Fixing Hell (13 page)
“Son, I want to sit right between those three rough-and-tough gals over there.”
“Sir . . . but you can sit up in the comfortable seat, up by the pilots,” he said helpfully.
“Partner, if this bird goes down and we get in a gunfight, the pilots won’t be able to save my old ass like those three girls right there,” I told him. “I want to sit right between those female MPs, and I’ll sit real close to the one with the .50 cal machine gun.”
I nestled in nice and cozy with the heavily armed soldiers and waited out the long ride into Baghdad. A few miles out from Baghdad, at 10,000 feet, the crew chief stood up and yelled, “Don your helmets and vest!” We did, and within minutes I felt the plane pick up speed. I knew what that meant: this big bird was doing a combat approach.
Here we go. This is gonna be some wild shit here,
I thought.
A combat approach is used when landing at an airport in a combat zone, and it is truly something to experience at least once in your life. Instead of a gentle, slow descent to the runway that would make your big fat plane an easy target for anyone on the ground, the pilot brings it in fast and furious, juking and jiving up and down, left and right. In an instant, this mammoth aircraft picked up speed and banked sharply at a 45-degree angle in a downward motion to my right, like we had suddenly gone over that first big hill on a roller coaster. It was wicked! The huge lumbering plane was dancing like it had delusions of being a nimble fighter jet. The sailor across from me barfed on the floor of the plane and then started shouting prayers loudly with puke all over his chin. The twenty-eight-year-old pilot leveled the aircraft for what seemed to be three seconds. Then the plane suddenly angled straight down and it seemed as though we were plunging nose first to the ground. Then we leveled out at the very last second and came to a sudden stop. I never knew a C-130 could land so fast and come to a complete halt in so little time. When the plane finally stopped moving, it felt like my nuts were in my throat.
“Welcome to Iraq,” somebody on the plane mumbled amid the groans as we all tried to get our shit together again. I was finally here and now it was time for me to get to work. The hell of Abu Ghraib still awaited me, but now it was just around the corner.
House of Strange Fathers
June 2004
W
hen I arrived in Baghdad, I was greeted by General Miller’s staff and the Abu Ghraib intel center’s acting commander. We loaded into an armored Humvee and drove to the tent reserved for high-level military personnel for the night. It was just another tent with cots on the floor, not a big step up from the tin shed with cots in Kuwait, but with one big difference. With the outside temperature still around 100 degrees, this VIP tent was a frigid 49 degrees. I slept in my clothes because it was so damn cold.
The following morning, I met with General Miller, my former commander at Gitmo, to get my marching orders. Just the sight of him reassured me that we had a good soldier in charge here. If the late great Marine Corps general Chesty Puller had ever had a twin brother, it would have been General Geoffrey D. Miller. I welcomed the opportunity to work for him again. You never left General Miller’s office unclear about your purpose in life or what your exact mission was to be. He was about five feet five inches tall with a notable underbite. He would have been a better choice as an actor for the colonel than even John Wayne in the 1960s film about Vietnam, The Green Berets. Despite his small size, General Miller could organize soldiers with passion and a clear sense of purpose. We respected him and wanted to work for him. He measured every word with an uncanny efficiency. This gift, coupled with his telling movements and expression, provided the observer with volumes of information.
Inside the general’s office at Task Force 134 headquarters, Miller immediately focused on the mission—he was not one for much small talk. He launched into business, with his customary drawl.
“Larry, we could sure use your help,” he said, growling out the last word so it sounded more like hep. “The JIDC [Joint Intelligence and Debriefing Center] doesn’t have a lot of good leaders like you. I want you to teach them how to do this the right way, teach ’em how to get prisoners to talk without all the harsh stuff. You know how to do it. You will report to me and only me.”
With his instructions on the table, he looked me in the eye. “Now, what are your questions?”
I had none. It was exactly clear what he wanted me to do: save this rapidly sinking ship.
At 2 p.m. the following day, General Miller, the acting director, and the five-man security team for the general and me boarded a Black Hawk helicopter. Because of the dangers in Iraq, all generals traveled with a well-armed security force. Twenty minutes later, we landed at Abu Ghraib. I tried to brace myself for whatever I would find here, knowing it wouldn’t be good.
