From the Shadows

Last Friday's chilling Washington Post op-ed by former interrogator, Eric Fair, is still resonating within me. In the piece, Fair describes the lasting torment from coercive interrogations he was ordered to perform while serving at a Coalition prison in Falluja in early 2004. He writes:

I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division... The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

[...]

I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly wrong.

Fair's wrenching piece includes an observation: "We have failed to properly address the abuse of Iraqi detainees. Men like me have refused to tell our stories..." By-and-large this statement is true. Military culture punishes whistleblowers-- it does not reward them. Despite this, there have been several other brave soldiers that have stepped forward in high-profile ways.

For instance, Fair's article reminded me of another cathartic op-ed written by a former interrogator. Anthony Lagouranis served in the Army from 2001-2005. His article, published in the New York Times in February 2006 amid the trials of two Army dog handlers-- later found guilty of mistreating detainees. Lagouranis wrote:

I have never met [dog handlers] Sgt. Santos Cardona or Sgt. Michael Smith, but we share similar experiences. In late 2003 and early 2004, both men used their dogs to intimidate Iraqi prisoners during interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison. They maintain that they were following legal orders. Now they both face impending court-martial.

From January 2004 to January 2005, I served in various places in Iraq (including Abu Ghraib) as an Army interrogator. Following orders that I believed were legal, I used military working dogs during interrogations. I terrified my interrogation subjects, but I never got intelligence (mostly because 90 percent of them were probably innocent, but that's another story). Perhaps, I have thought for a long time, I also deserve to be prosecuted. But if that is the case, culpability goes much farther up the chain of command than the Army and the Bush administration have so far been willing to admit.

Likewise, three soldiers of the 82nd Airborne-- Eric Fair's division-- turned to Human Rights Watch to share what they observed while serving in Iraq. Their raw accounts are markedly different from the polished New York Times and Washington Post op-eds. One soldier, identified only as "Sergeant A", had this to say:

The “Murderous Maniacs” was what they called us at our camp because they knew if they got caught by us and got detained by us before they went to Abu Ghraib then it would be hell to pay. They would be just, you know, you couldn’t even imagine. It was sort of like I told you when they came in it was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy goes before he passes out or just collapses on you. From stress positions to keeping them up fucking two days straight, whatever. Deprive them of food water, whatever.

To “Fuck a PUC” [Person Under Control] means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. To “smoke” someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then
make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.

"Sergeant B" added that after Persons Under Control were captured:

We would immediately put these guys in stress positions. PUCs would be holding hands behind their backs and be cuff tied and we would lean their forehead against a wall to support them. As far as abuse goes I saw hard hitting. I heard a lot of stories, but if it ain’t me I wouldn’t care. I was busy leading my men. I did hear about [a sergeant] breaking PUC bones... I also saw smoking. They would get the PUCs to physically exert themselves to the limit.

Finally, "Officer C" told Human Rights Watch:

When we were at [Forward Operating Base Mercury, 10 miles east of Falluja] we had prisoners that were stacked in pyramids, not naked but they were stacked in pyramids. We had prisoners that were forced to do extremely stressful exercises for at least two hours at a time which personally I am in good shape and I would not be able to do that type of exercises for two hours.… There was a case where a prisoner had cold water dumped on him and then he was left outside in the night. Again, exposure to elements. There was a case where a soldier took a baseball bat and struck a detainee on the leg hard.

[...]

[At FOB Mercury] they said that they had pictures that were similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, and because they were so similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, the soldiers destroyed the pictures. They burned them. The exact quote was, “They [the soldiers at Abu Ghraib] were getting in trouble for the same things we were told to do, so we destroyed the pictures.”

This is only the tip of the iceberg. In the years and months ahead, I am confident that more soldiers will come forward with similar accounts. For Eric Fair, and perhaps the others, the ghosts of their past leave them no choice.