Sex Crimes in the White House
NEW YORK - Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
I had a sense of déjà vu when I saw the photos that emerged in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison. Even as the Bush administration was spinning the notion that the torture of prisoners was the work of "a few bad apples" low in the military hierarchy, I knew that we were seeing evidence of a systemic policy set at the top. It's not that I am a genius. It's simply that, having worked at a rape crisis center and been trained in the basics of sex crime, I have learned that all sex predators go about things in certain recognizable ways.
We now know that the torture of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Rice -- who actually chaired the torture meetings. The Pentagon has also acknowledged that it had authorized sexualized abuse of detainees as part of interrogation practices to be performed by female operatives. And documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union have Rumsfeld, in his own words, checking in on the sexualized humiliation of prisoners.
The sexualization of torture from the top basically turned Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay into an organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners. Looking at the classic S and M nature of some of this torture, it is hard not to speculate that someone setting policy was aroused by all of this. And Phillipe Sands' impeccably documented Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, now proves that sex crime was authorized and, at least one source reports, eroticized: Diane Beaver, the Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo who signed off on many torture techniques, told Sands about brainstorming sessions that included the use of "sexual tension," which was "culturally taboo, disrespectful, humiliating and potentially unexpected."
"These brainstorming meetings at Guantanamo produced animated discussion," writes Sands. "'Who has the glassy eyes?" Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, thirty or more of them. She was invariably the only woman in the room, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get excited, agitated, even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas" [reported Beaver]. A wan smile crossed Beaver's face: "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard, I can stay detached."' [Sands, p 63]
The nonsexual torture that was committed ranged from beatings and suffocation, electrodes attached to sensitive areas, and forced sleep deprivation, to prisoners being hung by the wrists from the ceiling and placed in solitary confinement until psychosis was induced. These abuses violate both US and international law. Three former military attorneys, recognizing this blunt truth, refused to participate in the "military tribunals" -- rather, "show trials" -- aimed at condemning men whose confessions were elicited through torture.
Though we can now debate what the penalty for waterboarding should be, America as a nation, maintaining an odd silence, still cannot seem to discuss the sex crimes involved.
Why? It's not as if the sex crimes that US leaders either authorized or tolerated are not staring Americans in the face: the images of male prisoners with their heads hooded with women's underwear; the documented reports of female US soldiers deployed to smear menstrual blood on the faces of male prisoners, and of military interrogators or contractors forcing prisoners to simulate sex with each other, to penetrate themselves with objects, or to submit to being penetrated by objects. Indeed, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was written deliberately with loopholes that gave immunity to perpetrators of many kinds of sexual humiliation and abuse.
There is also the testimony by female soldiers such as Lynndie England about compelling male prisoners to masturbate, as well as an FBI memo objecting to a policy of "highly aggressive interrogation techniques." The memo cites a female interrogator rubbing lotion on a shackled detainee and whispering in his ear -- during Ramadan when sexual contact with a strange woman would be most offensive -- then suddenly bending back his thumbs until he grimaced in pain, and violently grabbing his genitals. Sexual abuse in US-operated prisons got worse and worse over time, ultimately including, according to doctors who examined detainees, anal sodomy.
All this may sound bizarre if you are a normal person, but it is standard operating procedure for sex offenders. Those who work in the field know that once sex abusers control a powerless victim, they will invariably push the boundaries with ever more extreme behavior. Abusers start by undressing their victims, but once that line has been breached, you are likely to hear from the victim about oral and anal penetration, greater and greater pain and fear being inflicted, and more and more carelessness about exposing the crimes as the perpetrator's inhibitions fall away.
The perpetrator is also likely to engage in ever-escalating rationalizations, often arguing that the offenses serve a greater good. Finally, the victim is blamed for the abuse: in the case of the detainees, if they would only "behave," and confess, they wouldn't bring all this on themselves.
Silence, and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a family. Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding sex criminals in their midst through silence.
Just as sex criminals -- and the leaders who directed the use of rape and sexual abuse as a military strategy -- were tried and sentenced after the wars in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, so Americans must hold accountable those who committed, or authorized, sex crimes in US-operated prisons. Throughout the world, this perverse and graphic criminality has added fuel to anxiety about US cultural and military power. These acts need to be called by their true names -- war crimes and sex crimes -- and people in America need to demand justice for the perpetrators and their victims. As in a family, only when people start to speak out and tell the truth about rape and sexual assault can the healing begin.
© Project Syndicate
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I've felt that Americans like to see ourselves as "good" people: ourselves as moral and our works in the community and the world as good. An important part of the Iraq "sell" was that Hussein was an "evil doer" and the world is a "safer place without him." It is very difficult to look into the mirror and see that we have done evil. And to the extent we do face it, we would like to believe the evil we do is necessary in regard to the evil we prevent. It is extremely important I believe that we not be allowed to communally "repress" (in the psychological sense) what we have done. A dispassionate discussion of the history and mechanism of these processes is an important piece of work, perhaps ranking up there with the Shock Doctrine itself. One can not be selfish enough, however, to ask you to undertake yet another nauseating look at the evil we do. Yet....
