None of Us Were Like This Before: Six Questions for Joshua Phillips

[Jefferson23]

By Scott Horton

Earlier this year, Joshua Phillips received the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for his 2008 American Radio Works documentary What Killed Sergeant Gray. Now he’s developed that story in a book that offers a compelling account of how the use of torture and abusive techniques on prisoners affected the lives of American soldiers caught up in it. I put six questions to Joshua Phillips.

1. Most of the discussion of torture has focused on the prisoners as victims; you turn this around by describing the tragic consequences of torture for soldiers. How did you come to this approach?
By accident. I learned about the central story while investigating various veterans’ issues, and the problems that some troops faced trying to report prisoner abuse to their superiors. One of the soldiers I interviewed was Jonathan Millantz, an Army combat medic. Millantz told me he was upset by the pushback that he faced from officers when he tried to report abuse. Over time, he revealed how he and his fellow unit members became involved in prisoner abuse and, in some cases, torture. It was important to Millantz that I understand the complex circumstances that led to such misconduct. He and his fellow troops also wanted me to recognize how damaging the experience had been for them—especially for soldiers who felt remorseful about their involvement with abuse, such as Sergeant Adam Gray.

As I learned more about these soldiers, I reflected on a story I wrote for the Washington Post (”The Case Against the Generals,” Aug. 17, 2003) about Salvadoran torture victims. One of the victims I profiled was a doctor, and he said he later met one of the soldiers who had tortured him in El Salvador. The doctor said he felt sorry for him because he noticed how this soldier, too, had been victimized by the torture. The soldier appeared to be traumatized by the violence he inflicted, he was discarded by the military that he faithfully served, and he could not describe to others what he had gone through.


in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/07/hbc-90007368

[BrklynLiberal]

1. To the greatest page.

[Angry Dragon]

2. It is time to arrest bush and cheney

and try them for crimes against humanity.
If the United States does not do this then this country has no standing
among the nations of the world.
If there is any Senator or Representative that feels that torture is okay
then they do not deserve to serve this government.
They can not just sit there and say nothing for if they do
then they do not represent the American people.
And the people are the government.

This subject makes me angry.........

[Citizen Worker]

4. We must look forward not backward

Lindsey Lohan gets 90 days for violating probation. Bush and Cheney go free.
Massey Energy kills 29 miners. No charges filed.
BP and Trans Ocean kill 11 workers. No charges filed.
Greed and avarice win out every time. Workers are nothing more than expendable commodities, or more PC, are defined as human resources. We know what corporations do with resources, they consume them. But Lindsey Lohan is going to jail for 90 days.
Justice is served.

[Angry Dragon]

5. With Lohan in jail the world will be a safer and better place

[Jefferson23]

6. Yes, very frustrating. Perhaps one day The Hague, that is my hope.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. K&R.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Jefferson.

[tblue37]

8. The only reason the Nazi war criminals were punished is that their country lost the war--in

no uncertain terms. As long as the US is not "defeated" by other countries with the power to bring its war crimes to trial, none of thosee.g., Bush, Cheney, Rumsefeld, and many others--who are responsible will face justice in the court of international law.