Mad Social Scientist

The "plan" for Falluja has fallen apart. You can see the wheels starting to come off in this article last night; now the first Iraqi general is out after 4 days, and a new, non-Baathist, non-Fallujan Iraqi general is in (maybe?). Uh, George, how can we stay the course if there's no clue what comes next?

Testimony about the general treatment of Iraqis is starting to come out:

Day and night lost meaning shortly after Muwafaq Sami Abbas, a lawyer by training, arrived at Baghdad International Airport for an unexpected stay. In March, he was seized from his bed by U.S. troops in the middle of the night, he said, along with the rest of the men in his house, and taken to a prison on the airport grounds.

The black sack the troops placed over his head was removed only briefly during the next nine days of interrogation, conducted by U.S. officials in civilian and military clothes, he said. He was forced to do knee bends until he collapsed, he recalled, and black marks still ring his wrists from the pinch of plastic handcuffs. Rest was made impossible by loudspeakers blaring, over and over, the Beastie Boys' rap anthem, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn."

The forced exercise was even harder for his 57-year-old father, a former army general who held a signed certificate from the U.S. occupation authority vouching for his "high level of cooperation and assistance" in the days after the war.

Father and son are now free -- and angry about what they endured in a suddenly notorious U.S.-run prison system in Iraq. But months later, Abbas's three brothers are still inside Abu Ghraib prison, he said. He is their only legal advocate, trying to refute written charges that they are members of the Iraqi insurgency.

"The savagery the Americans have practiced against the Iraqis, well, now we have seen it, touched it and felt it," Abbas said. "These types of actions will grow more hostile forces against the coalition, and this is the reason for the resistance."

The photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- images that reached Iraqi newspapers on Sunday, following a three-day holiday -- have reinforced the long-held view here that the U.S. occupation is intent on humiliating the Iraqi people. The system has been rife with complaints for months, but now the testimony of former Iraqi prisoners claiming abuse at the hands of U.S. jailers has gained new credibility while further damaging the reputation of the U.S. occupation authority.

Interviews with former Iraqi prisoners and human-rights advocates present a picture of the U.S. prison system here as a vast wartime effort to extract information from the enemy rather than to punish criminals. Former prisoners say lengthy interrogation sessions, employing sleep depravation, severe isolation, fear, humiliation and physical duress, were regular features of their daily regimen and remain so for the estimated 2,500 to 7,000 people inside the jails.

The system comprises 16 prisons, four of which hold prisoners accused of being part of the anti-occupation insurgency. But there are countless other holding cells on U.S. bases, many once used by former president Saddam Hussein's government, where young Iraqis spend their first fearful hours in captivity.

"We have to get to the bottom of it," coalition spokesman Daniel Senor said on CNN's "Late Edition." "We have to engage in a robust investigation, which we are doing. . . . But let's not express frustration with the entire military in the process."

Abdullah Mohammed Abdulrazzaq, an unemployed 19-year-old, was held for six months in several prisons around Iraq. "How can we not hate the Americans after the treatment we have received?" he said. "It is not human."

Four Humvees arrived for Abdulrazzaq at 2:30 a.m. one day in September, he said. He was awake when troops crashed through his apartment door. The electricity had cut out hours before in Adhamiya, a comfortable northwest Baghdad neighborhood where he lives with his widowed mother, and the heat was stifling.

The troops held a picture of the wiry teenager holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, he recalled. In hood and handcuffs, Abdulrazzaq was taken to Adhamiya Palace, a compound once used by the former president's eldest son, Uday Hussein. It is now a U.S. Army base, and one of the sitting rooms became the venue for long, intense interrogation sessions.

His interrogators -- first U.S. soldiers, then a man who he said wore the uniform of a Kuwaiti army captain -- sought information on the location of weapons of mass destruction, Hussein and the insurgents in his neighborhood. For the next three days, he said, the Kuwaiti man tortured him using electricity.

U.S. soldiers came in and out of the room where he was tied naked to a chair, he said, adding that he saw their boots from beneath his blindfold and heard them speaking English. He collapsed because of the physical stress and lack of food and water. He was eventually taken to Baghdad International Airport on a stretcher.

