23 April 2009
War Criminal #5
(SERE School Shoulder Patch)
I got the Top Secret memo in the unclassified e-mail the other day. It is one of the ones the Administration has declassified about the harsh treatment of the assholes who have killed thousands of us, and would like to kill more.
We must be in Neverland, right? The Times this morning informs me the Taliban have taken possession of Buner, only 70 miles from Islamabad. They are flogging the usual enemies, locking the women up in their houses, and generally triumphant. Secretary Clinton is alarmed, or says she is, and I am too.
The land routes to support Afghanistan are at stake, not to mention the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. As a demonstration of our concern, we apparently are about to establish a truth and reconciliation tribunal to explain why we may have abused the rights of murderers.
I have one of those twitches when I see something that in my working life would have had a security over sheet, and a whole series of procedural mandates associated with it.
The Chief of MI-5 in the UK recently got into a bind over a violation of process- he had one of those classified memos on top of some other papers in clear view as he walked into 10 Downing Street, and the inadvertent disclosure of the operation the paper described to the waiting press caused the acceleration of a sweep of some home-grown terrorists who wanted to blow up soft targets in Manchester over the Easter Holiday.
Since nothing bad had yet transpired, I’m sure this is going to complicate matters for the prosecution, and those prospective victims who are alive will be oblivious to the plot against them.
That is the way I feel about the curious furor over the harsh treatment of Mr. Zubaydah and his pals. Like you, I am appalled by the idea that our government could utilize torture on prisoners.
We know what that is, right? It is broken limbs and real, searing, disfiguring pain. It is the calculated brutality that was performed on US prisoners in the hands of the North Vietnamese. The ingenious Northerners had a bunch of other techniques, too, which were related to me by a squadron buddy who had then performed on him in a place we know as “The Farm.”
Frankly, what happened to him was unspeakable. I’m sure you can find more about the experimental program that was conducted there if you look for it, but it is still unsettling to me. What happened set my pal apart, and I am sure it stayed with him to the end of his days.
I read the Top Secret memo about the ten harsh treatments requested for Mr. Zubaydah and laughed. For the record, I do not think they are specifically humorous in nature, but I do know them well. Like over 26,000 other veterans, I have had them all conducted on me, personally, by the US Government.
They were right out of the mandatory training program we had to endure as members of front-line aviation squadrons. The US Military calls Survival, Resistance, Evasion and Escape- C Level school.” More easily pronounced, it is known as “SERE-C.”
Another buddy wrote me the other day with a similar reaction. I am a veteran of the West Coast curriculum, circa 1978, conducted in the remote reaches of the Warner Springs Training Facility of Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego.
I remember being thankful for the location in mountains of southern California; there was no snow. My pal did his time at Brunswick, Maine, and it was colder than crap up there. My pal asked: “Is it time to write about the SERE schools’ simulated torture sessions of Cold War yore?”
I think it is, to at least inform the debate about what went on, and where it came from. My pal came back from his SERE school experience with black eyes, frostbite, sandflea bites and an intense fear of drowning, which was about par for the course.
Like him, I tried to sleep in the box. I did not have to endure the immersion in the icy waters of the People’s Pond, though I was fire-hosed in my skivvies in the crisp morning air, and endured the walling, stress positions and face smacking.
SERE has always been controversial, even if it is necessary. My friend was pulled out of the last two hours of the school’s prison camp phase, since he had been whacked pretty good, and there had recent bad press about both the Navy schools at Brunswick and Warner Springs. He has a picture of himself in a post-school picture with brilliant blue Rocky Raccoon eyes.
I myself considered it worthwhile to pierce my hand with a nail embedded in a plank, all the way through the fleshy part in the web between thumb and forefinger, so trust me, this was a realistic if simulated adventure. The few minutes with the duty corpsman, outside the training scenario was enough to allow me to go on.
So, while the controversy may be a little amusing, there is nothing at all funny about it. But we will have to get to that tomorrow, and how I became War Crinimal #5.
I’ll never forget it, but I am not losing any sleep about it now. I did though. If you want a read-ahead, there is a nice and completely accurate account of the program ten years after my pal and I went through it at:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n4_v20/ai_6676337/?tag=content;col1
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com