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TODAY IN TAP ONLINE. In an excerpt from her recently published book, Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War, Senior Editor Tara McKelvey chronicles what life was like for soldiers assigned to guard Iraqi detention facilities. The sexually-charged, drugged-up, violent environment played a huge role in creating the culture of abuse, she reports.
In November, he says, he overheard a conversation in the dining hall at Camp Victory. One soldier told his friends at a cafeteria table how detainees were being treated in Abu Ghraib. "They would hit the detainees as practice shots…The detainees would plead for mercy," according to Provance's sworn statement in Major General Antonio Taguba's March 2004 report on military abuse, "Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade.""The whole table was howling with laughing," Provance tells me."They'd talk about their experience when the detainees were being humiliated and abused," says Provance. "It was always a joke story. It was like, 'Ha, ha. It was hilarious. You had to be there.' It would be funny if it were in a movie -- in a spoof like Naked Gun 2 ½."He puts his chin in his hand and looks across the room. "You see these Iraqi people. It's hard to imagine they're human," he says. "They're just the stock detainee. Like a movie prop."Read the whole thing here.Also today, Terence Samuel has some thoughts on the still-alive-and-kicking immigration bill. And Judah Grunstein marvels at how newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been able to secure a parliamentary majority in just over a month in office.--The Editors
