None of Us Were Like This Before. Joshua PhillipsЧитать онлайн книгу.
in late 2001, voiced a feeling that seemed to be shared by many Americans after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. “One word kept pounding in my head,” Berntsen said. “Revenge.”8 Festering anger over September 11 could have contributed to a desire for violent retribution, leading to torture and abuse. But most soldiers who handled detainees served with honor and distinction, and never tortured. Moreover, troops who did engage in torture have cited many reasons and explanations beyond lingering anger over the September 11 attacks. For instance, some soldiers have said that their rage and frustration about combating Iraqi insurgent groups contributed to prisoner abuse. Others provide far more mundane reasons, including boredom.
Many critics (and apologists) of US torture have pointed to inexperienced interrogators and violent conditions to explain how abuse took root. But this doesn’t explain why other inexperienced interrogators who worked in violent areas in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo didn’t abuse or torture detainees. There are also cases in which experienced interrogators have worked in far less dangerous environments and have turned to torture (e.g., Guantanamo).
A common explanation for the spread of detainee abuse during the US war on terror runs as follows: White House and Pentagon officials drafted memos sanctioning coercive techniques for interrogation in Guantanamo; many of these methods were used, turned abusive, and sometimes led to torture. Officials from Guantanamo, most notably Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, were transferred to Iraq and “Gitmoized” the military facilities there, namely Abu Ghraib.9 This combination of events allowed the horrors of Abu Ghraib to take hold and spill out elsewhere in Iraq.
But this fails to explain how and why troops turned to torture in Afghanistan and elsewhere prior to this string of events.
As this book will make clear, some US forces tortured and abused detainees even before government officials drafted and disseminated memos permitting coercive interrogation and certain “harsh” techniques. (There were, however, early cases of US abuse and torture after the Bush administration lessened certain provisions of the Geneva Conventions by refusing to classify detainees as prisoners of war.) This poses a predicament for those whose theories of US torture stem from the so-called “torture memos,” along with the personnel who drafted and dispatched them. Solely ascribing the rise of torture to the Bush administration memos that sanctioned harsh techniques is inadequate.
In the course of my reporting, I tried to find a straightforward interpretation for the development of US torture during the war on terror. But I failed to find a one-size-fits-all explanation for the myriad cases in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo. As one human rights lawyer told me, “There isn’t a grand theory of US torture that encapsulates and explains all the different abuses that have taken place in the war on terror.” The more I learned about cases of detainee abuse, the more I have found myself agreeing with that sentiment.
There are several explanatory narratives for US prisoner abuse. Yet they share many common threads—some are woven together, some hang as loose strands. Collectively, these threads offer an account of US torture and abuse, and it is possible to discern in them patterns that have been replicated throughout the war on terror.
American soldiers, interrogators, generals, psychologists, senior Bush administration officials, and lawmakers shared many of the very same compulsions and beliefs that led US forces to assume that torture was effective, permissible, and necessary. There has likewise been a pattern in the costs incurred through the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. The toxic dividends of torture are shared by victims and victimizers, and have shaped the legacy of US torture during the war on terror.
Chapter 1:
Searching for Answers
THE HORIZON UNFURLED along the westward road as distant figures slowly came into view.
Neglected orchards dotted the landscape. Ochre-colored mountains sliced across the smooth expanse. Dust devils flared across the horizon, tightened into long, thin funnels, whipped across the plains, and dissipated into light wisps of sand. Oil refineries chugged away, clouding the air with thick fumes. As the road curved and sloped uphill, a large prison complex, encircled by glistening coils of concertina wire, punctured the sky and interrupted the placid scenery that surrounded it.
An American soldier scanned the scenery.
“It reminds me of Iraq,” said Adam Gray. He was now back home in Tehachapi, California. His stepfather, Roy Chavez, was driving him home while Adam sat beside him, gazing at the familiar landscape and quietly reminiscing.
After serving a year-long tour in Iraq, Adam went on leave to visit Roy and his mother, Cindy Chavez.
“It really shocked me when I picked him up at the airport. He wasn’t in his uniform; he just had his regular clothes,” said Roy. That he had changed clothes might have seemed like a small detail, but it surprised Roy, given how much pride Adam took in his military service. “I don’t know if he was just sick and tired of it and [thought] ‘I’m on leave, I don’t want to deal with this anymore. I just want to have a good time, see my mom, just be a regular normal person.’ ”
Regaining that normalcy wasn’t easy for Adam. The jagged bluffs that encircled his hometown area were remarkably similar to the scenery he had seen in the Middle East, and they plunged him back into a time and place that had irretrievably affected him.
Other members of Adam’s Army unit also had great difficulty making the transition back to the US. The camaraderie that bound them was no longer intact; each went his separate way after their unit returned. They were no longer linked by a common purpose; their mission was over. “Accomplished,” said some.
Yet it was unresolved for Adam and others in his unit, Battalion 1-68. They still carried unsettling memories and tried to slowly digest them as they readjusted to their old lives back in the States.
I first learned about Adam Gray in 2006, when I met some soldiers who had served with him. Jonathan Millantz, an Army medic who was assigned to Battalion 1-68, first told me about the life and death of Adam. Millantz sensed that Adam was haunted by what he had seen and done in Iraq. At first, Millantz would only talk cryptically about those events. But he often stressed that he empathized with his former war buddy and shared many of the traumas that plagued him during his own return to civilian life.
Other soldiers who served with Adam puzzled over what happened to him and mentioned that his mother was also struggling to make sense of his experience. And so, in mid-2006 I called Cindy Chavez in Tehachapi. Her husband, Roy, answered the phone. He welcomed my call, but was firm with me.
“I’m going to give the phone to Cindy, my wife,” he said. “But I want you to promise me that you’re going to be very careful with her, because she has already been through a lot.”
I promised, and he passed the phone to Cindy. We talked extensively and traded phone calls for several months. After nearly a year of conversation, Cindy agreed to meet and discuss her story in person. In August 2007, I traveled from San Francisco to see her and Roy at their family home. My colleague Michael Montgomery, a producer with American Radio Works, came along to interview them.
Part of our drive followed the very same westward route that Roy and Adam took from Bakersfield to Tehachapi. As we scaled the Tehachapi Mountains—a chalky, rugged range that links Bakersfield to Mojave—I tried to imagine Adam’s earlier homecoming. During our visit, dense wildfire smoke filled the valley with choking fumes. Soot coated the sunset with a rusty orange haze, turning the evening sky into a dramatic, apocalyptic backdrop. Such striking imagery, like the area’s harsh and arid landscape, truly seemed evocative of Iraq’s scenery. After five hours of driving, Michael and I pulled up to Roy and Cindy’s house, where assorted wind chimes fluttered in the breeze. A Green Bay Packers flag, set beneath an American flag, waved above their driveway—Adam and his mother had originally hailed from Wisconsin. Cindy and Roy greeted us warmly and welcomed us into a cavernous living room with a deep-purple carpet, assorted antiques, and a big-screen TV tucked into the corner.
A pile of photos lay on top of a coffee table, chronicling Adam’s life in Iraq and back