Friday, June 12, 2015

Review: The trials of Abu Ghraib: an expert witness account of shame and honor by Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović

I did my review through a series of Twitter status updates using the hashtag #TrialsAbuGhraib. If you use Twitter, please add your comments using that hashtag.










John Yoo: Yeah. I think that's a line that Congress drew. So the torture convention says you cannot engage in torture and it says you shall undertake not to engage in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. So clearly, the people who drafted the treaty thought they were two different things. And when the Congress, when the Senate adopted the treaty, it only made torture criminal. It did not criminalize cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. So clearly, Congress thought they were different concepts. I think there is a broader category of things that people can do which are cruel, inhumane and degrading and only extreme versions of that constitute torture. Otherwise, you've expanded the definition of torture, I don't know, to include everything from you know standing at attention from an hour � Or to things that happen in basic training in our military forces, which I don' t think anyone thinks constitute torture. [source]
The word prisoners was replaced w euphemisms detainees & PUCs (persons under control) b/c POWs r protected by Geneva Convs

No reason 2 doubt that Harman took photos to doc abuse "Who would have believed her ... w/o the evidence of photographs?"






dog handler testified that "his working dog became so disoriented & upset from the screaming & bit an interrogator" p183

cries of pain of detainees were like constant background noise of traffic which urbanites ignore #Iraq #torture p 182

When rules r nt established & whistleblowers r ignored, institutions suffer chronic chaos akin to dysfunctional families

Toxic social spill frm Guantanamo through Afghanistan 2 Abu Ghraib is still injecting poison into international relations.

there is somethng ghastly about such legalistic calculations as to how much pain is permissible yet falls short of torture

act that prison was in middle of war zone violated Geneva Conventions which require POWs be kept safe from fighting

US Government "more concerned with U.S. image than the reality of #torture & its consequences" p 203

Psychologists think scripted emotions r sign of dysfunctional response to emotionally traumatic events=#USA re #torture

USA's & army's honor won't b restored by scapegoating low-ranking soldiers & sending them to prison

Honor 2 victors restored by treating vanquished w due respect in accord with army, American & intl values re human rights

I disagree with Mestrovic's idea that conscientious people, strictly adhering to norms, can salvage war.

Note: I'm writing this many years after reading the book. I used Storify to create the original blog entry, and I neglected to archive the Storify when the service notified me of its impending end. So this is a series of notes. Nevertheless, I hope you found it helpful.
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