As I stepped off the helicopter, I recalled Truman Capote’s description of the small, remote Kansas town in his book In Cold Blood. Americans didn’t “happen across” Abu Ghraib. Before the news of the abuses, most Americans had never even heard of this place, and the few who had rarely gave it a passing thought. This was a place you forgot as soon as possible.
Abu Ghraib was a wasteland, nothing but sand and rocks and run-down buildings, with garbage and raw sewage everywhere you looked. This was a terrible place to be, for anyone.
As I stood there surveying the scene, it struck me that I didn’t even know what this place was named for. Was it named after somebody or did the name mean something? I asked Sam, an Arabic interpreter from the intel center, and found that the meaning of Abu Ghraib held a very ominous and dark metaphorical message, even prior to the beginning of the global war on terrorism. The actions of U.S. soldiers here were not the first abuses to be attached to this name.
The word Abu refers to “father” in Arabic, and Ghraib has been interpreted to mean “strange.” Loosely translated, Abu Ghraib was interpreted by the locals to mean “the house of strange fathers.” It was built by the British in the 1950s and ’60s. Since its beginnings, it took on three or four ominous and sinister purposes in the Saddam Hussein regime. Initially, it was an insane asylum much like those found around the world before 1956. Before then, psychiatrists lacked the ability to control schizophrenics with medication, leading to many of the horrible scenes we think of from the worst mental hospitals of that time. Then Thorazine, a very effective antipsychotic medication, hit the market in the United States. It became the most effective clinical tool of its time in managing hallucinations, paranoia, and other symptoms of schizophrenia. But not in Iraq. Even in the modern era, psychiatrically ill patients were sentenced to Abu Ghraib without these modern advances, locked away, and the keys discarded. These patients were strapped to beds and beaten or tortured into submission by Iraqi guards.
Later, Abu Ghraib functioned as the torture chamber for those who either disagreed with Saddam Hussein or created a quiet discontent with his wishes. Iraqi citizens were hanged, mauled by animals, tortured, and brutalized in ways most Americans could never fathom. Some of the very worst of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities occurred right here, in these wretched buildings at Abu Ghraib.
Third, Abu Ghraib served as the center of the Hussein-era maximum-security prison system. Even a country abused by a bloodthirsty dictator has its share of hardcore criminals, and this is where Iraq sent them. Abu Ghraib housed the worst of the worst criminals—rogue degenerates, murderers, rapists, and sociopaths.
Fourth, the Abu Ghraib prison was to sequester away husbands and fathers who resisted turning their wives or daughters over to Saddam or his two favorite sons to satisfy the Husseins’ perverted sexual desires. If either Saddam or his sons sought the company of a man’s wife and the husband did not consent, the husband was arrested by a member of Saddam’s thug guard and brought to Abu Ghraib for convincing sessions. The husband or father would be beaten and tortured beyond recognition until he would consent to having his wife raped by either Saddam Hussein or one of his sons. Thousands of women were hidden away in sex harems across Iraq.
My God, this truly is hell on earth. The things that must have happened here, even before we showed up . . .
Sam waited for me to absorb all he had told me, finally adding his own commentary. “Abu Ghraib is indeed a house of strange fathers, a place of many strange fathers. It has had many ghosts,” he said quietly. “The U.S. should not have come to Abu Ghraib.”
I couldn’t disagree with Sam, based on what I had just heard. I knew already that the Iraqi government told us not go to Abu Ghraib, that it was not the right place for any kind of U.S. operation, but I didn’t really understand that warning until I was there at this “house of strange fathers.” I came to think this phrase was a powerful metaphor for not only the prison of Abu Ghraib but also the half-assed, poorly planned postwar occupation. There really wasn’t much of a plan. I remembered how, as the whole world watched, President Bush stood on that aircraft carrier and declared that the war was over. To us on the battlefield it seemed as though the administration believed that, like in the first Gulf War, the Iraqis would lay down their weapons and go home. But out on the front lines, it was clear there was no well-thought-out plan for what to do with the 20,000 prisoners we soon accumulated.