According to the Taguba Report, at least one child was anally raped by an American interrogator and a teenage boy was tortured in front of his father to try to get his father to talk. Where's Chris Hansen when we need him?
http://daltonator.net/durandal/blog/?p=68
I have long been convinced that the use of sexual torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib was mostly for the purpose of spy recruitment-- because of all the photographs. An inhabitant of a conservative Muslim community would be shown the photographs of his humiliation and threatened with their distribution, both torturer and the tortured knowing that such an inhabitiant could never return to his home as a respected citizen if the community became aware of his debasement. So in return for assurances that his continued cooperation with the coalition would guarantee the photos never got an airing back home, he would be set free-- to spy on his fellows for the invaders.
Remember, all this stuff took place within a few months of the invasion, at which time the US armed forces quickly realized, thanks to all the wild inaccuracies and pure fiction therein, that the so-called "intelligence" they had from Chalabi and his fellow outcasts was entirely worthless, and that therefore they were going into a country without any real knowledge of terrain, troop placement, location of munition dumps, etc. That knowledge deficit made the forced recruitment of intelligence providers such a priority for them, albeit a disgusting and illegal priority...
Oh, then.........that's okay. In that circumstance it is totally understandable. Too bad it wasn't you or your child.
I have to agree with the comment by wadenelson1 in that the vast majority of the US population will never hear of these attrocities.
It would appear that it only took 30 or 40 years with Darth Cheney at the controls for us to actually become the bully’s on the global block. He and his henchmen have managed to prove to the rest of the world what they already suspected, that we are the bad guys that the terrorists say we are. We have forced US friendly puppet regiems onto other countries for years and demanded that our products be sold worldwide when there are known consiquences. Think Cigarettes.
Now instead of our government doing these horrible things in backroom deals and under the table we have removed the vail and are actually perueing a New American Century right out in the open and to hell with the rest of the world!
I say it again. We (America) are the bad guys in this one.
The whole world knows about these atrocities. You will have a hard time explaining why Americans are the only people who have never heard of them.
thank you, Hermoine Granger! great remark.
This is as disgusting as it gets. I am shocked, truly shocked. Where is the coverage from the coporate media? Oh, I forgot, it's hard to find enough time in a news cylce with all the "interest" in A-rod and Madonna, or Chistie Brinkley's divorce or Bush calling the new Russian leader a "smart guy", or pandering to McCain and his "wonderful" trip to Columbia. The media should be ashamed. The American people should be outraged!
wake up! see about the shock doctrine, by Naomi Klein. Book out, and a short six minute video here.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/17/the_shock_doctrine_naomi_klein_on
You are being shocked into losing all your civil rights. It's a plan.
Naomi Wolf writes:"....
All this may sound bizarre if you are a normal person, but it is standard operating procedure for sex offenders. Those who work in the field know that once sex abusers control a powerless victim, they will invariably push the boundaries with ever more extreme behavior.
Abusers start by undressing their victims, but once that line has been breached, you are likely to hear from the victim about oral and anal penetration, greater and greater pain and fear being inflicted, and more and more carelessness about exposing the crimes as the perpetrator's inhibitions fall away.
The perpetrator is also likely to engage in ever-escalating rationalizations, often arguing that the offenses serve a greater good. Finally, the victim is blamed for the abuse: in the case of the detainees, if they would only "behave," and confess, they wouldn't bring all this on themselves.
Silence, and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a family. Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding sex criminals in their midst through silence,,,"
DRAW BACK THE CURTAIN, AMERICA. THE EMERALD CITY IS RUN BY PERVERTS OF WAR.
I would argue that the entire military-industrial complex is based on dysfunctional sexuality, so I think this analysis is tip-top.
This graphic post is another reason why a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" needs to happen. All this stuff needs to get into official historical record. Otherwise it will be covered up as "lefty propaganda" or some such. Official statements by the highest officials testifying under oath for the congressional record will ensure that the criminal behavior will follow these people in history long after they are alive. Their legacies "branded" forever.
At what point of revelation does it become inarguably clear that, while the unwashed were preoccupied with shopping and American Idol, a concentrated group of repressed, inadequate and insecure men (and a few women) did what repressed, inadequate and insecure people do? They strove to lord it over -- and abuse -- those whom they perceive as a threat: everyone else.
The first step in that mission is elbowing one's way into the pilot house of power, whether that's dominating a small group, an employment setting or seizing control of the levers of government.
Such classic pathology, so terrifyingly transparent... "Lord Of The Flies", redux.
This is what's become of America... and we're all trapped on the island.
All of us.
StillAmused:
I think it very unfair that you say Americans were"preoccupied with shopping and American Idol." Is that a comment regarding the "dumbing down of America?" Or are you putting down Americans in general?
