Freedom's Fidelity

Monday, June 21, 2004

Torture in Context

The first time I tried watching the Nick Berg video I ended up closing the window as soon as the knife was pulled out. My hands were shaking, I didn't need to see this. Later that night, after a few cocktails had made it past my throat, I decided I would give it another chance.

It was without a doubt one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. A helpless man, hog tied and at the mercy of evil having his head sawed off by a knife as his shouts of agony drowned out by those of elation "Allah Akbar!" In short, there is no fast way to cut off a head with a knife, it was horrific.

So on Friday, I saw that Stephen Green of VodkaPundit linked to a video of Saddam-era prison torture, I thought I needed to watch it. I was at work and didn't want to view something that long with that kind of content. But I did want to see it, I felt the need to remind myself just how evil and depraved a culture could be, I would wait until I got home. Dan Rather likes to remind us that it is the duty of the media to show us all the "costs of war" while CNN's Aaron Brown reminds us that he must continually show footage of the horrid Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. soldiers noting that "you don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it." Neither Brown nor Rather, appear interested in reminding us of the costs of not going to war though, or of what is now not happening in that prison because of what we did. Every time I start to wonder if going to war was the right decision I come across something like this and any seedlings of doubt of are immediately stamped out.

Saddam's atrocities have been well documented, and I have read about more than my fair share of them. Seeing this video would provide a sobering reminder of why and who we are fighting. But I cannot watch it. I was going to, but that was before I came across this Nick Shulz description of what is on the tape. In reading about it, I realized that, somehow, this footage is much much worse than I could have ever imagined. Care to read about it?

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

The first film clip opens with the camera showing a man standing in a bland, mostly empty room. The camera pans down to show his right hand. Folded rugs are visible in the background. The clip jumps to footage of scrub-clad "surgeons" with rubber surgical gloves severing the man's hand at the wrist. First the skin is peeled away with surgical knives and tweezers; ligaments, tendons, muscle, and bone underneath are exposed. Then the gloved hands wielding the knives begin to slice, shredding through the sinews, slashing muscle, breaking bone, until the hand is ultimately detached and plopped onto a green cloth, as yellow, pulpy tissue spills forth.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

The next clip opens amid Saddam Fedayeen - Fedayeen means "those willing to die for Saddam" - chanting loudly: "With blood and spirit we will redeem you Saddam." The Fedayeen stand barking and clapping in a courtyard. A blindfolded prisoner, forced to his knees and held in position has his arm outstretched before him along a low concrete wall.
A masked member of the Fedayeen raises high a three-foot-long blade and ferociously slams down on the man's hand, slicing through his fingertips. The victim is wailing, howling, screaming in agony.

The swordsman-torturer, not sufficiently satisfied with his first effort, raises the sword again and drives down once more on the man's immobile hand. This time he severs the fingers closer to the knuckles as blood spurts cartoonishly from his hand spilling over and down the concrete slab. The victim emits a wail I have never heard - could never imagine hearing - from a grown man, this time louder, harder than the first.

The camera then turns to the assembled Fedayeen as they continue rhythmically chanting.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

In the third clip, a prisoner sits on the ground, his arm tied with white cloth, strips to a wooden board resting on a gray concrete slab. A man stands before him with a sword, this blade is wider than the last. He, too, strikes down on the man's hand, severing it from his right arm as the prisoner recoils in pain. The camera then quickly darts to the man's hand resting on the dusty ground several feet away as it was launched a considerable distance from the prisoner due to the force of the torturer's chop.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

When Mel Gibson's movie The Passion was released, several critics harped on the scenes where Jesus is flogged mercilessly by Roman soldiers. The brutality was so extreme, critics charged, the depiction bordered on parody - it was not a credible rendering of what could have happened to Jesus.

In the fourth clip in the Saddam torture film, it's clear Gibson's cinematic vision of just how depraved men can be was not divorced from reality.

A tall prisoner, stripped to the waist and blindfolded has his arms tied before him to a white pole, his bare back exposed. Black-clad Saddam Fedayeen surround him, jackal-like, as one begins to pound on his back with a black rubber whip. With the man screaming, his scourged back arching backward, shoulders and arms frantically struggling to block the blows, one of the Fedayeen torturers is heard to say "no situation more honorable than truth over falsehood." Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The prisoner's knees buckle as he crumbles into a hump on the ground from the blows, crying out in pain. Another Fedayeen grabs his hands and pulls him up the pole to receive further lashes.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

"In the name of Allah the merciful," intones the beret-topped loyalist to Saddam's "secular" regime in the next segment. He introduces to the viewer and the assembled butcher squad to another prisoner. The loyalist-narrator reads from Koran, Sura 2:179: "And there is a saving of life for you in the Law of Equality in punishment. O men of understanding, that you may become the pious."

"The Fedayeen, Saddin Ezzedin al-Arousi," he goes on, "was charged with a special mission in which he betrayed his duty in the mission. The head of the Fedayeen has ordered the following: He is expelled from Fedayeen work and his arms are to be broken in front of his unit. Tarik Juman will personally undertake the breaking of his arms. Thank you."
The camera jumps to al-Arousi sitting with one arm tied behind him as his right arm is extended out to his side. His right elbow rests on a cinderblock and his right fist is supported by another cinderblock. Nothing supports his forearm in between. While a Fedayeen holds the prisoner's elbow in place, Tarik Juman crashes a three-inch-thick pipe down on his old compatriot's forearm, bending the forearm in a 'V' shape and shattering the bones within. This procedure is repeated for his left arm as well.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

In another clip a hooded and blindfolded prisoner is led to a room where he is forced to kneel, hands tied behind his back. Another man sits before the prisoner with thick metal tweezers and a scalpel. With his left hand he grabs the tip of the prisoner's tongue with the tweezers and pulls it forward from his head. With the scalpel in his other hand he slices through the prisoner's tongue, cutting it out of his mouth and then dropping it on the floor.

This ritual is repeated for more prisoners who are lined up, squatting in a row like parts on an assembly line waiting for processing, sitting ducks surrounded by dozens of men bearing witness to a Baathist tongue lashing.

"You don't appreciate what happened in that prison until you see it."

In the final clip we see a blindfolded prisoner being led to his fate as the assembled men around him sing "Happy Birthday, long live the leader, eternal gift to the people." Again with arms tied behind his back he is shoved to the ground, bent over stuffed burlap sacks. A black-clad Fedayeen loosens the prisoner's shirt exposing his back and neck, while another stands two feet from him holding a long silver blade at its curved handle. He raises his arms and strikes, hacking the prisoner's head from his body, tumbling it to the ground. He picks up the severed head by the hair and places it ceremoniously on the dead man's back as the camera pans in closer and closer and you can make out the victim's now lifeless and bloodied face.

Keep in mind, in Saddam's Iraq thousands of men each day, got up for work, put on their black hoods and went to work punishing human beings in a most inhumane way. Then they did it again the next day. And they were rewarded. And so on. A daisy chain of snakes all biting their tales.....

Those who opposed the liberation of Iraq could do themselves a service by examining the arguments of those who opposed the abolition of slavery. For what is the difference, except on scale?

posted by Paul  permalink | |