Random header image... Refresh for more!

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

by Scott H. Payne

From the new Harper’s piece featuring Sergeant Joe Hickman on three Guantánamo “suicides”, this particular bit chilled me to the bone (emphasis mine),

The pathologists place the time of death “at least a couple of hours” before the bodies were discovered, which would be sometime before 10:30 p.m. on June 9. Additionally, the autopsy of Al-Salami states that his hyoid bone was broken, a phenomenon usually associated with manual strangulation, not hanging.

The report asserts that the hyoid was broken “during the removal of the neck organs.” An odd admission, given that these are the very body parts—the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage—that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging, from strangulation, or from choking. These parts remained missing when the men’s families finally received their bodies.

I actually have an incredibly difficult time wrapping my head around the degree of dehumanization that goes into making the decision to simply remove the “neck organs” of men who have died in US custody from being strangled and  having rags stuffed down their throats. It’s as though the line of logic took a sort of “out of sight, out of mind” track: if we get rid of any evidence of wrongdoing, we can wipe the very event from the record oand carry on as if nothing is awry.

Andrew is, I think, right to suggest that this story, “really takes you into the realm of totalitarian states”. Overused a characterization as it is, the kind of sociopathic belief that reality, history, and the course of events can be shaped to meet the needs of the centres of power by the crude and blatant erasure of inconvenient facts (like necks organs) is terrifyingly Orwellian in nature.

If there is any wonder why I have railed so hard against my own country’s tacit involvement in enabling torture, this is more than reason enough. The institutionalization of this kind of damaged mindset, then, is the logical culmination of finding ways of justifying the use of torture, regardless of the circumstances. Not only do the ground rules of right and wrong become elastic, but the very notion of what did and did not happen becomes a matter of debate — trading the elimination of words for body parts.

Anyone who thinks that such a cancer won’t eventually spread to decisions involving the everyday lives of citizens has a distinctly more rosy outlook than I.

Bookmark and Share

Share and Enjoy
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Fark
  • Reddit
  • SphereIt
  • Yahoo! Buzz

Related posts...

Tags | , , , ,

25 comments

1 Jaybird { 01.18.10 at 10:47 am }

I absolutely agree. We need to have a full investigation and make sure that those who are responsible are locked up, and those who are responsible for those responsible are locked up and the key thrown away.

We need to have everything that happened described in great detail and we need to have the equivalent of an impeachment proceding against Bush. What happened was a disgrace and those responsible need to be disgraced.

Jaybird
January 18th, 2010 at 11:02 am

There’s a book I’d suggest everyone read. The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn (I’d also suggest his The First Circle).

At the risk of sounding like Mr. Cheeks, I think it’s very important that everyone know exactly how much power we’re ceding to the state in order to protect society… lest we repeat history as farce.

Scott H. Payne
January 18th, 2010 at 11:05 am

I’m actually quite curious to see Mr. Cheek’s reaction to this.

Jaybird
January 18th, 2010 at 11:15 am

One hopes he does not give his best Walter Duranty impression.

Bob Cheeks
January 18th, 2010 at 2:00 pm

Scot, I hate to disappoint, but I’m always one for a full and public examination of the facts of any case whether it’s a murder or political machinations.
I’m not so sure how much I trust the accusers you mention but the facts may all be true…like I said a “fulll and open” examination and then let the law have its way.
Hey, did you guys read my blog on the movie, The Book of Eli?

Scott H. Payne
January 18th, 2010 at 2:02 pm

No disappointment provided. I was curious, you satisfied my curiosity by laying out your case. And no I didn’t, but I will as “Eli” is a movie I’d like to see.

North
January 18th, 2010 at 8:11 pm

Bob I put up a response on your blog about Eli and his book. So I got your back.

2 Old Rebel { 01.18.10 at 11:57 am }

Even more unsettling is the dehumanizing effect on the nation that permits torture in its name. Where does it end? If the government can punish defendants without a time-consuming trial proving guilt, why not torture suspected drug dealers, tax cheats, or those benighted souls who fail to enthusiastically embrace diversity?

Miscreants all.

3 Art Deco { 01.18.10 at 12:12 pm }

Love the scare quotes. Just who are you accusing of having killed these men?

Scott H. Payne
January 18th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

The quotes are a direct copy and paste from the article I was quoting. In that article, Sergeant Hickman presents his account of how the three individuals seemed to have died as a result of the use of torture. My focus was more on the removal of the necks post mortem, but, of course, the whole article is worth a read.

