Ohiocore

It was front page material in the Dispatch and other major papers today.

Seattle Times: Guantanamo Bay Female interrogators' tactics aired

Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.

A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics.

The author of this manuscript (the central source of the story) is former US Army Sargeant Erik R. Saar, age 29. The way the report describes him isremarkable:

Saar didn't provide the manuscript or approach AP, but confirmed the authenticity of nine draft pages AP obtained. Saar, who is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent, worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S. camp in eastern Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003.

What is so bizarre is the implication that if the source were Muslim or Arab, or even if he had approached a reporter with information, that the resulting report would be less credible. That might make sense in a world where:

• Islam is the enemy.
  
• Our military is involved in racist wars.
  
• We had multiple, corroborated, transparent accounts of operations inside Guantanamo that contradict Saar's, or contradicting evidence.
  

If an Arab-American Sargeant or a Muslim veteran describes witnessing torture, does it have to be worse to warrant attention? Why would one race or religion take particular offense on alleged torture that the rest of the honest world would not?

Saar himself comments that "the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used," adding somewhat presumptively "even though it is not the case." So the question arises: what constitutes religious war?

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt and thong underwear during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren't their wives.

This is written as though for a God-fearing Christian American, sexual contact with a foreign interrogator while shackled in a military prison after 3 years incommunicado with your wife would be... untaboo? To be clear, lets this by its proper name. Being fucked. Or prison rape. Take your pick. I believe that it is still taboo.

This information contextualizes the earlier reports "Some Guantánamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by 'prostitutes'." These stories didn't run much in US media, indicating they were essentially discounted. But what are they supposed to think? "Now that's an intelligence professional of the world's only military superpower." Put yourself in the role of this 21-year-old Saudi man (you were an 18-year-old boy when they picked you up in Afghanistan):

The man closed his eyes and began to pray, Saar writes. The female interrogator wanted to "break him," Saar adds, describing how she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and began taunting the detainee, touching her breasts, rubbing them against the prisoner's back and commenting on his apparent erection.

The detainee looked up and spat in her face, the manuscript recounts. The interrogator left the room to ask a Muslim linguist how she could break the prisoner's reliance on God. The linguist told her to tell the detainee that she was menstruating, touch him, then make sure to turn off the water in his cell so he couldn't wash.

So we've got linguists devising interrogation methods now, on the fly. Sounds like a serious operation there. The article goes ahead to point out "Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact with women other than a man's wife or family, and with any menstruating women, who are considered unclean." Oh, that explains it.

Really what you should do is become Satan to break them, then they'll tell you all the information you want to know. Notably, Mosaic (strict Jewish) law says the same thing about women and menstruation, some Christians are similarly strict about contact with women outside the family, and menstruation is cited by the Catholic church in denying women access to priesthood. Why this interjection?

"The concept was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength," says the draft. The interrogator used ink from a red pen to fool the detainee, Saar writes.

She put her hands in her pants and the detainee then saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand, [Saar] says.

"She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred. " She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward" — so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle. "He began to cry like a baby," the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

And what about the information? Nothing. It didn't matter.

Sexual tactics used by female interrogators have been criticized by the FBI, which complained in a letter obtained by AP last month that U.S. defense officials hadn't acted on complaints by FBI observers of "highly aggressive" interrogation techniques, including one in which a female interrogator grabbed a detainee's genitals.

It is worse than that. As blogged previously here, the FBI actually said such interrogations "destroyed any possibility of prosecution." Apparently the Bush Administration doesn't plan on ever prosecuting them (in America), though. You might be tempted to believe the interrogations support US National Security interests, thereby trumping all other considerations. Except that the same FBI complaint declared the them totally useless, having "produced no intelligence of a threat-prevention nature to date". That is why they have to get contractors to conduct them. The FBI wouldn't do such a sloppy job for so long. They have evidentiary standards, professional codes, and actual counter-terrorism interrogation experience. Let's be sure to not listen to them on this one.

U.S. Southern Command revealed that 20% percent of Guantánamo guards are women, but withheld the number of female interrogators. They also offered the pro-forma counterfactual assurance, "U.S. forces treat all detainees and conduct all interrogations, wherever they may occur, humanely and consistent with U.S. legal obligations, and in particular with legal obligations prohibiting torture."

I started thinking: can you imagine if the roles were reversed? But that is not strong enough. You cannot imagine imagine the roles being reversed. It is not even within the capacity of imagination. But what we can do, apparently, as a country and as a culture, is pretend that we never read that article, and the hundreds like it. Don't mention it and nobody will notice... not notice it, and not notice our knowing. How can we be implicated if we didn't know? We had no idea!

The other bizarre angle on this is to reinterpret cultural forces like the performative hypersexual of Britney Spears as military psychological conditioning. Strip tease for freedom, baby, one more time. Because what America really needs is to put more emotionally fractured, physcially aggressive, sexually demonstrative individuals in positions of total power over others.

How old was this interrogator? Do you think she had ever had a healthy sexual relationship?