Margaret Carlson
June 2, 2005
On Memorial Day, I watched the A&E movie about former Navy Lt. Cmdr. John
McCain's 5½ years in a Vietnam prison. McCain's face was beaten to a bloody
pulp, his bones shattered, his teeth knocked out. Guards hung him from the
ceiling by his arms, one of which was broken. It was so painful I had to return
repeatedly to my crossword puzzle.
The next morning, I watched President Bush at his news conference respond
to a question about an Amnesty International report condemning U.S. detention
facilities in Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere. Bush called charges of abuse
"absurd" allegations by detainees "who hate America."
But how does he explain the Army? The New York Times recently obtained the
Army's 2,000-page file on deaths at its Bagram, Afghanistan, detention center.
It's as chilling to read as it is to watch McCain's crippled leg being crushed.
The John McCain of this report is an uneducated Afghan villager known as Dilawar,
who was sent by his mother to pick up his sisters for a Muslim holiday on
Dec. 5, 2002. Before he got there, Dilawar was rounded up as a suspect in
a rocket attack.
For much of his five days in custody, Dilawar was brutalized and hung from
the ceiling of his cell, even though no one thought he was a terrorist or
had any useful information. Military police took turns kicking him above the
knee because they found it amusing to hear him cry out "Allah."
When he was too weak to follow orders during interrogations, one sergeant
grabbed him by his beard, crushed his bare foot with her boot and then reared
back and kicked him in the groin.
That night, an interrogator summoned an MP when he noticed Dilawar's head
slumped forward in his hood and his hands limp in his chains. After pressing
his fingernail to see that blood was still circulating, the MP left him there.
On Dec. 10, dragged in for what would be his last interrogation, Dilawar was
incoherent. Angry at his unresponsiveness, an interrogator held him upright
by twisting his hood around his neck. An intelligence specialist who spoke
Dilawar's Pashto dialect was disturbed enough to notify the officer in charge.
It was too late. Dilawar was already dead.
Were the Vietnamese guards who savagely beat McCain any worse?
Then-Lt. Gen. Daniel McNeill, U.S. commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan,
initially claimed that Dilawar wasn't abused and died of natural causes, according
to the Times. The case was virtually closed until a March 4, 2003, article
in the Times reported that an autopsy found Dilawar died from blunt force
injuries that shattered his lower extremities.
The Army reopened the inquiry and, more than two years later, seven soldiers
were found complicit in his death. McNeill, on the other hand, was promoted.
Shortly after Dilawar's death, Bagram's chief interrogator, Army Capt. Carolyn
Wood, was deployed to Abu Ghraib.
The outrage that followed photos from Abu Ghraib has subsided. Only one of
the five top officers at the prison — a reservist — was reprimanded.
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who wrote a memo saying the Geneva Convention
protections against torture don't always apply, was elevated to attorney general.
Hearings by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) were
quickly put on hold. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has called for them to restart,
but so quietly it's as if he were calling on some other party in control of
some other Senate to hold them.
I understand Graham's reluctance. I come from a military family, and I risk
being called unpatriotic if I so much as criticize unarmored Humvees.
Bush maintains that only enemies of America would allege such abuse. But if
the charges are true, it is the perpetrators and their superiors who show
contempt for America and what it represents.
Watching the government stonewalling and lie about the fatal beating of an
innocent man is as disturbing as watching the torture John McCain suffered
30 years ago rather than betray what America stands for.
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times