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BUSH’S POW PORN
by
Dr. Susan Block
IN
4 PAGES
1 I 2 I 3 I 4
Page 4
Staff Sgt. Ivan
(Chip) Frederick, Abu Ghraib
segment producer for Bush's POW Porn
Military Intelligence, CIA, mercenaries working for CACI International, and maybe Wolfie and Rummy themselves seem to have directed torture like we see in the Abu Ghraib Photos. But the practices are, for the most part, an extension of the American prison system. Lane McCotter, a contractor who had resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours, was chosen by the Bushies to rebuild Abu Ghraib and train the guards there.
One of the soldiers in The Photos (a segment producer for Bush's POW Porn), Staff Sgt. Ivan (Chip) Frederick, had worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections, and was described by his warden as “one of the best.” Scott Bobeck, a special agent in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, testified that Sgt. Frederick and Corporal Charles Graner "were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run." That knowledge came from working in a U.S. prison system that now cages over two million Americans.
Part of the problem is the nature of prison. As psychological studies at Stanford and Yale have shown, when normal, compassionate people are given the job of “prison guard” and told by authorities to enforce discipline or administer punishment, their overwhelming tendency is to become sadistic and abusive. Of course, this natural prison guard sadism can be checked with supervision. The danger of abuse rises with severe overcrowding, a problem in America, as well as in Iraq (not to mention Afghanistan and Guantanamo) where thousands of people who shouldn’t be imprisoned are.
But Bush doesn’t care about problems like this, just as he hasn’t cared about the mulitiple reports of abuse and torture from the Red Cross and other groups that have been crossing his desk for years. Now he cares. He’s been caught! He’s just “sickened” that the world has seen his secret stash of porn.
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
Ultimately, he was forced to mouth the words “I’m sorry,” though he said them to a fellow King, Jordan’s Abdullah II, not to his main victims, the Iraqi people, nor to his other victims, the American people (whom he should apologize to for turning our sons, daughters, parents and neighbors into sadistic bullies like him). And sticking to form, his so-called apology actually blames the viewers of The Photos themselves.
Sadists love to say, ‘I’m sorry to hurt you, but it’s really your fault.” Bush said he told the King, "I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families. I told him I was as equally sorry that people seeing those pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America."
The first line is okay. Even though he doesn’t say who did the humiliating of the Iraqi prisoners and their families (um, Americans?), at least he says he’s sorry about it. But then he cancels out his apology by blaming these very people--as well as all of us who see The Photos--for believing our eyes and not his words.
“I am sickened by what I saw and sickened that people got the wrong impression,“ he goes on, again saying that we are “wrong” to get the “impression” that The Photos give us. Earlier, in his interview with Al-Hurrah, he kept repeating that the Iraqi people “must understand” that what we see in The Photos isn't really "America." Then, for a kicker, at the end of the interview, he had the temerity to say to the interviewer, “Good job.” As if we needed to be reminded that Al-Hurrah is the American Iraqi station.
The arrogance, the patronizing tone, infantile insistence that everyone see things his way, is breathtaking. Some diehard submissives do find this kind of brute domination sexy—at least in fantasy. Okay, but do we really want it for President?
Coming Attractions: More & Worse!
We shall see what we want, based on what we're willing to accept. Bush’s POW Porn has some sequels. There's more to come, including rapes of women and children. And we also have the court martials of the six soldiers featured in The Photos. After which, the more ambitious of the bunch will get their book contracts (though they won't be allowed to make any money from committing felonies, will they?). And there will surely be more admonishments, reprimands and dismissals to various disposable cogs in the wheels of the Bush War Machine. But the Executive Producer has made clear that his main POW Porn Production Team stays, including Line Producer Master Rummy who is doing a “superb” job. "Disgusting," but "superb."
Rummy and Janis talk about remodeling Saddam's old rape
rooms and torture chambers at Abu Ghraib
The official nominally in charge of Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski (who said, "I'd like to know who was the one that was giving instructions to the military intelligence personnel to turn up the heat"), has been canned. The new Big Cheese at Abu Ghraib is Major General Geoffrey Miller, most recently in charge of the draconian detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.