"I told the American soldier when I arrived to do something for me, and punish this Kuwait soldier," he said. "He told me, 'I can't do anything against him. And you are going to find the same treatment here.' "

After a few days of interrogation, Abdulrazzaq said he was taken to Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad. There he lived in a tent with 40 other prisoners. Showers were available once a week when Army water tankers pulled up in front of portable bathrooms. A liter of water was expected to last each prisoner a week, he said, and a weekly Army MRE augmented their one meal a day.

Unruly prisoners were placed in shipping containers used to house the prison dogs, he said. The smell inside was horrible, and detention there would last days.

He was interrogated every two weeks. He was taken to a room with his hands and feet tied together, he said, then thrown on the floor. In that position, he would endure hours of questioning, much of it designed to elicit a confession that he was part of the insurgency or inform on his neighbors -- many of whom, he said, were already tent mates.

Then one day he was informed at 5 a.m. that he was being released. He never saw a lawyer or any evidence against him, beyond the photograph that he claims is a fake.

"I told him Allah released me, not you," he said.

Saif Mahmoud Shakir, a 26-year-old taxi driver, always carries the papers he received on his March release from Abu Ghraib. He said he was taken from his house in July, accused of participating in the insurgency and threatening to kill a translator working for the Americans. The man owed him $60, he said, and was trying to avoid repaying the loan by lying about him to U.S. troops eager to hunt down the insurgents.

He said he served most of his time in Umm Qasr, Iraq's southern port, where the occupation authority assembled a vast prison camp out of tents. His twin brother, Ali, was taken with him, and the two moved from prison to prison together for months.

His first stop was another U.S. base in Adhamiya. There, he said, he was beaten by his interrogators before being taken to a special section of the airport prison where he said he was held along with senior members of Hussein's government.

"I arrived there and I was urinating blood because my kidney had been injured by the beatings," he said. "The doctor was very sympathetic and gave me medicine and fruit."

Shakir, whose gaunt cheeks are covered by a thin beard, said U.S. interrogators used his relationship with his brother to try to extract a confession. On three occasions following extended sessions, he said, they were taken in Humvees into the desert north of the port. There, he said, they were buried up to their necks in the sand.

"I couldn't see my brother," he said. "Then I heard shots fired. They came back and told me my brother was dead."

But his brother had not been killed, and the interrogators sometimes fired near his head to frighten him. The only time he was shot, Shakir said, was by rubber bullets used by guards if prisoners were outside the tent after 9 p.m., even to use the bathroom. He has two dark, dime-size scars on his right biceps.

The brothers were separated in March when Shakir was released from Abu Ghraib, where he spent his final months in captivity, and his brother remained inside. At 5 the morning after his release, U.S. soldiers came looking for him.

"My father showed them my release papers, and they threw them back at him," Shakir said. "They just kept asking, 'Where is Saif?' So I don't sleep there anymore."

Apparently, we torture our friends as well as bystanders and enemies (I guess if the idea is to create a unified new Iraq...). This fits with the grumbling coming out of the British military that the US has been abusing Iraqis. Particularly disturbing is the key role of private contractors in such sensitive duties as interrogation. Pete Singer is the top expert on military outsourcing (and a fellow political scientist from Harvard); here's his take in the Guardian.

Meanwhile, evidence is piling up that military intelligence was behind a lot of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. We'd better come up with stiffer penalties that a "repimand". Our military spokesman in Iraq isn't fooling anyone:

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said on ABC that he isn't sure Army military intelligence ``had anything to do with the individual acts of criminal behavior.''

``Those were clearly the acts of individuals,'' Kimmitt said, appearing on the program after Karpinski. ``They made the choice to do those. And now they seem to be a little concerned they've been caught and being prosecuted for that.''

Kimmitt added, however, that the investigation is reviewing ``concerns expressed about the military intelligence.''

Asked whether more people are under investigation, Kimmitt said it's possible but he didn't want to ``pry into'' an ongoing probe.

``Something's going on here that's wrong and we need to get to the bottom of this. There's been determination to open up every door and find out what's going on,'' Kimmitt said.

Of course the people photographed torturing Iraqis are responsible for their actions, regardless if they were under orders or not. But it's way too lately to call this an isolated incident. The cat is out of the bag. (And we've been using it way too much.)

If you're as mad as I am, you'll find this funny, but it's way over the top.