The Shock Doctrine: Fear Up

[Joanne98]

When the Canadian citizen maher Arar was grabbed by US agents at JFK airport in 2002 and taken to Syria, a victim of extraordinary rendition, his interrogators engaged in a tried-and-tested torture technique."They put me on a chair, and one of the men started asking me questions...If I did not answer quickly enough, he would ponit to the metal chair in the corner and ask, 'Do you want me to use this?' I was terrified, and I did not want to be tortured. I would say anything to avoid torture." the technique Arar was being subjected to is known as "the showing of the instruments," or, in US military lingo, "fear up." Torturers know that one of their most potent weapons is the prisoners own imagination-often just showing fearsome instruments is more effective than using them.



As the day of the invasion of Iraq drew closer, US media outlets were conscripted by the Pentagon to "fear up" Iraq. "They're calling it 'A -Day'," began a report on CBS News that aired two months before the war began. "'A' as in airstrikes so devastating they would leave Saddam's soldiers unable or unwilling to fight." Viewers were introduced to Harlam Ullman, a Shock and Awe author, who explained that "you have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but in minutes."



Iraqis, who picked up the terrifying reports on contraband satelittes or in phone calls from relatives abroad spent months imagining the horrors of Shock and Awe.



Many Iraqis say that the shredding of the their phone system was the most psychologically wrenching part of the attack. The combination of hearing and feeling bombs going off everywhere while being unable to call a few blocks away to find out if loved ones were alive, or to reassure terrified relatives living abroad, was pure torment. Journalists bases in Baghdad, were swarmed by desperate local residents begging for a few moments with their satelitte phones or pressing numbers into the reporters' hands along with pleas to call a brother or an uncle in London or Baltimore. "Tell him everything is okay. Tell him his father and mother are fine. tell him hello. Tell him not to worry." By then, most drugstores in baghdad had sold out of sleeping aids and antidepressants, and the city was completely cleaned out of Valium.

Next to go were the eyes. "There was no audible explosion, no discernible change in the early evening bombardments, but in an instant, an entire city of 5 million people was plunged into an awful, endless night." The Guardian reported on April 4. Darkness was relieved only by the headlights of passing cars." Trapped in their homes, baghdad's residents could not speak to each other, hear each other or see outside. Like a prisoners destined for a CIA black site, the entire city was shackled and hooded. Next it was stripped.



previous thread.. War as Torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2609103

[Joanne98]

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[Joanne98]

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