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Sexual Terrorism David Rosen / Counterpunch | May 14, 2008 The “New York Times’” recently revealed the existence of a little-known executive order issued by President Bush in the summer of ’07 that permitted U.S. intelligence operatives to circumvent restrictions on the use of humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques. Bush’s order permitted U.S. intelligence operatives to effectively side-step the legal and moral restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court and Congress (and formally approved by Bush) as well as Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Brian Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, laid-out the rationale for the continued subversion of these restrictions: The fact that an [humiliating interrogation] act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliating or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act. (Article continues below)
The Bush administration’s argument is that an interrogator can utilize what it calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” if he/she believes such techniques will thwart a possible threat or terrorist act. For the administration, illegal (if not immoral) interrogation techniques are a corollary to preemptive military strikes that was its rationale for the invasion of Iraq. Much attention has been paid to water-boarding as an immoral if not illegal technique utilized in the so-called War of Terror. Little attention has been paid to the equally physically harmful and likely more long-term consequential technique of sexual humiliation and terror. Buried deep in Mark Mazzetti’s Times article is an intriguing paragraph:
Yes, what “techniques” of sexual humiliation can still be used? It seems almost impossible to precisely determine these techniques. Reviews of the CIA, Justice and Defense department’s websites reveal little useful information. Email queries to the Justice Department, including Benczkowski and the media-relations office, have not been answered. An exhaustive search of the internet has provided no further information about sexual humiliation then the oblique Times reference. (An effort for further clarification from Mazzetti has not succeeded.) This is very much in keeping with Bush administration policies to deny, falsify, obfuscate or simply lie about techniques sanctioned and employed in its fictitious War on Terror. In the absence of the formal specification of CIA’s approved or utilized (and they are not necessarily the same) techniques of sexual humiliation, one must draw upon previously documented U.S. military and intelligence-agency practices and the techniques used by other militaries. These examples illustrate what the CIA and other U.S. agencies are capable of employing to break those they identify as “terrorists”. Rape is one of the most barbaric forms of sexual humiliation and terror. Since the Civil War, rape has been increasingly integrated into what is known as total warfare. Women, girls and some boys have been increasingly singled out for systematic sexual abuse during civil conflicts and military campaigns. However, rape has only been limitedly employed against adult male captives detained in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo or CIA black sites around the world. [see “’The Hard Hand of War’: Rape as an Instrument of Total War,” CounterPunch, Apri1 4, 2008] The U.S. has employed (and, most likely, continues to employ) a host of other techniques of sexual terrorization to break male inmates. An act of sexual humiliation serves two purposes: to physically harm and to emotionally scar those subjected to such abuse. Sexual terrorization seeks to inflict both pain and shame, to make the recipient suffer and loath himself. Sexual humiliation is intended to break the victim both physically and spiritually, to leave scars on (and inside) the body and in the psyche. If (or when) top officials of the Bush administration face either an American or international war crimes tribunal over their conduct related to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, sexual humiliation and terror should not be absent from the indictment. * * * According to an ABC News report, in response to September 11th the CIA adopted six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" in mid-March 2002. These techniques were to be used on a dozen or more alleged al Qaeda leaders detained in CIA black sites. These “approved” techniques consisted of:
Obviously missing from the CIA’s list of interrogation techniques is sexual humiliation, degradation and terrorization. [ABC News, November 18, 2005] The best single source for details on abuses at Abu Ghraib is the study conducted by Major General Antonio Taguba. In the report’s executive summary, the following "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” are identified as having been used at the prison:
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