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TORTURE
OF IRAQI PRISONERS
by Joseph D.
Douglass, Jr.
May 4, 2004
This was not just a macho male thing, several female soldiers participated in the fun. Still, the critical component was the photos that made it impossible for anyone to ignore.
According to the story that has emerged, this was not a single event involving just a few MP reservists. Clearly, at least 17 were directly involved. Sixteen pairs of feet were seen in one of the photos and one person was taking the pictures. To this must be added all the intelligence people (military, CIA, and contractors) who encouraged the process and the numerous command echelons who either ignored it or accepted it as normal and usual. Increasingly, it appears more the latter “normal and usual” than a case of ignoring it, although that is also present.
Everything that has surfaced is damning, and more, much more, is likely to come out. So far there are three military investigations now known to have reported on serious human rights problems in U.S. military prisons going back nearly a year; yet, evidently no actions were taken. The author of the New Yorker article that tells the whole story, Seymour Hersh, also learned that the problem extended back to the Afghanistan war.
Top U.S. administration officials from the President down have all uniformly expressed their outrage. Nevertheless, it seems that no one in the government has taken any steps over the past two plus years to follow up on news reports of the abuse of Afghani, Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Iraqi prisoners while under U.S. control. Rather, up until now, every report seems to have been met with various denials and serious statements on how well the prisoners are being treated, that the prisoners are living better than their peers are back in Afghanistan and Iraq. The response is different this time, due to the photos that have been spread all over the world.
A related chapter from recent history concerns the fate of missing American prisoners of war (POWs). Try to find any official reactions to the atrocities they were subjected to. Several scores of men and women, working on their own, have been trying to learn what has happened to over 30,000 American POWs missing following WWII and subsequent wars. None of these people are in the government. Why is it so hard to find people in the government who are concerned about these missing men or their treatment?
Several people at top levels in the current administration were also in high positions ten to thirty years back when the missing American POWs and their rescue was a current concern, but did any among them exhibit any serious concern or follow-up when the issues were raised on their prior watch? The more common reaction among most of them was to obstruct efforts to locate and free the Americans or sweep the whole issue under the table.
Going back to WWII and to the wars in between then and now, it is hard to find more than a small handful of U.S. officials, military and civilian, who expressed any concern and fewer who tried to do anything. In other words, what has struck most investigators struggling with this issue over the past forty years is that the people at the top—beginning with the President and his staff—really do not care much about what happens to those who get captured, military or civilian, unless there is an associated threatening political impact. Is this what is driving all the expressions of disgust today, political embarrassment? Have these expressions of disgust been triggered by compassion or by anger at the photographic evidence that cannot be denied or swept under the rug?
Why was there no similar unleashing of expressions of disgust when the former high-level Communist official, Gen. Jan Sejna, who had been part of the Russian operation to take captured Americans, testified before Bob Dornan’s congressional committee in 1996? What he said was almost shocking beyond belief: Thousands of missing Americans had been taken to be used as medical guinea pigs in horrendous experiments. Few survived. Why was this story from an eyewitness ignored by 99 percent of our nation’s media. To the best of my knowledge, not one television news program ran any clips of Sejna’s testimony, or of what Col. Philip Corso testified in corroboration. Why? Wasn’t this newsworthy, or did it point the finger of blame in the wrong direction?
Stop and recall the statements and news reports on the Iraqis who were subjected to this humiliation and, in some cases, torture. Has there been much sympathy expressed for them or has most of the emotions, the anger and disgust, been directed at the American soldiers. How dare they sully the image of the American liberation of Iraq! Has any high-ranking U.S. official apologized to the Iraqis? Have any been set free? Or is the principal response of U.S. officials directed at the Americans for the embarrassment they caused, especially now when thing are not going well in Iraq?
Probably not one in a hundred thousand Americans has been told anything about the captured Americans who were missing after prior wars, including the first Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. Live American prisoners knowingly abandoned by our government, most people ask in disbelief? Unfortunately, the answer is: Yes. Do you mean the President and the top brass in the military, intelligence and diplomatic services knew the men had been captured and not returned at war’s end? Yes. Does this include all the major wars? Yes, over 22,000 abandoned after WWII, over 8,000 after Korea, over 3,000 after Vietnam, and no one knows how many following the Cold War.
Not only that, but they were abandoned to various Communist countries and the U.S. government did not even let their families know what happened. Rather, they lied and tried to cover the whole thing up and this is still going on today.
To carry this a step further, the men were abandoned knowing that they faced lives worse than death. Not just forced labor camps—they were the lucky ones—but torture and their use as medical guinea pigs in experiments, until there was nothing left to test.
Why were they abandoned? The three dominant reasons appear to be 1) because of the U.S. policy not to confront the Communists (that would be counterproductive to our efforts to “win them over”), 2) to avoid doing anything that might interfere with financial and industrial interests wanting to do business with the Communists, and 3) because no one really cared that much about the missing men—after all, none of them could vote, as one of the prisoners who did return put it.
