….. couldn’t do it.
We got it wrong, says former torturer
A FORMER US Army torturer has described the traumatic effects of American interrogation techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves.
Tony Lagouranis said he conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify prisoners and subjected others to hypothermia.
But he said he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did had contributed to the plight of US forces in Iraq.
Mr Lagouranis, 37, said he suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks after returning to Chicago, where he works as a pub doorman.
Between January 2004 and January 2005, first at Abu Ghraib prison and then in Mosul, in northern Babil province, he tortured suspects, most of whom he said were innocent. He realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis.
Mr Lagouranis told The Sunday Telegraph: “When I first got back I had a lot of anxiety. I had a personal crisis because I felt I had done immoral things and I didn’t see a way to cope with that.”
The nightmares and anxiety attacks this guy suffered pale when compared to the nightmares and anxiety attacks that had to have been suffered by the innocent boys and men that were subjected to American style interrogation.
– I tried to work up some sympathy for the man, but couldn’t.
What sort of personal crisis does one have when they are being subjected to hypothermia?
What sort of nightmares to you have after you’ve been on your knees with a gun to your head contemplating the uneven spray pattern your brains are soon going to be making on the floor in front of you.
Everyone has choices to make in life, like his president, this guy made the wrong ones.
Whooee! I ain’t gonna shed too many tears over the poor torturer’s tortured conscience. I do think good people can get sucked into doin’ bad things, though. US military indoctrination is designed to dehumanize the enemy, to exaggerate the threat and to reinforce the idea that corporal methods achieve results. Coupled with the fact that they military draws its recruits largely from the undereducated unemployed means there could be some mitigation.
The rank and file torturers should answer for their misdeeds. Their superiors should answer, too. Back in the days of straight-talkin’ presidents, Harry S Truman said his famous quote — “The buck stops here.”
The buck keeps stoppin’ before it gets very far up the chain of command. The problem is compounded by a president who publicly declares his actions are above International Law and the Geneva Conventions. In the US, the president is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. He sets the tone.
JB