“Acceptable for short periods of time”

48 hours in a cell 4 feet x 4 feet x 20 inches. “Acceptable.”
Acceptable to whom? To some especially depraved KGB colonel?
No, to a Brigadier General in United States Army.

48 hours in a cell 4 feet x 4 feet x 20 inches.

Acceptable to whom? To some especially depraved KGB colonel?

No, to a Brigadier General in United States Army.

Here’s the commentary from TNR’s The Plank.

Here’s the PDF of the redacted report. See p. 47.

I will never forgive these people for the way they have dishonored our flag. To the Hague with the lot of them!

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

22 thoughts on ““Acceptable for short periods of time””

  1. "I will never forgive these people for the way they have dishonored our flag."
    Agreed. The flag I served stood for honor and decency. We must restore it.

  2. "To the Hague" is right, but I have read no one but you suggest it. The argument is obvious — if Bush were the leader of any other nation, Americans would be demanding a war crimes trial. Is there any way to get the ball rolling on this? Can the Hague arrange a kidnapping, a la Eichman?

  4. The sad part is that this sort of patriotism is actively being debased by the likes of Reynolds and Malkin.
    I fear my country is evaporating under the heat lamps of calculating totalitarianism, served up by cheap "pundits". (That word is just a trivial linguistic victim of what's happening.)

  5. Unbelievable. All too believable. My tax dollars at work.
    Reading through the report (between the massive redacts), I found it significant that although Formica generally found no evidence of abuse, most of the prisoner descriptions of abuse were nearly identical. What are we to make of this?
    Our doctor and our investigator found by interviewing our interrogators that most claims of abuse are unsubstantiated, but somehow all of the prisoners have the same stories? I smell a rat. And it would not be the first time a doctor went over to the dark side.
    Reading reports like this makes me more than ashamed to be a fellow citizen of those doing these evil deeds; it makes me ashamed to be a human being. All this evolution just so that we can exhibit such bottomless cruelty against others of our kind: it is utterly unfathomable, and profoundly depressing.

  6. Is the reference to "these people" meant to include the general? The Special Forces soldiers?
    And why to the Hague? Haven't we courts here?

  7. Seeing a post like this, even from a blogger who never use Atrios-esque nonsensical anger or insincere emotions, I still find it hard to imagine that the message is sincere.
    I can't really imagine a situation in which the US would be involved in a counterinsurgency war and not use inhumane tactics on innocent civilians as a matter of policy. How else could a counterinsurgency war possibly happen?
    Is this worse than what happened as a matter of policy in Vietnam? Are the people orchestrating these horrible things less moral than Henry Kissinger?

  8. "Formica generally found no evidence of abuse, most of the prisoner descriptions of abuse were nearly identical. What are we to make of this?"
    Um, that they're allowed to talk to each other, and got their stories straight? It's at least possible.

  9. Thomas asks: "And why to the Hague? Haven't we courts here?" For one thing, Bush and his cohorts are not going to prosecute themselves, so we would have to wait until 2009. If the unimaginable occurred and the next president were willing to prosecute Bush and his cohorts to the full extent of the law, that would help show the world that we were on the way to redeeming ourselves. But to demonstrate that we had chosen to rejoin the community of nations, it would be better to step aside and let an international tribunal take over. Okay, enough fantasizing for today; I have work to do.

  10. I visited in Vilnius a wartime jail which was equipped with a just such a cupboard cell. The jail was set up by the Soviet NKVD when the Soviets occupied the Baltic states in 1940. A year later, Lithuania fell into German hands and the Geatapo took over the prison; and the NKVD got it back in good condition in 1944.
    The analogy here to US war crimes is a much better fit than the notorious one between the fledgling Bulag and the giant Gulag system. Neither the NKVD nor the Geatapo tortured huge numbers of people as a matter of routine, only when they found it necessary.

  11. "Are the people orchestrating these horrible things less moral than Henry Kissinger?"
    I'm sorry, is that supposed to be a *defense* of the actions? Is "not as bad as Kissinger" the new "not as bad as Saddam"?

  12. Brett: "Um, that they're allowed to talk to each other, and got their stories straight? It's at least possible."
    The interrogators or the prisoners?

  13. Either. Uniformity of unconfirmed stories among people who can communicate with each other is not, I'm pointing out, really evidence that the stories are true. Now, if they're being kept isolated from each other, that would be quite another matter…

  14. I'm sorry, is that supposed to be a *defense* of the actions? Is "not as bad as Kissinger" the new "not as bad as Saddam"?
    My point was that I find it hard to imagine that Mark is surprised by any of this. There shouldn't be so much more outrage now that the atrocities have been publicized than there was at the point three years ago when the atrocities were inevitable.
    Uniformity of unconfirmed stories among people who can communicate with each other is not, I'm pointing out, really evidence that the stories are true.
    You're right; as a matter of fact, the fact that people say something is not evidence that it is true. Maybe there should be some effort put into finding out if the things are true.

  15. Apparently putting things in italics doesn't work.
    How are you supposed to quote somebody else?

  16. "How are you supposed to quote somebody else?"
    Quotation marks work. 😉
    "Maybe there should be some effort put into finding out if the things are true."
    Couldn't agree more. As opposed to assuming the allegations must be true, just because they were made, which is what I objected to.

  17. No, I'm not naive enough to be shocked at random maltreatment of prisoners. I am shocked at the apparent systematization of maltreatment as a matter of policy.
    But what really freaks me out is that a general is willing to sign a report justifying this crap (even the stuff he doesn't deny) and is allowed to keep his job afterwards.
    Kissinger was evil, but (aside from his love affair with the Shah and the House of Saud) not stupid. He might have winked at this sort of stuff, but he never would have written it down.

  18. Note: Brett's point is a reasonable one. It's hard to tell whether the other forms of maltreatment occurred. But there's no doubt about the stress-position cells (what the North Vietnamese called "tiger cages"). Gen. Formica admits those, and admits they were used for what he deemed "unacceptable" lengths of time. What's shocking is that he thinks 48 hours in such cells is "reasonable."
    And no, I'm not calling for war crimes trials for the guys in the field; if generals don't know the difference between right and wrong, why should they? But everyone with clean fingernails who signed off on this ought to hang, including Cheney and Bush. A firing squad is much too good for them.

  19. OK, if true this is not in keeping with American values (assuming such things can be said to exist), but I wonder about one point. Ackerman states that the Geneva Conventions apply to "Iraqi detainees" – but doesn't it actually only apply to uniformed soldiers in the military of a signee to the convention? What clause includes non-uniformed irregulars who themselves do not act in accordance with its provisions?

  20. Russ: Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention (look it up on Wikipedia) applies to prisoners of armed forces of contracting parties, or of non-contracting states or resiatance movements applying the Geneva provisions de facto. But Article 3 is universal:
    "(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria." ( It goes on to specify some banned treatmesnts).
    The UN Convention against torture and the implementing US legislation are likewise universal – the Bushies' argument that GITMO isn't on US territory is outrageous sea-lawyering.
    Combat soldiers under pressure can't be asked to make fancy legal distinctions. The only practicable rule, whuich used to be followed when the US Army was led by honurable men, is Geneva standards for everybody.

  21. Hey, John McCain stayed in a tiger cage for way longer than that, and he seems fine.
    It builds character.

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