WASHINGTON, 8 May 2004 — Over 20 years ago, I was sitting in a hotel conference hall awaiting a speech by the Academy Award winner, Vanessa Redgrave. Redgrave was speaking at a special event organized by the National Association of Arab Americans in Boston, Massachusetts. Redgrave had been scheduled to appear with the Boston Symphony, but the concert had been cancelled because of her support for the PLO. I looked up as I heard a commotion in the back of the room as in rushed Harvard constitutional law professor, Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz, known as one of the most famous civil libertarians in America, stormed the podium and, though uninvited, demanded the floor. He insisted that Redgrave had not had any of her rights violated in the concert cancellation and challenged Redgrave to a debate. Dershowitz certainly demonstrated “chutzpah” that day and chutzpah seems to be the name of the game for Dershowitz.
Dershowitz has even written a book with the title “Chutzpah”, a Yiddish/Hebrew word used to connote brazen, self-confidence bordering on rudeness. And Dershowitz is in the news again for his chutzpah. He has long been advocating to the American public and the American judicial system that we should seriously consider using torture as a means to extract information from prisoners and the “enemy.” And his ideas have apparently come to fruition with the current revelations coming from the Abu Gharib prison in Iraq.
Dershowitz has authored various articles and papers on the issue of using torture to coerce prisoners. In the Jewish World Review of Jan. 30, 2002, his article, “Let America Take Its Cues From Israel Regarding Torture,” stated, “No democracy, other than Israel, has ever employed torture within the law.” In a Nov. 8, 2001 editorial in the Los Angeles Times titled “Is There a Torturous Road to Justice?” Dershowitz said: “Any interrogation technique, including the use of truth serum, even torture, is not prohibited. All that is prohibited is the introduction of evidence of the fruits of such techniques in a criminal trial against the person on whom the techniques were used.” And Dershowitz was quoted by the Kurt Nimmo blog site as stating to a September 2001 group at a Jewish community center in St. Louis, Missouri in a speech on torture, “Society needs to be protected from immigrants and other undesirables.” Dershowitz has also been quoted advocating shoving sterile hypodermic needles under prisoners’ fingernails and says, “Pain is not the worst thing in the world. You get over it.”
Just how pervasive is the Dershowitz argument in American political discourse? The Abu Gharib torture incidents and photographs have opened a sore wound for America in confronting this issue. Years ago, a conservative US senator and presidential candidate made famous the statement, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” It appears that many in American society today are becoming advocates of that idea. Some may argue that individuals such as Dershowitz have no direct effect on real policy. However, the more often these views are stated as normal, the less opposition they seem to generate.
British author, Oliver Poole was embedded with American troops during the invasion of Iraq. In his book, “Black Knights”, he says that the Americans that he was with considered the Iraqis “barely human”. They put a much higher priority on the protection of American soldiers than the protection of Iraqi civilians. And American journalist, Joseph Farah, recently urged us “to make an example” out of Fallujah. “We may need to flatten Fallujah,” Farah said, “We may need to destroy it. We may need to grind it, pulverize it and salt the soil.” Farah and Dershowitz ultimately often influence their readers. As Pogo, the cartoon character once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Much has yet to be revealed in the Abu Gharib aftermath. We already know much about the torture thanks to journalists like Sy Hersh who wrote an expose of the torture incidents and released information on a previously secret lengthy report on Abu Gharib by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Taguba is incidentally only the second Filipino-American to become an army general and, as a minority in the American military, he showed great sensitivity to the plight of the Iraqi prisoners. Taguba pointed out that, though soldiers pictured in the torture photos were complicit in their actions, it was the ultimate responsibility of various private contractors and the soldiers’ superiors who gave the orders.
Various individuals working for US military contractors, CACI and Titan were cited in the Taguba report. Those individuals included Steven Stephanowicz and John Israel. CACI is a huge private military contractor for the US military. It provides information and translation relation services to the armed forces. CACI has strong links to Israel as well. The CEO of CACI, J.P. “Jack” London was awarded the Albert Einstein Technology Award by the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah which was presented by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz in January. At that juncture, CACI proudly announced that as a provider of information technology to help fight the war on terrorism, it was helping to transform the Middle East “from a source of global instability into a peaceful, stable region.” London visited Israel earlier this year with a delegation for a homeland security conference. Hersh in a previous article pointed out that during the course of the war in Iraq, a stronger Israeli-US alliance has been taking covert shape. Hersh stated “Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers — again, in secret— when full-field operations begin”. The Guardian newspaper has also reported on Israeli military activities with American forces training for and based in Iraq. It also appears that Israeli interrogation/torture methods used on the Palestinians for many years might also have found their way into Iraqi prison camps.
Jason Raimondo in Antiwar.com also mentions that one of the American interrogators at Abu Gharib, Joe Ryan, in posting his diary on a website stated, “I went through the DOD Strategic Debriefer Course, Israeli Interrogation Course, and the SCAN Course.” So the Israelis and their friends such as Alan Dershowitz seem to be setting the agenda again. On the other hand, it may be just as US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld said recently, “I’m not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture.” As Pogo, the cartoon character once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
