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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
Weekend
Edition
November 4 / 5, 2006
From Chile to Iraq
Torture
Memories
By Dr. SHEPHERD BLISS
I try not to think about torture. Then
I read the following: Vice-President Dick Cheney apparently defends
it, a U.S. soldier who objects to interrogation techniques commits
suicide, articles with titles like "Torture's Not So Bad,
If It's Done for a War Worth Fighting," and Chilean Gen.
Augusto Pinochet was recently arrested and charged with torture.
Feelings about close friends
tortured over thirty years ago in Chile rush in. Unfortunately,
my experiences with U.S.-supported torture have been quite direct
and specific.
To most people, torture is
just an idea, probably abstract and distant. Not to me. Hearing
the word, I feel, rather than think. I remembera sharp pain
rises in my stomach.
Cheney recently admitted on
radio that the U.S. engages in water-boarding. "Cheney indicated
that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as
torture and allows the CIA to use it," an Oct. 26 McClatchy
News Service article reports.
In water-boarding "a prisoner
is secured with his feet above his head and has water poured
on a cloth over his face. It has been specifically widely condemned
as torture," an Oct. 28 San Francisco Chronicle article
reveals. It is only one of the many techniques that the CIA
apparently employs and tries to cover by the use of words such
as "coercion" and "aggressive interrogating tactics."
Over thirty years ago, after
being ordained a Methodist minister, I was assigned to Chile.
My ministry there started well, given the hopefulness of Chileans
for their popular and democratically-elected President Salvador
Allende. My good American friend Frank Terrugi also came to Chile
to work. I started a relationship with a young woman who was,
like me, a member of a military family.
Then came Sept. 11--the date
in l973 that the U.S. supported Allende's overthrow by the dictator
Gen. Pinochet. Frank was tortured so badly that the coffin could
not be opened at his funeral in Chicago. My girlfriend was also
tortured, and survived. Their tortures stopped my life.
More than 30 years later, that
torture still holds a firm grip on me. However, as with much
torture, it failed. Instead of reducing my commitments to genuine
liberty, freedom, and democracy, it enhanced them. Torture is
immoral, cruel, ineffective and deeply damaging to whomever it
touches, including associated survivors and the torturers. For
example, when you join the U.S. military, you do not expect to
be ordered to torture. If you follow those orders, you are forever
damaged.
U.S. SOLDIER
COMMITS SUICIDE
The editor of the authoritative
trade publication "Editor and Publisher," Greg Mitchell,
wrote on article on Nov. 1 entitled "Revealed: U.S. Soldier
Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques."
He tells the story of U.S. Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27.
She died on Sept. 15, 2003, by "non-hostile weapons discharge,"
according to the military.
Her story lay dormant until
longtime radio and newspaper reporter Ken Elston decided to probe
further in 2005. On Oct. 31 he reported the following on her
hometown radio station KNAU in Flagstaff, Arizona: "Peterson
objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She refused to participate after only two nights. Army spokespersons
for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques
Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques
have now been destroyed."
Elston reports on interviews
with her colleagues, "The reactions to the suicide were
that she was having a difficult time separating her personal
feelings from her professional duties." Peterson was a devout
Mormon. She is described by a friend as being "genuine,
sincere, sweeta wonderful person."
It is bad enough that the Bush
administration is putting the bodies of our military personnel
in harm's way. It is worse that some are being order to apparently
engage in war crimes, thus damaging their souls.
I hope that Peterson's story
gets out further. It is an example of how torture deeply harms
those tortured, their family members and friends, and those ordered
to torture.
TORTURE AS MORE THAN AN ABSTRACT
IDEA
For me, torture is more than
merely an abstract idea or a vague metaphor. Its reality is not
just in some distant place or time, but exists as a feeling in
my body. The tortures of my friends traumatized my nervous system,
creating a scar. I go through periods of not thinking about
it. Upon reading about torture, I remember.