Miller’s considered competent because, though tales of torture similar to Abu Ghraib flow constantly out of Guantánamo, the S/M Porn Photos that have emerged from there are soft-core compared to The Abu Ghraib Collection. Miller might even go farther with the torture than Karpinski who acts like she was the one wearing the hood at her own prisons. The Taguba Report quotes Miller, after inspecting Abu Ghraib, as saying that it was ‘‘essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.’’ So, stack those pyramids high, kids!
The Power of Perversion
Most of the main players are staying or just switching locations, and will continue to do what they were doing, only without the digital cameras. That’s one big change at Abu Ghraib, the signs that say “No Cameras Allowed.” And herein lies the crux of the "disgust." It's not with the torture, it's with The Photos of the torture.
Those of us who want the truth of Bush’s War and every war can only be grateful for The Photos and for the photographers. Whether they were brave or stupid or "just doing their job," they gave us riveting evidence of something the Bushies would like to keep secret. We can only laugh and weep that, after the release of The Photos the first new rule is “No Cameras Allowed.”
So no more photos, and maybe no more hoods and a few more clothes. Or maybe not. But the sickness that we see in The Photos is only the tip of an iceberg. The iceberg is the war. And it is melting down into a mess we can never clean up.
Well, at least, The Photos got the Shrub to give a simulated apology, which is more than he’s done yet through this whole war. That’s the power of perversion, specifically sexual perversion. Bush has never apologized for the invasion or the occupation. He has never apologized for all the lies, the bombings, the wholesale murder of thousands of Iraqis (which we don't bother to count), the senseless deaths of hundreds of Americans, the virtual destruction of a country, it’s libraries, his art museums, it’s hospitals, it’s schools. But he does apologize for The Photos. He has to. Because his stash was found, his pants are down, way down around his ankles, and all the world can see what a sadistic little bully he is.
But it’s not only Bush, and it’s not only Dick. It’s not only Rummy and Lynndie and the guys in MI. It’s not only Fox TV. All Americans are engaged in playing the bully game. Some of us have been “forced” into this painful position. But as much as Bush says Iraqis “must understand” that The Photos are “not America,” what they show is incontrovertible: average Americans being bullies. Which means it’s more imperative than ever that we all do whatever we can—whether we’re soldiers, spies, doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, writers, webmasters, sex therapists, schoolteachers, secretaries, pornographers or presidential candidates--to stop the war, and the abuse that goes with it, now.
As I write this, my email box is filling up with links to the latest atrocity caught on tape. This time it is an Al-Qaeda-produced snuff film showing the gruesome beheading of young Nick Berg from my hometown Philadelphia. The way that the killers call their murder retribution for the Abu Ghraib abuses painfully recalls the vengeful killing of Daniel Pearl (another Jewish American civilian) in Pakistan shortly after the abusive treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo became public. Some in the pro-war crowd in America are actually emboldened by Berg's murder, now screaming that it somehow justifies American torture. U.S. Senators are using it as an excuse to censor the latest set of pictures which might "incite" more violence.
We may see some of them anyway. The speed with which The Photos and video from the Iraqi Front appear on our TVs and computers rattles the synapses. Now, any amateur can take a photo, any bully can make porn and any murderer can make a snuff film viewed by millions within moments. Will the digital technology that made Bush's POW Porn the huge hit that it is make this horrific human violence escalate or shock us enough to stop it?
It's up to us. We are America.
© May
12, 2004,
Dr. Susan Block
For reprint rights, please contact rox@blockbooks.com
Dr. Susan Block is a sex educator, cultural commentator, host of The Dr.
Susan Block Show and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure.
Visit her website at http://www.drsusanblock.com
Send all hate mail, love letters, commentary, questions and confessions to her at liberties@blockbooks.com.
Read "Bush's
POW Porn" in
by
Dr. Susan Block
IN
4 PAGES
1 I 2 I 3 I 4
