HOME	Where the World's Views of America Come into Focus

By Sara Sefchovich

May 26, 2005

Original Article (Spanish)

Last week the U.S. was again beset by scandal, with the White House and the State Department accusing Newsweek magazine of seriously damaging the country with an article that appeared in a recent edition of the weekly publication. "This report has had serious consequences, as people were killed and the image of the United States abroad has been damaged," Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said.

The article at issue said that American guards at the Guantanamo naval base had defiled the Koran, the Muslim Holy book, flushing down its pages in front of prisoners. The information triggered rioting in Afghanistan and protests in several other Islamic countries, leaving 17 dead and dozens wounded. The magazine retracted the story, but it was much too late to avert the anger of Muslims in and out of the United States.

The most important thing, nevertheless, is to understand what happened. First and foremost, it is now impossible for the White House, the Pentagon, the departments of State, Defense or the company [the CIA] to aspire to deny reports of the brutal methods used in obtaining confessions from prisoners, and second, these agencies should drop the pretense that they themselves were not the source of the leaked information.

In fact, Human Rights Watch and newspapers such as The New York Times have confirmed that the sources of this information are within the American Army itself. And there is more and more evidence of this every day.

One such piece of evidence is a new book called Inside the Wire, written by Erik Saar, a former linguist at Guantanamo, and Viveca Novak, a Time magazine correspondent (published by the Penguin Press). Saar, who was a U.S. Army Sergeant served at the detention facility for six months. The book tells of how some of the prisoners were treated, and describes one female interrogator that tried to sexually arouse and humiliate a detainee. Wearing a miniskirt, and taking off her T-Shirt, the interrogator rubbed her chest against the prisoner’s back and made fun of him for not having an erection. She then wiped red ink on his face saying that it was menstrual blood – and finally denied him water to wash himself off before his evening prayers.

These extremely offensive techniques are used to shake the resolve of prisoners. The Pentagon defends itself by arguing that it is necessary to break the suspect’s connection with God, which is the thing that gives him strength and enables him to maintain his resolve and silence. But according to Saar’s book, rather than breaking the prisoner’s resolve, the techniques cause the subjects to roll their eyes, get angry, insult interrogators, spit or begin to cry.

For years Americans have criticized their own government for the methods used to extract confessions from prisoners. I am not talking about the abuses committed by soldiers in prisons like Abu Ghraib, which U.S. authorities claim were isolated cases committed by individuals.  I refer to the standard method of U.S. interrogators, which is to insure that only, “a sufficient level of brutality is exerted.”

In the pages of EL UNIVERSAL I recall that there were photographs in June 2002 which depicted prisoners squatting and forced to remain in unbearable positions for hours, with their hands ties behind their backs and wearing face masks to prevent them from seeing or hearing, and others that had been completely battered, and were removed on stretchers after their interrogations.

These photos were published, not in magazines of enemy countries, but in nothing less than the Harvard International Review and Time magazine – both of which carried several articles expressing concern that the United States had sacrificed its legitimacy by not respecting international human rights and justice.

There is no doubt that this is the crux of the problem.

This past March, Secretary of State Rice notified U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States would withdraw from the Vienna Convention [ratified by the United States in 1969 – this provides that foreign detainees have the right of access to consular officials from their native countries] and that Washington would not recognize the International Court of Justice, after they had been the first to invoke the treaty in the 1970s during the hostage crisis in Iran.

Washington has also argued, to critics both inside and outside the country,  that since most of the prisoners are not members of a regular army, they do not qualify for protection under the Geneva Conventions; and Washington has even maintained that Guantanamo does not fall under American law nor the jurisdiction of that country, because the base is on Cuban, and not United States territory.

It is interesting to observe the changes in public opinion of our neighboring country. After September 11, anyone that defended the human rights of Muslims was seen as bad. Part of the rapid ascent and dizzying triumph of the right in that country was based on the argument that liberals were enemies of the United States. In a three-year CNN survey, almost half of Americans agree that, "While it is certainly true that human beings should not be tortured, it is worth doing to save the lives of others.”

Today, however, the decisions of the courts have frequently opposed Bush and Rumsfeld on these issues, and most people in the United States recognize that the best way to obtain justice is to respect the law.

Sara.sefchovich@asu.edu