Thursday, January 27, 2005 10:02 AM CST
前f course you're going to get torture'
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
CHARLESTON -- To understand the torture led by U.S. troops in Iraqi prisons, one needs to look at America's prisons and culture of violence, said an expert in crime and punishment during a presentation Wednesday at Eastern Illinois University.
"It's the outsourcing of torture, the outsourcing of abuse," said Stephen Hartnett, co-author of the book "Empire of Deception: The War in Iraq, Globalization & The Twilight of Democracy."
Hartnett, associate professor of speech communication at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, said the use of former guards and administrators from U.S. correctional institutions at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq contributed to the abuses that have undermined America's international credibility.
He said the pressure on the U.S. intelligence community, the Bush Administration's sidestepping of the Geneva Convention and the mismanagement of civilian prison contractors in Iraq are also to blame.
"This is a disaster for U.S. policy," said Hartnett, who has spent 15 years teaching in prisons and authored numerous books and papers on the subject.
"It's crippling our ability as a nation to talk about democracy ... We as a people are being seen as perpetrators of this brutality."
Hartnett reported that all of the leadership personnel at the American military's Abu Ghraib facility were fired from jobs within prison systems in the United States. And they were dismissed for abuse of inmates, Hartnett said.
The three main instigators of the torture at Abu Ghraib were also alienated from their families at home, and each was under a restraining order from his wife, said Hartnett.
"The mastery they can't have at home, they have over there," he said.
And he said that America's "culture of brutality," where violence is entertainment, told these men that such mastery was their right.
Hartnett also criticized the U.S. policy on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, and the administration's claim that the provisions of the Geneva Convention against torture do not apply in Iraq.
He said Condoleezza Rice, confirmed Wednesday as secretary of state, and Alberto Gonzales, nominee for attorney general, were the primary architects of this policy.
Citing the report by former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, Hartnett said 90 percent of the detainees at Abu Ghraib are innocent, placed there by young soldiers hampered by language and cultural barriers as they try to locate insurgents in Iraq.
"The U.S. forces in Baghdad have been functioning literally as disappearance squads," said Hartnett. "Any young (Iraqi) man is a potential victim ... This is why the insurgency is skyrocketing."
Hartnett also talked about the international backlash both to the torture at Abu Ghraib and Americans in general. He referred to a mural depicting the Statue of Liberty pulling the switch on electrodes attached to a torture victim.
"That image is what they think of America," said Hartnett. "It's destroying the credibility of the United States ... We are losing the battle of hearts and minds.
"They already think that we're cowboys ... That just feeds the opinion that we're out of control. They assume you agree with this, they assume you're like these people."
Hartnett said the premise for the war in Iraq itself was faulty, and contributed to the situation at Abu Ghraib.
He said the CIA had repeatedly told the Bush Administration there were no links in Iraq to Osama bin Laden, or evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but the White House asked intelligence leaders to lie.
"When you pursue these wars for bogus reasons, of course you're going to get torture," said Hartnett.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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