Fallgirls

Front matter

Classical and Contemporary Social Theory E

Fallgiris

Gender and the Framing of Torture at Abu Ghraib

Contents

List of Figures ix List of Abbreviations xi List of Significant Personnel xiii Series Editor s Preface xv Preface xix Prologue: So What Really Happened at Abu Ghraib? 1

Defense Counsel’s Opening Statements 23 1 It was not Lucifer Achieved: Zimbardo, Women, and Abu Ghraib 31

Testimony of Captain Donald J. Reese, U.S. Army, Sabrina Harman Courts-Martial 49

Preface

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957)

I wrote this book based on my experiences as a researcher in sociology for the trials of Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman, and as a co-expert witness and researcher for the defense. As I participated in these trials with Dr. Stjepan Mestrovic, many different themes became apparent to me. Issues of power, gender, control, punishment, deceit, to name a few, were manifest in both the trials and the stories that were shared with me about Abu Ghraib. I knew then that there was more to Abu Ghraib then was being reported in the media and that it was my job to further convey these stories in ways that I knew how. I knew almost immediately that my reading of this abuse would apply a critical power perspective that used gender as a primary point of departure. This I could do.

So, why? Well I am interested in both justice and the sociology of knowledge, and how truth is created within culture, the courtroom, through dialog, and within institutions, such as the military. I found it fascinating that a huge institution such as the U.S. military could blame the events of Abu Ghraib on seven low-ranking soldiers, and claim no responsibility, no knowledge of these happenings going on whatsoever. Something did not seem right. (And then came the Levin-McCain Report in 2008.)

I am trained as a social and cultural theorist, and also as a feminist philosopher, and so, the focus of this book is a social and cultural theoretical analysis of the empirical data regarding the prison abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by American forces. The empirical data provided is drawn primarily from my first-hand qualitative research that involved participant-observation of Lynndie England’s and Sabrina Harman’s courts-martials, interaction with soldiers and officers, and analysis of documents pertaining to the trials as well as the photographs of abuse themselves, among other things.'? Few, if any, have looked at the mass of empirical data surrounding Abu Ghraib through the lens of social theory and

1 Although I mostly consider gender and power in this book as significant explanations for the abuse at Abu Ghraib, in other publications I apply additional theoretical viewpoints, and consider for instance the anomic social climate as well as the varied experiences of Reisman’s lacking moral compass. This line of thinking is best laid out in Stjepan Mestrovic’s book The Trials of Abu Ghraib (2007) and other joint publications with him.

2 Iwas the only female, feminist, academic who was not only in the courtroom at the England and Harman trials, but who ate meals with the defendants, sat through conferences

XX Fallgirls gender. Fallgirls provides the following: an examination of the photographs of abuse that were leaked to the press in the fall of 2003; a first-hand analysis of both Lynndie England’s and Sabrina Harman’s courts-martial (two of the “rotten apples”); a discussion of the body associated with punishment and torture, and also as marked in ways of identification; an evaluation and critique of existing feminist analyses of Abu Ghraib; and finally a one-on-one interview with Sabrina Harman. My approach to understanding gender is that gender as a sociological concept is multifaceted, based on power relations, and has to do with performances of individual, cultural and symbolic meaning constructions, where identity is constituted through these performances. Gendering is something that is “done” (either something we do, or something that is done to us), it is a process and an action, and a metaphysical transformation so to speak. Gendering is always in reference to a “code” such as a context, a culture, or a symbol rich with meaning, and these “codes” have to do with power. Bodies can be gendered, so can roles, expectations, spaces and environments, commands, organizations and institutions, fashions, theoretical viewpoints, and advertisements, to name a few. In this way, gender is a process metaphysics,’ a system of becoming, a performance process, an adjective of sorts, a means for identity construction, as well as a tool or thematic for analysis. Gender functions as code with power infused within its understandings—where even the analysis of power itself can be examined and understood as “gendered.”* What I think is most important within discussions of gender is not only theoretically important conversations about gender (its “code”) rich with detail and example, but also critical engagement and thought about how gender is policed, produced by and for us, consumed, and other ways power makes complex the relations of gender. Although this book deals with sensitive and emotionally disturbing issues— torture, abuse, sadism, abandonment, and other distressing topics—I make sense of Abu Ghraib through the lens of a social scientist, a sociologist, a feminist and a philosopher. This approach does, however, have its unique aspects. First, I view the “rotten apples” as persons, and not as they have been characterized in the media— as “poisoned apples.” Like most people, I do not condone the abuse, and actually deplore it; nonetheless, I am trying to understand the circumstances surrounding the with attorneys, talked to relatives, talked to other soldiers, read sworn statements that were never made public, reviewed court martial transcripts, etc.