That’s how we ended up in Abu Ghraib and why I was standing there wondering if I could fix the mess we’d made. Our leaders had expected the occupation of Iraq to be a very, very short-term venture and the prison at Abu Ghraib was already there, so why not use it? We soon found the answer to that question. As many soldiers would say, right from the beginning, the U.S. occupation of Abu Ghraib was a “Charlie Foxtrot,” which could be loosely translated to mean a real shit mess. The big picture was that it was a failed postwar strategic plan. At the same time America watched our “strange fathers” lead us into a war that we now know had little to do with a real threat at that time. Strained logic forced us to swallow the idea that Saddam actually had something to do with 9/11.
All of this was running through my mind as I was finally surveying the scene at Abu Ghraib. As the interpreter said “house of strange fathers” to me for the third or fourth time, I began to think that not only was this place a house of strange fathers but also that it took a bunch of strange fathers to actually believe this ragtag Iraqi army was any real threat to America’s national security. I was not an infantry officer, but even I could see that the best Iraqi infantry unit would get their ass kicked in a fight with any Boy Scout troop in North Carolina.
As we walked from one side of the compound to the other I was increasingly lightheaded and nauseated. With an apology, I asked the general to excuse me because I didn’t feel well. I found my way to my room, an actual old prison cell with bars, about thirty square feet in size. I remembered Sergeant Danny’s warning to me to stay in an old prison cell, not one of the tents, so I at least understood why I had been put in such a shithole. In Abu Ghraib, apparently, this was high living. I collapsed onto the Army cot and passed out. Only later would I learn I was suffering from what was called the “Iraqi crud,” which was soldiers’ slang for the worst flu of your life. I awoke at 11 p.m., feeling no better than when I had gone to sleep. I resolved to see the physicians in the morning and get treated if need be. In the meantime, I had a job to do.
As I walked to the intel center, I was intensely curious to see what was really going on in this place, and more than a bit apprehensive. Walking past the sleeping soldier who was supposed to be guarding the entrance to the building, I entered and proceeded down the long hall. I moved toward the angry screams, cussing, and yelling that were coming from one of the interrogation booths. Peeking inside the door, I saw the twenty-two-year-old female interrogator being bested by a forty-year-old terrorist prisoner. The American soldier had tears in her eyes as the prisoner yelled with ferocity in Arabic and the interpreter translated.
Finally, having absorbed enough, I marched next door—about fifty steps away—into the headquarters building. The ratty cement building that held high-level intelligence papers and computers was unlocked. Inside, I found a twenty-five-year-old supervisor fast asleep with his feet up, a Playboy magazine clutched tightly to his chest. As I stood over him, I noticed he wore dark aviator sunglasses, despite it being 1:30 in the morning, and despite his being asleep. They reminded me of the sunglasses worn by the “guards” in the Stanford Prison Experiment. I tapped on his right shoulder to get his attention.
“Hey man, one of your soldiers needs some help in the booth,” I said calmly. He woke and looked startled, as if thinking, Where’d this guy come from? He snapped to attention.
“She’s getting her ass kicked and abused by this prisoner,” I continued. “It might be a good idea if we call it a night and talk about this in the morning.”
“I got it, sir,” he said with a southern accent. “We’ll shut it down for the night!”
As I walked away he called after me. “Colonel, who are you, sir?”
I turned. “Son, I’m Colonel James.”
“Well sir . . . But sir, may I ask why you’re here, sir? We ain’t never had no colonel here this time of the night, sir.”
“Yes, I can see that,” I responded, with a bit of a grimace. “Well, I’m here to keep us safe and help make us all better.” Then I turned and went to disturb the nap of the sleeping MP guard at the front door.
Like the supervisor I had just roused, the MP was stunned to see a full colonel at 1:30 a.m. at the intel center. She would later learn to expect my presence at all hours of the day and night. On my order, the MP called for assistance and escorted the unruly prisoner to his cell.
As I was leaving the intel center, alone in Abu Ghraib’s darkness, I could hear the young female interrogator crying outside the building. Ending the interrogation session had not ended her pain. The sobs I heard inside had progressed to painful heaves, with her gasps for air echoing in the quietness of the night. As I approached her, she made little effort to hide her distress, confiding in me right away.