Prisoner Abuse: One of America's Many Exports

June 14 2004
Counterbias.com
Marc Krug


As recent revelations have shown, George Bush does not let the rule of law, the Geneva Conventions, or the dictates of common human decency interfere with his decisions on how to treat prisoners taken in the war against terrorism.  Neither does he accept full responsibility for his actions. Instead, he hides behind quasi-legalistic technicalities, unfounded half-truths, and outright untruths--both his own and others'.

Unfortunately, this is not new behavior for him. Equally unfortunate, such behavior seems to be spreading.

When Bush recently decried the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib as "not American," he was being technically correct: none of the prisons currently holding enemy combatants is located inside this country. But should he have made the same statement about American prisons, he would have been dead wrong: mistreatment of prisoners happens all the time in America. It certainly did in Texas when Bush was Governor.

Currently, detention of enemy combatants remains limited to facilities in Cuba, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Diego Garcia--a small island in the Indian Ocean that America leases from Britain. Although all of these places are outside the U.S., they all have since come to be known as the "American Gulag." In every one of them, prisoner abuse is reputedly rampant.

For example, in Guantanamo, Cuba, many "enemy combatants" underwent the same outrages that made Abu Ghraib infamous. Prisoners were hooded, threatened, stripped naked, kept in dark cells for 23 hours a day, made to stand or kneel for hours in excruciating discomfort, and held in solitary confinement for months on end. All of these offenses have been documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Bush justified this mistreatment in a most inventive way. Because these combatants were not soldiers in any recognized army, they were not prisoners of war, and hence not subject to the Geneva Conventions. And it would seem from the wealth of documents and memos uncovered recently that many have been working long and hard on Bush's behalf during the last two years, trying to formulate a "creative" legal defense for his justification.

Unfortunately, the same mistreatment of inmates found at Guantanamo occurs commonly in American prisons, according to many human rights organizations. As the ACLU sees it, what goes on in the American Gulag should not be considered an isolated, foreign phenomenon. It should be regarded as an extension of the American prison system.

Keep in mind that two of the guards now facing courts martial for their alleged crimes at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick and Specialist Charles Graner Jr., were once guards at American prisons. While still a guard at a Pennsylvania prison, Graner had been named in two cases involving prisoner abuse. Although the accusations made against him in Pennsylvania were quite similar to those made against him in Iraq, he was not found guilty in either case. Nevertheless, for what he allegedly did in Iraq, Graner will not likely escape punishment--the Army recently brought seven charges against him.

But it was certainly not all Graner's fault, nor was it entirely by
accident that the Iraqi prison system became an extension of ours. It was just one of our many "exports" to that country.

Beginning in mid 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft sent to Iraq a four-member team of rather questionably chosen U.S. prison officials. Arriving two at a time, this team was asked initially just to set up Iraq's prison system. Once there, they were prevailed upon to hire and train guards.

One of the first two members of the team sent  was O.L. "Lane" McCotter. McCotter left his job as Director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997, following the death of a schizophrenic man, Michael Valent. Mr. Valent had succumbed to a coronary embolism after being strapped to a chair, naked, for 16 hours.

Five years later, McCotter was once again in trouble. The Department of Justice (DOJ) was investigating civil rights violations at the Santa Fe County Detention Center in New Mexico, which just happened to be managed by the same company that McCotter directed. In March 2003, the DOJ issued a report which said that prisoners at that facility suffered "harm or the risk of serious harm" from insufficient medical attention and poor living conditions.

Even so, two months later, the head of DOJ, John Ashcroft, put McCotter on a plane to Iraq for the purpose of helping DOJ. set up Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Accompanying him was Terry Stewart.

Stewart had also run afoul of the DOJ, having been sued by them in 1997 when he ran the Arizona Corrections Department. According to the suit, at least 14 female inmates were repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted, and watched by guards as they dressed, showered, and used the bathroom.

Among the two next sent, John Armstrong arrived after McCotter had left Iraq. In several ways, Armstrong was a most fitting replacement for McCotter-in Connecticut prisons Armstrong's company managed in 1999, two mentally ill inmates died after being restrained. Also like McCotter, he
resigned under a cloud of suspicion. But he did so only last year, following an ACLU lawsuit over his transferring prisoners to an infamous Virginia facility where two Connecticut inmates died.

Nevertheless, like McCotter, several months later he was on a plane to Iraq. Accompanying Armstrong  was Chuck Ryan. Ryan had been Terry Stewart's top deputy in 1996.

As to whether Ashcroft could have been unaware of these men's past, it's well known that DOJ runs background checks on all contractors, particularly those given sensitive jobs. Ashcroft knew precisely who he was sending -- displaying then the same disdain for others' rights that he displays now by refusing to reveal the contents of a 2002 DOJ memo.

Ashcroft does tend to repeat certain patterns of behavior. But then again, so does his boss.

"The culture of sadistic and malicious violence that continues to pervade the Texas prison system violates contemporary standards of decency." These words came from Texas Judge William Wayne Justice in early 1999, just about the same time that a certain Texas Governor was preparing for his first Presidential run.

There is an old proverb that says a fish rots first at the head.
Apparently, this rot has already spread downward-from the White House to the Department of Justice and lastly to Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere in the American Gulag.

Marc Krug has a PhD in Cultural History from the University of Chicago, and has been a professional writer for more than 30 years.