3 This notion of ‘process metaphysics’ is inspired by William James’ philosophical metaphysics, where he describes reality as literally states of becoming—hence, a process. I argue that gender works similarly.

4 Social construction is a theoretical concept used to understand and explain social reality, and I take it as a theoretical presupposition that individuals experience a shared sense of reality that is itself socially constructed in terms of power differentials. By this, I mean that what individuals and society perceive and understand as “reality” is a product of the social interactions of individuals and groups with others, as well as with the previously established “reality” that has been beforehand socially objectified. Through these interactions, people continually create a shared reality experience, thereby ultimately establishing a shared social epistemology.

Preface Xx abuse. Second, I favor the approach of looking at a social climate, environment and context above and beyond simply a lone individual for responsibility. Third, I look at laws as social constructions that might not always be applied in practice (such as the Geneva Conventions should have applied in Iraq, but there was confusion). Fourth, I discuss gender and social theory throughout, and as a means of understanding Abu Ghraib. Given that the U.S. military is not a bastion of feminism, this analysis is important for several reasons: showing how power functions within Abu Ghraib and also for interpreting and illuminating the gendered and homoerotic torture that took place there as well.

I am grateful to the soldiers for sharing with me their experiences of what happened at Abu Ghraib. I am most thankful to Sabrina Harman for allowing me to interview her and also for sharing photographs for this book with me. Harman is a down-to-earth individual with a sacred bond to animals (which I share!). Additionally, the professionalism of the legal teams was quite impressive and I am especially grateful for all of the information and unclassified documents that they provided during the trials. Thank you specifically to Frank Spinner, Captain Patsy Takemura, Captain Catherine Krull, and Captain Jonathan Crisp. In my limited experience with all of you it was an absolute honor and pleasure.

I would like to personally thank the following individuals for discussions and help pertaining to this book: Keith Kerr, Kristi Wilson, Tomas Crowder-Taraborrelli, John McDermott, Alex McIntosh, Don Albrecht, Cletus Dalglish-Schommer, James Spady, Orin Kirshner, Aneil Rallin, Enrico Mariotti, James Chouinard, Rachel Romero, and my fantastic student research assistant Mohammad Ali Ahsan for his tireless work. I could not have finished this project without your assistance, Ali. I appreciate greatly the previous mentorship I have received from Alice Sowaal, Mark Webb, Joseph Ransdell, Ed Averill, Karann Durland, Rod Stewart, and Mark Hebert. I am also grateful to my family and friends, and especially Lucy Ransdell, for all of their support throughout this project. Additionally, many thanks to Diana Phillip and Will Harrell of the ACLU, Texas who taught me very early on in my academic career (during an internship and then later, as a member of the Texas State Board of Directors) about justice and accountability within the prison and jail system of Texas. It is so strange to look backward in time and have it all make perfect sense! Also, many thanks to Neil Jordan and Philip Stirups for all of their assistance with this project.

The most important inspiration and absolute support for this project comes from my friend, mentor and dissertation chair, Stjepan G. Mestrovic. He has always taught me to believe in myself, to ask questions of situations, to never take the obvious explanation as truth, to seek for deeper analysis, and to push myself further. Mestrovic also taught me to love social theory and to readily engage theorists in conversation within my very own head—and I do! I am forever indebted to him for revealing to me how to use social theory in a constructive way in order to help others. I appreciate your help, Mestrovic. I fashion myself after you as a professor each day.

Prologue: So What Really Happened at Abu Ghraib?

After viewing the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib at the hands of American soldiers, over 16,000 of which have never been seen by the public, I remember thinking things would never be the same from this point forward. What had happened? How could this behavior be explained? What would be the aftereffects of this abuse and these photographs, knowing that from this moment on the world would refer to this instant in time as the flash when America lost its claim to “doing good” in Iraq.' I remember trying to imagine myself actually at Abu Ghraib prison in the fall of 2003, turning my head to see past the physical abuse and into the faces of the onlookers in their cells, envisaging their fear, dread and anxiety. I also tried to imagine what it must have been like for the soldiers there, how the social environment was experienced at Abu Ghraib by all, and what day to day life must have been like given the horrible surroundings of the prison I have come to understand. I am still trying to make sense of the abuse at Abu Ghraib, and to tell a story of Abu Ghraib that has not readily been told. It is this endeavor to fully understand the whys and hows that drives my sociological research in war crimes, in order to understand how power operates within military institutions, and the associated contextualized experiences of all members involved within the social environment. So what really happened at Abu Ghraib?

