Brutality in the gulag: what for?

This morning, Bill the spouse and I were speculating about what the point of all the officially sanctioned brutality in Abu Ghraib prison was.
Once we accept that this was no “furtive”, rogue operation, we have to understand that someone in the military chain of command–most likely the Military Intel command– was actually, under very difficult operational circumstances, devoting quite a lot of manpower and other resources to running these sessions of organized brutality. This, in a situation where manpower is stretched incredibly thin.
Plus, by the accounts of some of the front-line perpetrators, they were given the cameras by superiors and instructed to take the photos and videos.
So what was it all in aid of?

Bill noted the many articles that have come out recently by intelligence experts who have stressed that coerced intelligence is usually barely worth the paper it gets written down on. “People will say anything to stop the pain,” is the general line there.
We also noted that, if it truly were a case of the brutality being used primarily to gather current information, it would have been far more closely targeted, far less widespread than the goings-on in Abu Ghraib seem to have been.
I said I thought there might be another goal: “Maybe they were trying to build up a network of informers inside Iraq by getting as many as possible of the thousands of detainees to agree to work with a US Military Intel handler on the outside, in return for a reduced sentence or an alleviation of the brutal conditions?” I speculated.
I also recalled that the Israeli intelligence have been reported as using just that tactic, also extremely broadly, during the large-scale roundups of male detainees they have undertaken during the current intifada (10,000 and counting, I believe?), as well as during the first intifada in the late 1980s and at various other points along the way.
No surprise at all, I figured, if the Military Intel guys in this US administration have been taking some lessons from the copybook of their counterparts in Sharon’s Israel…
So guess what. Later this morning, following a link I found in Yankeedoodle’s fine blog, Today in Iraq, I went to a comment posted posted on Col. David Hackworth’s great website, Soldiers for the Truth/ Defensewatch, that revealed the following:

The abuse and humiliation actually took place at 3 prisons in the Baghdad area. This was not done by accident, it was a planned, systematic way to break down the prisoners will to resist any interrogation, degrade them and then blackmail them into working for US Intelligence.
The pictures were taken as a way to intimidate the prisoner and then keep them working as low level collectors (if they did not the pictures would have been released to their family and tribes) Videos were also made as a way to record the “success” to be used as a teaching tool at Fort Huachuca (to train future interrogators). The MPs and Interrogators were told the Geneva Convention did not apply to Iraq Soldiers and Civilian Detainees. The methods the MPs used were actually taught to the MPs by military intelligence professionals and civilian contractors. This was a sanctioned operation and the methods were known to be used by Generals in the chain of command. Women MPs were sought out to further humiliate the Iraqi prisoners. The female MPs who accepted the jobs, conducted degrading acts upon the Iraq men, because such acts by women on men in the Arab culture are so humiliating, it was thought that the men would then talk just to stop the abuse by the female MPs. This abuse was done in stages and the less cooperative Iraqis were given the more degrading abuse to condition them to interrogation. The Major General (Barbara Fast) in charge of the MI personnel in Baghdad sanctioned this treatment.
Hack, if they are going to hang privates and NCOs for meting out this abuse, they better go after the Generals and Colonels who sanctioned and approved these methods be use. This is a not an isolated cace of abuse my a few soldiers, this was a planned campaign well know by the entire chain of command. There is also evidence that people in the Pentagon also knew and approved of these methods many months prior to the pictures being relased and only told the President when the pictures were published.
The DOD is now trying to pin the blame on anything else, other than the Generals amd Colonels who sanctioned this treatment.

The signatory, who has chosen to remain anonymous, signs him/herself merely as: “MI Senior NCO”.
Incidentally, Hackworth’s own commentary on the practice of the brass hanging “Joe and Jill Grunt” out to dry while covering their own rear ends is also worth reading.
Anyway, there you have it. The best explanation I can think of yet for all that brutality having been not just sanctioned but actively encourgaed there in the holding cells in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
I just note two things re the possible Israeli “connection” in all this:
(1) I have seen no reports–and I follow these things quite closely– that the Israeli forces have ever made photographic or videtaped records of the brutality they have organized in their prisons throughout the 37 years they have been running military occupations of other people’s lands (Gaza, West Bank, Golan). The US is leading the way in this regard!
(2) Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan may have lasted 37 years. But even with that length of time to brutalize, humiliate, and pauperize the population, it still hasn’t worked in producing a leadership either in Palestine or in Golan that is prepared to “cry uncle” to any of the successive governments of Israel.
So here are some questions for Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, his sidekick General William (‘Jerry’) Boykin, and of course for the big kahunas Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush themselves:

• Why on earth do you think you could do any better than the Israelis by using these vile tactics, even if you do add the extra twist of having photographic records with which to exercize blackmail?
• Why are you so incredibly stupid that you can’t see that organizing tactics of deliberate brutalization on such a scale–whether photographed or unphotographed–would eventually backfire on the US politically? Have you no capacity for imagination at all?
• Have you any understanding of the harm you have wantonly caused to the security of every single US soldier in Iraq by this flagrant and widespread contravention of the laws of war? (See the most recent JWN post.)
• Have you no humanity?