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The narrative frame for Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” is the story of the capture, interrogation by Army M.P.s, and death under torture of a young Afghan man, known only as Dilawar, in 2002, at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. But the true subject of the movie is the mentality and the atmosphere that produced sadistic conduct, both at Bagram and at Guantánamo. Gibney interviewed some of the men who were later courtmartialled for criminal behavior; he also talked to some of their lawyers, an F.B.I. expert in interrogation, and such figures as John Yoo, the Department of Justice attorney who redefined the practices permitted by the Bush Administration in such a way that they couldn’t be deemed war crimes. Along with “No End in Sight,” this movie is one of the essential documentaries of the ongoing war.
Though no one says it in so many words, “Taxi” produces an uncanny impression of the fundamental logic at work in the interrogation process: the Army and C.I.A. interrogators who take control of prisoners in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo assume that they must be guilty of something. If they’re not, what are they doing in custody? The prisoners—cut off from any possible counsel, harassed, stripped, hooded, bound, and, in many cases, threatened with attack dogs or abused physically—were locked into a system of punishment before any guilt was established.
The story of Dilawar unfolds at the moment of maximum fear of strikes against the American homeland and against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The M.P.s who performed the interrogations were under tremendous pressure to produce results, yet they were given only the vaguest guidelines as to how they should behave. They were told, however, that Al Qaeda trained its members to resist. If prisoners failed to give satisfactory answers to questions, it could mean that they had something to hide. And so the incarceration—and, in some cases, the abuse—went on. Dilawar, a taxi-driver, was arrested, along with three of his passengers, after he was accused of driving the getaway car in a raid against an American base. It later emerged that the Afghan who made the charge against him was actually the one involved in planning the raid. Gibney tells us that only seven per cent of the prisoners in Guantánamo were captured by American and Coalition forces. In Afghanistan, most of the detainees were turned over by Afghans friendly to the Americans—members of the Northern Alliance or local police and the like. Some of these people may have had grudges against those they named. It is not known why Dilawar was accused, but, as his tormentors admit, it became clear before the end of the interrogation—during which he was hung up by his arms and repeatedly struck on the legs—that he was innocent. They kept hitting him, however. They all took turns.
The Review Above
Taxi to the Darkside - The Movie
Above, and below, is Now the Ideology of this Country as seen and understood by others on this planet, National Security No more!
Hatreds and Retribution is more apt!
Exposure
The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib
All that the soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, a Reserve unit out of Cresaptown, Maryland, knew about America’s biggest military prison in Iraq, when they arrived there in early October of 2003, was that it was on the front lines. Its official name was Forward Operating Base Abu Ghraib. Never mind that military doctrine and the Geneva Conventions forbid holding prisoners in a combat zone, and require that they be sped to the rear; you had to make the opposite sort of journey to get to Abu Ghraib. You had to travel along some of the deadliest roads in the country, constantly bombed and frequently ambushed, into the Sunni Triangle. The prison squatted on the desert, a wall of sheer concrete traced with barbed wire, picketed by watchtowers. “Like something from a Mad Max movie,” Sergeant Javal Davis, of the 372nd, said. “Just like that—like, medieval.” There were more than two and a half miles of wall with twenty-four towers, enclosing two hundred and eighty acres of prison ground. And inside, Davis said, “it’s nothing but rubble, blown-up buildings, dogs running all over the place, rabid dogs, burnt remains. The stench was unbearable: urine, feces, body rot.”
SNIP
GUERNEVILLE, Calif. (AP) -- Merry Lane, a cul-de-sac shaded by redwoods in Sonoma County wine country, would seem a pleasant place to recover from the psychic wounds of war. Nadia McCaffrey's dream is to set up a group home there for veterans plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sergeant Patrick Ryan McCaffrey
Before the deployment to Iraq: Patrick McCaffrey with wife and daughter
Veterans and community members from across the region turned out today to commemorate the life of Eric Hall, the 24-year-old Iraq war veteran who was missing for weeks and found dead in Charlotte County on Sunday.
Cheney Five Years Ago: ‘We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators’
~ Rachel Corrie ~
