Shame, bitter, and painful
May. 4th, 2004 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI've been on vacation for about two months now, and I am glad my hair is long, and my face shaggy, because right now I am ashamed of my profession, and don't want the world to see me for what I am, unless I tell them.
It isn't that I'm a soldier, not exactly. It's that I'm an interrogator, and while only MPs and officers (who don't do interrogations) have been implicated, it was said to be in the interest of people in my line of work.
It's hard to write this... so much of my spleen has been vented other places. I feel dirty, unclean, with spotted hands. What has been alleged is indefensible, if it was done (and I am certain it was) they deserve public humiliation.
The Regiment in square: The NCOs and Officers called out; the NCO's stripes ripped from their sleeves, the epaulets from the Officers shoulders, the rattle of the drums, and the painfully brittle sound of swords being broken in the hard light of an afternoon sun.
The terrible roll of the drums as the offenders are read off the rolls and out of the Army, and away to the brig.
And the casing of the colors, no music to march away, just the funeral pace of the drums tattoo, dull and heavy at the slow march.
It isn't that I'm a soldier, not exactly. It's that I'm an interrogator, and while only MPs and officers (who don't do interrogations) have been implicated, it was said to be in the interest of people in my line of work.
It's hard to write this... so much of my spleen has been vented other places. I feel dirty, unclean, with spotted hands. What has been alleged is indefensible, if it was done (and I am certain it was) they deserve public humiliation.
The Regiment in square: The NCOs and Officers called out; the NCO's stripes ripped from their sleeves, the epaulets from the Officers shoulders, the rattle of the drums, and the painfully brittle sound of swords being broken in the hard light of an afternoon sun.
The terrible roll of the drums as the offenders are read off the rolls and out of the Army, and away to the brig.
And the casing of the colors, no music to march away, just the funeral pace of the drums tattoo, dull and heavy at the slow march.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 03:01 pm (UTC)Is this part of the Scharff method, or is it a recent deviation?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 04:39 pm (UTC)Scharff's account of his time as an interrogator is available, I commend it. The title is, "The Interrogator."
The nearest thing Sharff did to this was to make it unclear how time was flowing, and that briefly. Meal times were moved around, and the POW was not given anyone to talk to. That raised stress.
But real sleep dep, is (if you ask me, and I suppose you have) torture. Stress positions... they are in the realm of torture light. I have philosophical problems with them, because a lot of the use of them I know of is to reduce the frustration of the interrogator. "You've decided you don't wanna talk, OK... see how much more you don't like this."
Done in moderation, I suppose it isn't beyond the pale, but the problem of the slippery slope is there. The seductive sense of power is there, and I don't care what Miller says about approval, the fact of it's being allowed, and more frightening, the, "more active role in gathering intelligence," he wants the MPs to have.
One of the safeguards of the system was supposed to be the detached nature ofteh MPs. Making the booth the only place the EPW has any real concerns about is/was important.
When there is no isolated place, in which the gathering of information actively takes place, when the idea is that these people are to be worked on, without stop, by everyone they meet, I don't like it. I think it counterproductive, and I think, despite Miller's protestations, such an atmosphere at Abu Ghraib was no small part of what led to the systemic, and appalling, abuses there.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 04:59 pm (UTC)