Kaffeine Buzz
reviews independent and foreign films,
in addition to reporting the latest buzz behind
Colorado's film festivals.
Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex
Gibney)
At a recent rally for Barack Obama, the candidate
went through a list of major changes he would
be making when he becomes president. When he brought
up closing the prison camps (including Bagram,
Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo
Bay), the roar from the crowd was huge.
This issue of torture and the actions taking
place in these camps is constantly in our news,
but we as private citizens never really know the
true story of these men who are spending endless
sentences without representation or habeas corpus.
“Taxi to the Dark Side”
not only lifts the veil, enabling us to view confidential
documents and hear directly from those involved,
but from the soldiers themselves, many of whom
have paid the price while the commanders orchestrating
this war slide free from responsibility (including
the commander-in-chief).
Even more importantly, it enables us to learn
about one prisoner, who he was as a person, his
family that was left behind, and what led to his
death after capture. On December 1, 2002, Dilawar
was a taxi driver who was at the wrong place at
the wrong time. The army had been given a “tip,”
which led to the arrest of him and his three passengers.
Five days after he was exposed to continuous beating
and sleep depravation, he was found slumped in
his cell, dead.
We’ve heard about the humiliation tactics
used, forcing prisoners to strip naked and group
together in a huddle, or exposing them to dogs
and loud music, and some of those images came
across media lines when the Abu Ghraib story surfaced.
In the documentary, soldiers who were responsible
for interrogation at U.S. prison camps, describe
the pressure to “get information”
from prisoners at any cost. This involved a sleep
depravation chart that showed how many hours the
prisoner had been “up” and awake,
or “down” and asleep, neither of which
lasted longer than a few hours.
Or they would chain the prisoner to wire mesh
of the cell’s ceiling, which would ensure
the prisoner would stay awake and standing for
long periods of time. These chains and charts
were also removed when the Red Cross came in for
inspection, so these tactics would go without
interference by an outside third party standing
up for human rights.
But it was the continual beatings to the legs
that cause permanent damage. In the case of Dilawar,
a clot had formed in his leg because of the beatings,
and traveled to his brain, causing death. The
coroner stated that had he lived, his legs were
so badly damaged that he would have required amputation.
It was the cause of death, homicide, which led
a New York Times journalist, Carolotta
Gall, to find his family in Afghanistan.
All the press releases coming from the White
House relating to the two deaths that occurred
at Bagram that week stated the prisoners died
from natural causes, and in an interview between
Gall and General Dan McNeill, he denies any knowing
of prisoners being killed. Again, homicide was
the cause of death on the death certificate, and
this was just one of many examples of lies being
fed to the press.
We also heard numerous denials by Alberto
Gonzales and Donald Rumsfeld,
the latter of which visited the prison camps often
and was continually informed of what was taking
place.
“Taxi to the Dark Side” continues
to fill in the blanks, presenting the historical
line of how President Bush and his administration
took the constitution and the Geneva Convention,
put them on the shelf, and not only created his
own interpretation of each BUT included a provision
to protect him and all his buddies from ever being
prosecuted for war crimes. That in itself is an
obvious admission of guilt.
The immense tragedy in all this is the tens of
thousands of prisoners that still sit in prisons
today with no idea of when they will ever be free
or be given a chance to prove their innocence.
The way they got there is war lords in their country,
turning them in for cash rewards by the U.S. government,
or in some cases, getting turned in by their fellow
countryman who turns around and takes over a family's
land.
It is also the soldiers that have thrown under
the bus by the upper echelon in the Army and the
U.S. government. They receive little training
(5 hours worth) on interrogation or any clearly
written Rules of Engagement or Field Manual for
Interregation. No one in charge takes the fall
except those who were performing the actual “techniques”
that were expected as part of their job, some
of which have been charged with Dereliction
of Duty and have faced court marshals.
In the film, one soldier is asked, “Do
you think you were misled?” With pain in
his eyes, he answers, “I think we all were.”
Most of us also know that the number of terrorists
in Iraq and neighboring countries has grown substantially
since the U.S. invaded Iraq. Any logical person
can expect that what has taken place in these
prison camps is being used to recruit more and
more men and women to join al-Qaeda. Meanwhile,
there is little to no information being gained
from those imprisoned.
Even today, the discussion continues about the
CIA’s involvement in torture, including
waterboarding, with the CIA director Michael
Hayden admitting that they in fact used
that technique and believed it was necessary at
times, even though it may have been deemed illegal.
The use of torture hasn’t proven to be
an effective technique for use on "an unlawful
combatant is possessing information that would
help us prevent catastrophic loss of life of Americans
or their allies," as stated by Hayden. This
statement in a recent New York Times article is
in contrast to those who have succeed in getting
the coveted “information.”
A former FBI interrogator explains the right
way to get the information needed, which includes
appealing the prisoner in a variety of ways, from
ensuring his family will be taken care of to other
things that the prisoner seeks. He attests that
what you get in torture situations is unreliable,
or if one is in possession of information but
is dedicated to their cause, they will take that
information to their grave. At the film’s
end, you also hear from the director’s father,
Frank Gibney, a former interrogator
during WWII and the Korean War, who has seen what
has happened and has “lost my faith in the
American government.”
People across the country are showing up in record
numbers to have a say in where this country goes
after this dark era of the country is closed.
There will be a tremendous amount of work to do
to clean up many messes, but the more we know
through films like “Taxi to the Dark Side,”
the better prepared we will be to make people
accountable so this doesn’t happen again.