Americans are in the dark because GWB and his administration "ordered" it that way - I believe no other reason. With the media bought and paid for as well, how do you expect Americans to be informed?
I wanted so much to agree with and applaud your words, but just couldn't get past that first sentence. I would really like to know what you meant by that.
Are YOU "in the dark because GWB and his administration "ordered" it that way"?
Always let the press and the government do your thinking for you?
With the facts smacking them in the face if they cared to pay attention, nearly half of voters 're-elected' Commander Codpiece anyway. What were YOU thinking when Junior abandoned Tora Bora and launched his excellent adventure in Iraq?
... so, yeah, I guess about half of Americans were "preoccupied with shopping and American Idol."
Call it whatever you want.
"Dumbing down" works for me.
Everybody from the President on down knew about the abuse that went on at the prison. But as usual, when it was made public, the hammer fell on Privates and Sergeants. Sad but true.
And just as an adjunct to that thought, the investigations that were carried on...ALL of the investigations...were all "down the chain" investigations. By the rules these investigations followed, going UP the chain of command was forbidden. Thus, ONLY the lower echelons were under scrutiny. This fact makes totally laughable ALL of the investigations that were carried out. Right from the start, they (the White House) were bound and determined to avoid scrutiny, and as a result, the "bad apples" motif was floated, and spoken of ad nauseum.
This executive branch is beyond the worst in US history. There's no way to express the sheer outrage and indignation I feel toward these animals. They are nihilist hard liners who found that they enjoyed being "tough guys", especially when it involved sexual depravity.
The general in charge of the prison was fired as well.
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Ms. Wolff you are a gem. Please take care against these animals walking around as humans.
While this rape culture disgusts me please in the future focus on what makes it possible: war as an acceptable policy. Allow legal murder you will attract all the pathological and every facet of evil behavior.
Ms. Wolf, I have written emails pleading with my Democratic Representative to initiate impeachment hearings, or to join Rep. Kucinich. I have sent him articles with long and graphic descriptions of Americans torturing prisoners and literally felt sick as I cut and pasted them to him. I have advised him that irrefutable evidence of war crimes sanctioned by the top of the chain of command existed, and begged him to join Rep. Kucinich.
Silence from him. He has time to see the hate-mongering Pastor Hagee, but not to think about war crimes.
Ms. Wolf, for myself, and many others, these years of the Torture Administration have seemed like sheer hell. And yet what of the victims of these criminals? What can be worse than hell?
Diane Beaver sounds like a piece of work.
That's some fancy-schmancy title: Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo
What staff? For whom or for what was she advocating, and what was she judging, exactly?
Diane Beaver. You can't make this stuff up!
what about the sexual abuse that came from the WhiteHouse during the Reagan/Bush years? Some of the same modern day players were involved.
These are some sick, sick individuals.
Yet another confirmation that this group of criminals that occupies the highest offices of our government has so completely debased this country and everything it used to stand for. And what will come from this? Nothing. There is no one anywhere in this land who has the power to hold these criminals accountable that will hold them accountable. I am disgusted with those that did and with those that won't do anything about it.
I too am sick to my stomach - but I disagree that "nothing" will come of this. A whole generation of humiliated men, who watched their sisters and wives die in "surgical" strikes, who learned of their cousins and brothers' torture from photos on Al Jazeera, who found their fathers dead at the daily dump sites, crusted with flies - will certainly rise to stop the Imperialists.
They won't come on planes again - been there, done that. We forget that the Iraqi's had the highest level of education in the Middle East before we made their country into a wasteland. They'll strike at us through our computer systems, banking, military - even traffic lights, screwed with, in downtown Los Angeles during rush hour could cause pandemonian and death.
Of yes, "something" will be the result - The Rev. Wright was absolutely correct - our chickens will be coming home to roost.
Well, let me be more to the point then -- nothing that could hold these criminals accountable will come of this latest revelation. To your point, though, I think you are correct in that there will be a result of all of the actions that the Bushies have perpetrated on us and the rest of the world, and that most certainly not be the safety and security of this country.
and lets not forget sy hersh's account of that video tapes. the screams of a teenage male son of one of the prisoners being raped by a male contractor. this is in the actual files.
thank you naomi for pointing out what some of us have known for a long time. from the franklin scandal to what unfolds -often on videotape- in our own national penitentiaries. also, in youth detention centers and those "tough love" jesus camps.
our tax dollars routinely fund the depraved sex fantasies of powerful politicians and contractors. they want us to be outraged at mark foley with the text messages. they want us quibbling over waterboarding.
the real story would turn this country upside down and result in a LOT of people being frog marched off to prison.
to put things in perspective- think of the outrage when chris hansen catches some lowlife pervert trying to hook up with a 15 yearold on the internet. can you imagine what society would do if it realized that 15 yearold SONS of detainees were getting raped on camera for the pleasure of a sick contractor?
and lets not even begin to talk about the "peacekeepers" in the UN.
you are fearless. thank you.
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