Over the past twenty-five years, roughly two dozen well-researched books have been written and several video documentaries have been produced on the missing American POWs. But, the news media, including those responsible for book reviews, and the government in general have done their best to keep these books and videos from receiving any attention. They are all easily shrugged off—there were no photos of the missing men dramatically posed along with their captors who were there—or denied, as several people in the current administration did in days past. Congress was equally complicit in orchestrating a succession of commissions, committees, and hearings designed to exclude people who had information and sweep the whole matter under the rug, one of the more successful being the Senate Select Committee for POW/MIA Affairs in 1991-1993 that was chaired by Senator John Kerry, who conceivably could inherit the mess we now face in Iraq.
This is important because it displays in a most serious context our own captured prisoners who never dreamed when they went to war for their country that they would later be abandoned—how little our government really cares about real people. The recent torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is great example, but only because someone photographed the whole thing so it could not be denied. How completely our whole system is rotting from within is illustrated by the mere fact that someone photographed the whole thing in which those intimately involved posed with the Iraqi prisoners while they were being abused.
These charges that American prisoners were callously abandoned by our own leaders are, obviously, extremely serious. I hope this upsets you and interests you in pursuing this subject a bit further. What you learn may truly enrage you. For a brief summary of the information I have uncovered over the past fifteen years, see “Remembering Those We Left Behind” [See] that was published just prior to our invasion of Iraq. If you would like more details, don’t bother to ask anyone in Washington or the media. Rather, find and read one or two of the books that have been written or watch one of the videos. They all come at the problem from different directions, different wars, and different sources—and all come up with the same conclusions respecting the deceit and duplicity resident in our own government, beginning in the White House. Here are the books and videos I am aware of. Even the titles go a long way in telling the story.
Larry
J. O’Daniel: Missing In Action:
Trail of Deceit (1979).
Monica Jensen-Stevenson: 60
Minutes, “Dead or Alive” (1985).
Ted Landreth: We Can Keep You Forever Video (1987).
Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson: Kiss
the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POWs in Vietnam
(1990).
Foreign Relations Republican Staff, U.S. Senate Committee:
An Examination of U.S. Policy Toward POW/MIAs (1991).
Nigel Cawthorne: The Bamboo Cage: The Full Story of the American Servicemen still held
hostage in South-East Asia (1991).
Dorothy McDaniel: After the Hero’s Welcome: A POW Wife’s Story of the Battle Against a
New Enemy (1991).
Ted Landreth: Missing in Action: The Soviet Connection Australian 60
Minutes Video (1991-1992).
Red McDaniel (American Defense Institute):
Americans Abandoned Video (1992).
James D. Sanders, Mark A. Sauter, and Cort Kirkwood:
Soldiers of Misfortune: Washington's
Secret Betrayal of American POWs in the Soviet Union (1992).
John M. G. Brown: Moscow Bound: Policy, Politics and the POW/MIA Dilemma (1993).
Mark Sauter and Jim Sanders: The
Men We Left Behind: Henry Kissinger, the Politics of Deceit and the
Tragic Fate of POWs After the Vietnam War (1993).
Laurence Jolidon: Last Seen Alive:
The Search for Missing POWs from the Korean War (1995).
Craig Roberts: The Medusa File,
(1997).
Frank Anton: Why Didn’t You Get Me Out, (1997).
Monika Jensen-Stevenson: Spite
House: The Last Secret of the War in Vietnam (1997).
George J. Veith: Code-Name Bright Light (1998).
Timothy N. Castle: One Day Too Long: Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam
(1999) (Not strictly on POWs but with important insights on the lack of
regard for our men in uniform at risk.
Larry O’Daniel: Trails of Deceit (2000).
Philip D. Chinnery: Korean Atrocity: Forgotten War Crimes 1950-1953
(2000).
Steve E. Kiba: The Flag: My Story, Kidnapped by Red China (2002).
Joseph D. Douglass Jr., Betrayed:
America’s Missing POWs (2002).
Each of these books and videos tells the story of America’s missing men, their abandonment to lives of torture and gruesome experiments, and the U.S. government efforts to hide what happened.
What these men went through, and in the cases of survivors are still subjected to, makes the disgusting treatment of the Iraqi prisoners, in comparison, seem more like a fraternity hazing party. This is not meant to trivialize what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison. Rather, it is to ask why there has not been 10,000 times more outpouring of concern and efforts by the news media, Washington officialdom, and the White House to learn what happened to the missing American military and civilians captured by the Communists and to find and free those still alive and still held captive?
© 2004 Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.
Editorial Archive
Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., Ph.D., is a defense analyst, author of The Soviet Theater Nuclear Offensive and co-author of CBW: The Poor Man’s Atomic Bomb and America the Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical and Biological Warfare. His most recent books are Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America and Betrayed: The Story of America’s Missing POWs.
