Government hysteria and fairy dancing, the United States' scary court arguments
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
TUCSON -- To hear military prosecutor Capt. Evan Seamone tell it, the Fort Huachuca Army Intelligence Training Center is much like a Bible School Class for eight-year-olds.
Capt. Seamone, with an inordinate amount of squeaky cleanness, told the U.S. District court that the Army interrogation trainers at Fort Huachuca abide by every aspect of international law and the Geneva Conventions.
U.S. interrogators would, never, never, engage in sexual assaults, forcing detainees to remain naked for long periods of time and would never use dogs to terrorize inmates, he said.
But, they did.
It was Monday, August 13, and the preliminary motions of the trespass case against two priests, Franciscan Louie Vitale and Jesuit Steve Kelly, were being heard.
In response, defense attorney Bill Quigley quickly listed the U.S. interrogators abuse in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. There were lap dances by female interrogators who smeared what appeared to be menstrual blood on the face of the Muslim detainee. There were extremes of heat and cold and sleep deprivation.
U.S. interrogators squatted on the Koran.
Detainees heads were duck-taped. There was rape, sodomy and sexual assault. Hoods were placed on their head and electric wires ran from their bodies, including their penises, to simulate torture. They were forced to masturbate and were filmed doing it. They were strip searched in front of female interrogators. Detainees were placed on leashes and forced to perform dog tricks. They were piled on top of one another naked.
Female interrogators fondled the genitals of male detainees.
Those were the lucky ones. Others were beaten and an unknown number, at least six, died during those tortures by U.S. military personnel.
Among those carrying out these abuses was the 800th Military Police Brigade. They punched and slapped inmates, forced them to remain naked for long periods of time, simulated torture with wires and placed dog chains around inmates' necks. Inmates were short-shackled to the floor.
As Quigley spoke, he delivered to the court, report after report, from the U.S. Army, Navy, FBI and Red Cross, detailing the torture. There were hundreds of cases of torture and few U.S. interrogators were ever prosecuted.
Why were there no whistleblowers, Quigley asked. If this is military intelligence, didn't they know what was going on?
Quigley then explained Project X. Between 1966 and 1991, torture manuals were produced at Fort Huachuca. Those torture manuals were used by the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., to train Latin military and leaders. The manuals became public in 1996. Those torture manuals resulted in mass tortures, murders, rapes and disappearances in Central and South America. An unknown number of Indigenous Peoples were tortured and murdered.
In the current court case in federal court in Tucson, Priests Vitale and Kelly are facing 10 months in prison, charged with federal trespass and the Arizona state charge of failing to yield to an officer at Fort Huachuca.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Magistrate Hector Estrada spent a great deal of time scolding the priests. Apparently, Judge Estrada didn't like the fact that the priests have been going to prison in their efforts to oppose war and the nuclear industry.
However, Capt. Seamone's arguments were very revealing about what goes on at Fort Huachuca. If the judge agrees, there will be more of this when the trial gets underway.
"No actual detainees are actually used," Capt. Seamone explained of the training of interrogators at Fort Huachuca. "Of course, this is role playing."
Besides, he described Fort Huachuca as "very picturesque."
On top of all that, Capt. Seamone just couldn't understand what the priests definition of torture was. To hear him tell it, Fort Huachuca, near Sierra Vista in southern Arizona, is no more than a sweet walk in the park.
Besides, he said, whatever occurred before new military regulations regarding torture were put in place in 2005 "are irrelevant."
Capt. Seamone added that whatever is going on in another country, or "what the CIA may be doing," doesn't address what is going on at Fort Huachuca.
The government's delivery was as rigid as a Ku Klux Klan mantra.
Meanwhile, there was a row of military commanders and police seated in the audience in court, prepared as witnesses for the government. They all sat extremely upright during the prosecutor's delivery, but their shoulders began to sag as Quigley described the sexual and physical assaults on prisoners.
No, they don't torture inmates at Fort Huachuca, they do it at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan, Quigley told the court. Further, Quigley asked if Fort Huachuca has addressed the torture. Quigley said it is believed that U.S. torture continues.
After listening to the preliminary arguments, one can only wonder why a federal court would even proceed with this case: Two priests kneeling in prayer outside a guard station. They weren't even inside the gates of Fort Huachuca. With a backlog of federal cases, why chose this one to proceed to trial?
Quigley explained that the priests had not even reached the guard station when they were arrested outside.
If they had been pizza delivery men, they would have been allowed in. "They could have driven farther in a car," Quigley told the court.
Capt. Seamone wanted these two priests to sound pretty scary. Capt. Seamone used the "A" word: "Anthrax" in court. No kidding. He said Army personnel had to take a great deal of precaution when they saw two Catholic priests approaching with a letter. He said this was because Anthrax was sent earlier to post office employees and Congressmen.
Whoa, now there's a stretch. At this point, I scribble in my notebook: "Fairy dancing." The government's mangling of truth with deception had created a sort of fairlyland.
What the priests really planned to do was to deliver a letter to Major Gen. Barbara Fast, then at Fort Huachuca. Major Gen. Fast was the commanding intelligence officer in Iraq at the time of the most grotesque tortures of detainees and went unpunished for her involvement.
While chastising the priests, the judge said that Martin Luther King, Jr., always obtained formal permits before he marched in protest. Members in the audience, apparently older than the judge, groaned at the misinformation.
The motions to the court were taken under advisement.
PHOTOS OF U.S. TORTURE AT Abu Ghraib in Iraq:
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=Abu+Ghraib
PHOTO at top: Buddhist monk Arjahn Sarayut Arnanta catches up with Fr. Louie Vitale as Vitale enters U.S. District Court in Tucson Monday. Vitale, with a tiny pink rose between his lips, and Jesuit priest Steve Kelly were arrested as they knelt in prayer outside the gates of Fort Huachuca in 2006. The priests now want to expose to the world the role of Fort Huachuca's Army Intelligence Training Center in torture by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arnanta said he had planned to spend the day searching for the dying along the U.S./Mexico border, but chose instead to spend the day supporting the priests' effort to expose torture. Photo Brenda Norrell
Read more: "Priests expose secret cycle of U.S. torture"
Counterpunch
by Brenda Norrell
http://www.counterpunch.org/
US Army torture manuals: (copy and past link if not functioning)
http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/manuals.htm
"Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our
children." Sitting Bull
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