Art Deco
January 18th, 2010 at 4:53 pm

Mr. Payne:

1. Other principals in this matter have vigorously denied allegations made.

2. The Department of Justice has undertaken a review of the matter and closed the investigation;

3. The article was penned in a publication (Harper’s) with wretched editorial standards by an author (Scott Horton) who is an attorney for detainees;

All of which is to say that it would seem that one might, in the normal course of events, suspend judgment about the matter for the time being and take what has been written with a grain of salt. But NOOOOOOOOO…

Scott H. Payne
January 18th, 2010 at 5:05 pm

Mr. Deco,

I find the idea that three individuals who were being held in a detention facility whose existence it was common practice to deny and at which the use of torture techniques (or the euphemistic “enhanced interrogation techniques”, if you like) was being practiced stuffed rags down their throat to commit suicide when there is evidence to suggest that they were, in fact, manually strangled to be suspicious story, particularly when coupled with the fact of the removal of their neck organs. Horton presented what I thought was a compelling (though, certainly not iron clad) case presented in part by someone who not some yokel off the street that, at least in some regard, calls the DoJ investigation into question (that was, in part, the point of the article) and the whole thing strikes me as chilling and a reasonable argument against the use of torture by any civilized nation insofar as such occurrences are only enabled by going down such a path.

I wrote a post to that effect.

Rest assured that if incontrovertible proof surfaces that proves the suicide theory to be true, I would write a follow up post eating appropriate amounts of crow (and I have no doubt you’ll hold me to that having said it in public).

Art Deco
January 18th, 2010 at 8:06 pm

You are taking what Horton et al about what’s what at face value. Not smart.

Jaybird
January 19th, 2010 at 11:34 am

Cui bono?

That’s always a good question to ask.

4 Katherine { 01.18.10 at 1:49 pm }

This is chilling. There needs to be an investigation, and there needs to be accountability.

5 North { 01.18.10 at 8:13 pm }

Obama seems determined to not let this subject consume his term. My own read is that if any oxygen or daylight gets to this subject it’ll erupt in a conflagration. On principle I wish it would blow up and burn out the crooks involved. On politics I can understand why he’s sitting on top of it and hoping it’ll go away.

Katherine
January 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am

Covering up possible murder in order to get a very weak version of health care reform passed doesn’t seem like the greatest trade-off to me.

Jaybird
January 19th, 2010 at 10:31 am

It depends on what your goals are.

Do you want something akin to Justice/Morality?
Or do you want The State to have more power?

If it’s the latter, it’s a perfect trade-off to make.

North
January 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am

I agree Katherine on the principles and frankly I think Obama’s been played for a fool, (and Jay that’s unfair), but we do need to be real about what we’re talking about. If Obama lets the lid get pried off of this particular reeking barrel that Bush minor handed over to him lets not be dewy eyed about what the result is going to be. We’re talking a political firestorm because the Republicans will be fighting for their political life and they won’t hold anything back. Even a lot of senior Democrats from the era may not look very good from whatever comes out. Now in the end we’d probably end up with a scorched bunch of Dems and the GOP a charred corpse on the floor but how long would the inquiries and the trials and the condemnations take? Probably a full term, maybe longer. How much political oxygen would be available for anything else? Probably none.

So we have Obama coasting into office on a cloud of that wretched flowery rhetoric about letting bygones be bygones and moving beyond partisanship and all that nonsense so it’s no surprise he doesn’t want his first (and probably principle) act as president to be setting this bloodbath off. Obama doesn’t want to spend his term cleaning up the bloodstains that Uncle Dick left all over the house; he wants to add a new wing on and he’s hoping the blood will just go away. There’s a reason that Cheney starts skittering around on his fingernails screeching like a cat in heat every time one of the seals on those document caches pops. He knows how bad the stuff in there is for him. I think he honestly thought that there was going to be a follow-up Republican administration that would cover his tracks up for him. It’s amusing how wrong he was and agonizingly ironic that the very Administration he feared is now doing what he thought McCain would do for him.

Art Deco
January 19th, 2010 at 11:14 am

You are imputing motives to both career officials and the Administration without evidence.

Again, the source here – Scott Horton and Harper’s is tainted and cannot be taken at face value. Commissions of inquiry are to find facts, not to be some sort of pantomime before promulgating conclusions the bien pensants have decided upon beforehand. (Strange as that may seem to Scott H. Payne).

Jaybird
January 19th, 2010 at 11:24 am

How very little the writings of statists differ, at the root.

Will you next point out that children would die if we did not remove the throats from these corpses?

6 Trackbacks { 03.20.10 at 11:30 pm }