Others may argue abstractly
about whether water-boarding is really torture and whether torture
is ever justified. But those touched directly by torture are
likely to feel its terrors when hearing about water-boarding.
I can feel and even hear the victim's terror.
I continue to follow the oath
that I took in l966 when I was commissioned a U.S. Army officer
to defend our country and our Constitution. The main threats
to our people today seem to come from the Bush administration
itself.
One of the worst things about
the U.S.'s illegal and immoral war in Iraq is how it has stained
our military tradition. I do not always agree with American foreign
policy, but I support a civilian-led military to defend our country.
Many people in the services and veterans feel ashamed of the
continuing actions of our military in Iraq, which bring dishonor
to our country, especially when it involves torture.
Chile's Gen. Pinochet has been
charged in numerous European and Latin American courts with abuse
during his brutal regime. On Oct. 27 he was arrested and indicted
in Chile on torture charges. The apparent architect of the Sept.
11 coup in Chile, Henry Kissinger, also has been wanted for years
by judges in Europe and Latin America to stand trial for war
crimes. Kissinger is now an advisor to Pres. Bush.
Terrorism in any form is terrible.
Its worst form is when it is sanctioned by the state with its
substantial resources. The long and brutal power of the U.S.
state reached Chile in the l973 coup to kill, maim, and torture
thousands of people. Though that may seem long ago and far away,
that abuse continues to live in the bodies of those of us who
survived that time and place.
"TORTURE'S
NOT SO BAD"
"Torture's Not So Bad"
by columnist Joel Stein in a recent Los Angeles Times may have
been meant ironically to make his point "What is it we're
doing over there?" But his column was in bad taste-an abstract
use of the word "torture" as an idea and metaphor,
without any sense of how painful such uses can be to those actually
touched by torture. Stein does not appear to understand torture
and may not have had any direct experience with it. He should
stop re-triggering those of us who have had experience with the
trauma of torture.
Stein wants us to "stop
distracting ourselves with discussions about how we conduct this
war." Those discussions are important, not only with respect
to this war, but for recent and future wars. We still have veterans
dying from Agent Orange from Vietnam. We have soldiers returning
from this war with sicknesses caused by the use of weapons with
depleted uranium. Who knows what horrors will be visited upon
soldiers by their own government in the next wars. Stein should
stop distracting us from discussing the larger issues that modern
warfare raises.
I would not be able to put
these words down on paper without my decade-long participation
in the Veterans Writing Group, lead by Maxine Hong Kingston.
We recently published our first book "Veterans of War, Veterans
of Peace," www.vowvop.org, edited by Kingston. Listening
to the stories of other vets and telling my own has not been
easy. Kingston encourages us to "go into the dark of forgotten
things" and then "write the unspeakable." I still
have a long ways to go to be able to properly describe my deepest
feelings about torture.
Have you ever been tortured?
Probably not. (I hope not.) However, you may have used the
word to convey what the dictionary describes as "severe
physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion" and
as "mental anguish." Before you use the word "torture"
again to describe some pain, please study U.S. "aggressive
interrogation tactics" currently being used in Iraq and
taught to the Latin American military at the School of the Americas.
Better yet, speak to some of the Chilean and other victims of
such torture.
Torture has been illegal in
the U.S. and is prohibited by international law. Unfortunately,
it still occurs. Some of the 21st century masters of torture,
it seems, are Americans. Torture used to be considered Un-American
and should once again be considered Un-American.
But as my friend Jack Winkle
of Sebastopol, CA. recently wrote, "Now we Americans have
someone in the White House sanctioning torture. We are a changed
society and I suspect we will not like where it ends. My worst
guess is some variation of Auschwitz or Pinochet coming home
to roost."
Dr. Shepherd Bliss is a retired college teacher and former
officer in the U.S. Army who now farms in Northern California.
He can be reached at: sb3@pon.net
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