Torture’s out. Now they call it abuse

[rodeodance]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article326608.ece

> Torture’s out. Now they call it abuse
>
> No screaming, no cries of agony, no shrieks of pain. Yes, it sounds much better, doesn’t it?
>
> By Robert Fisk
>
> 11/12/05 "The Independent" -- -- "Prevail" is the "in" word in America just now. We are not going to "win" in Iraq - because we did that in 2003, didn’t we, when we stormed up to Baghdad and toppled Saddam? Then George Bush declared "Mission Accomplished". So now we must "prevail". That’s what F J "Bing" West, ex-soldier and former assistant secretary for International Security Affairs in the Reagan administration said this week. Plugging his new book - No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah - he gave a frightening outline of what lies in store for the Sunni Muslims of Iraq.
>
> I was sitting a few feet from Bing - plugging my own book - as he explained to the great and the good of New York how General Casey was imposing curfews on the Sunni cities of Iraq, one after the other, how if the Sunnis did not accept democracy they would be "occupied" (he used that word) by Iraqi troops until they did accept democracy. He talked about the "valour" of American troops - there was no word of Iraq’s monstrous suffering - and insisted that America must "prevail" because a "Jihadist" victory was unthinkable. I applied the Duke of Wellington’s Waterloo remark about his soldiers to Bing. I don’t know if he frightened the enemy, I told the audience, but by God Bing frightened me.
>
> Our appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations - housed in a 58th Street townhouse of deep sofas and fearfully strong air conditioning (it was early November for God’s sake) - was part of a series entitled "Iraq: The Way Forward". Forward, I asked myself? Iraq is a catastrophe. Bing might believe he was going to "prevail" over his "Jihadists" but all I could say was that the American project in Iraq was over, that it was a colossal tragedy for the Iraqis dying in Baghdad alone at the rate of 1,000 a month, that the Americans must leave if peace was to be restored and that the sooner they left the better.
>
> Many in the audience were clearly of the same mind. One elderly gentleman quietly demolished Bing’s presentation by describing the massive damage to Fallujah when it was "liberated" by the Americans for the third time last November. I gently outlined the folk that Bing’s soldiers and diplomats would have to talk to if they were to disentangle themselves from this mess - I included Iraqi ex-officers who were leaders of the non-suicidal part of the insurgency and to whom would fall the task of dealing with the "Jihadists" once Bing’s lads left Iraq. To get out, I said, the Americans would need the help of Iran and Syria, countries which the Bush administration is currently (and not without reason) vilifying. Silence greeted this observation........

[Briar]

1. Thank goodness for Fisk

one of the brave reporters who tell the story from the point of view of the victims of superpower armaments and propaganda. For which compassionate truthfulness, he is hated by so-called patriots.

[Briar]

2. More

""Torture" is out. No one tortures in Iraq or Afghanistan or Guantanamo. What Americans do to their prisoners is "abuse" and there was a wonderful moment this week when Amy Goodman, who is every leftist’s dream, showed a clip from Pontecorvo’s wonderful 1965 movie The Battle of Algiers on her Democracy Now programme.
"Colonel Mathieu" - the film is semi-fictional - was shown explaining why torture was necessary to safeguard French lives. Then up popped Mr Bush’s real spokesman, Scott McClellan, to say that while he would not discuss interrogation methods, the primary aim of the administration was to safeguard American lives.

"American journalists now refer to "abuse laws" rather than torture laws. Yes, abuse sounds so much better, doesn’t it? No screaming, no cries of agony when you’re abused. No shrieks of pain. No discussion of the state of mind of the animals perpetrating this abuse on our behalf. And its as well to remember that the government of Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has decided it’s quite all right to use information gleaned from this sadism. Even Jack Straw agrees with this."
The full article can be read at:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10992.htm