprisoned in an empty container with a bed but not food or water and told that she could not leave or appeal for help. One of her guards took pity on her after days of this and gave her a cell phone which she used to call her father. Her father then called his Congressman who called the State Department who then sent their people to the KBR camp and rescued the woman. You can read the story here.

Now, granted, neither of these incidents involves actual Army or Marine personnel. But it's not like we haven't heard similar stories about them. Of course I'm not saying that all the troops are doing this kind of thing. But I am saying that when you put hundreds of thousands of people into this kind of situation, you get more torture, more rape and more murders etc.

When I hear people - mostly in the media and on the right - talking about "the troops" as if they are some kind of host of saints, I think about this context. Knee jerk support for the troops is completely unjustified. They are human beings. And human beings in particular brutal situation. It does no one any good to give them an automatic free pass for what goes on over there. The only ones who want us to do so are the leaders who would ultimately be to blame. Calls for "supporting the troops" are really calls to "stop criticizing" their leaders.

We need to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible. A gradual pull out will on continue this kind of horror longer and will not change the inevitable consequence of this invasion, occupation and withdrawal.