> So, Miller understood what the Abu Ghraib system was supposed to do,
> which was extract information like his system does routinely at
> Guantanamo.
Except that, according to the NY Times front-page story yesterday, not much actual information came out of the Abu Ghraib system. What "information" has come out of the Gitmo operation we don't know. Certainly the people running these operations have the conscious intention of getting intelligence, but I think that there are other psychological functions the operations are actually performing as well, especially enabling the believers in the "war on terror" ideology to maintain their belief that their view of the world is correct.
> We are (hopefully) at the opening phase of something like Watergate,
> when there was a concerted effort to keep the case focused on the
> lowest level, the burglars.
I also hope that the present situation is like the opening phase of Watergate, but (if it develops in the best possible way) much more significant, since Watergate was only about the shenanigans of the "I am not a crook" crook Nixon, whereas this is about a whole war and indeed a whole concept of the U.S.'s relationship to the world.
My hunch (and the investigative process by both Congress and the press is not yet far enough along to allow more than a hunch) is that what the torturers in AG and elsewhere in Iraq (and Afghanistan and who knows where else) (and their higher-ups) were about, in reality, was not trying to gather information, but compensating for their inability to control Iraq, Afghanistan, and the whole world of terrorist activity by sweeping up a bunch of Iraqis and depositing them in their Iraq gulag (as they previously swept up a bunch of folks from Afghanistan and deposited them in Gitmo), where they could beat them up (and beat them down) to their heart's content. You could even go so far as to say that it was a kind of exorcism ceremony, to drive the devils of terrorism (what Bush keeps calling "the evil-doers who hate freedom") out of the world. So far, we haven't heard anything about what specific pieces of information they got by these endeavors, or even what kinds of information they were looking for.
Apparently, the Gestapo didn't get all that much information out of their "detainees," either, most of the time. It was mostly about expressing their boundless hatred and fear of The Other (personified in Jews, Bolsheviks, etc.) that was deep in their souls. And we know that the Soviet bully boys were generally not looking for information, either -- they were trying to get confessions, i.e., prove to themselves that, despite appearances to the contrary, every one did acknowledge the Truth as defined by the Central Committee. I think this is what Orwell was getting at, also: the bit with the rat cages was to prove to the devotees of Big Brother that what they believed to be true really was true: everyone did love BB.
So the Bush-believing torturers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Gitmo, and elsewhere have basically been enacting a kind of morality play, the purpose of which is to convince themselves that the dogmas Bush and they believe in are true, and that their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and wherever else they have in mind to sally forth into, are really appreciated and welcomed by "the natives."
Of course, the Taliban, al Qaida, etc., are trying to convince themselves of just the same sort of thing on their side. And the rest of us are caught in between them.
P.S.: I am very far from arguing, as some do, that "U.S. in 2004 = Weimar (or Nazi) Germany" (those who argue this are very poor students of history), but I would accept that the people responsible for AG and similar operations have an essentially Gestapo-like mind-set. Whether this includes, say, Rummy is hard to say at this point. All I know about him is what I see on the tube, and his performances there are so obviously shtick that I can't conclude anything from them about what the interior of his mind is really like.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.