Media depictions, popular perception, and academic explanations for the infamous torture at Abu Ghraib at the hands of American soldiers have utilized conceptions of chaos as a means to describe and explain the abuse. For this reason, many read and understand the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib as being about the actions of a handful of rogue soldiers, namely the “rotten apples” operating in an environment of chaos. The government’s own theory of the abuse is that there were originally seven rogue soldiers with moral failures, who just went out on their own and engaged in misconduct. In fact, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s 800-page book Known and Unknown (2011) argues that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was isolated and uses the “rogue soldier” approach for understanding the abuse itself, claiming that soldiers went outside of the bounds of approved policy. However, Rumsfeld’s book has drawn scrutiny from the ACLU who claims that Rumsfeld is “rewriting history” in his approach, and that abuses

1 There were 281 photographs used at exhibits, from five different cameras, that were pertinent to the courts-martials associated with the “rotten apples” (Special Agent Brent Pack, Computer Crime Investigative Unit, U.S. Army, Harman CM, May 13, 2005).

were not only widespread in Iraq, but also that “government documents show the methods used at Abu Ghraib were the same ones that Mr. Rumsfeld approved”.?

Looking at the U.S. government’s own reports (for example see the Levin- McCain report)? shows that the U.S. government deals with conspiracy, deception and intrigue, and suggests that we should not blindly accept the characterizations of these so-called “rotten apple” soldiers without question (Danner 2004, Strasser 2004). These reports state that the abuse was not at the hands of a few rogue soldiers, and was instead ordered and orchestrated from much higher in the chain of command—all of the way up to the White House itself.

An expert witness in sociology, Dr. Stjepan Mestrovic, points out at several of the “rotten apple” trials that there were leadership, training, discipline, chain of command, resource, environmental and socio-cultural issues that need to be considered in order to get a full picture of the context of Abu Ghraib, and how some abuse was inevitable given these conditions. In this way, I and others argue that the “rogue soldier” explanation for abuse is demonstratively false—magical thinking in fact—even though it was used by the government’s prosecutors at each and every “rotten apple” trial, and is still put forward today by some as a means for justification.* Says the defense counsel at the Harman trial, “you don’t have seven soldiers who were basically out there on their own like a bunch of cowboys just having their way with Iraqi detainees” (SHCM). Consequently, I think that we should be more critical of what happened at Abu Ghraib. Instead of pinning the abuse on lower-level soldiers, arguing that they acted alone and with no direction, I offer an alternative reading of this abuse in terms of gender and power to describe what caused these events so as to provide an additional narrative about what happened at Abu Ghraib.

Abu Ghraib Prison

Abu Ghraib prison is known as Saddam Hussein’s infamous torture chamber and was the site of weekly executions under his regime where political dissidents were tortured. Located about 20 miles west of Baghdad, Amnesty International has

2 See “Rumsfeld Memoir Draws Criticism from ACLU Over Abu Ghraib Depiction,” FoxNews.com, February 3, 2011. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/03/rumsfeld-memoir-draws-criticism-aclu-abu-ghraib-depiction/

3 http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=305735

4 In fact, the ACLU and Human Rights First filed in 2005 in federal courts in the Northern District of Illinois (A/i et al., vs. Rumsfeld) that Rumsfeld personally approved unlawful interrogation techniques and failed to stop torture at Abu Ghraib, therefore abdicating his legal duties and violating the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes and international law. See “ACLU and Human Rights Sue Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Over U.S. Torture Policies” at http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-and-human-rightsfirst-sue-defense-secretary-rumsfeld-over-us-torture-policie

Figure P.1 Abu Ghraib Prison

Source: Photograph provided courtesy of the author.

repeatedly documented human rights violations at this huge prison (about the size of an average airport), which was described as having vile living conditions. In October of 2002, Hussein declared a general amnesty for all prisoners in Abu Ghraib and they were subsequently released. When American occupation forces invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew the Iraqi regime, like most other places around Bagdad during that time period, the prison too was ransacked, looted, and abandoned. Soon afterward however, the American military took over the prison itself and continued running it, albeit not a common tactic, in the middle of an active war zone as a holding and detention facility, renaming it the Baghdad Central Confinement/Collections Facility. In June of 2003, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski was ordered to restore Hussein’s prison, and in her words:

We did our best to marginalize the old hellhole. While we rehabilitated Abu Ghraib in stages, starting with cellblocks 1A and 1B, we kept most of our Iraqi inmates in compounds of tents ... We started to draw down our biggest facility at Abu Ghraib, Camp Ganci (named, like all of our camps, for a policeman or fireman affiliated with the 800th who had died on 9/11) ... The commanders had created a monster at Abu Ghraib, but they felt no real need to bolster our resources for dealing with these thousands of incarcerated Iraqi citizens, most of them innocent bystanders swept up by the attempts to stop a growing insurgency. (Karpinski 2005: 183-191)

The hard site of Abu Ghraib, or the actual hard standing building with a foundation is built with brick and concrete. The hard site housed tier 1A and 1B and the rest of the regular prison wings; however, it was tier 1A where the MI and CID holds were located, as these were the prisoners who were supposed to be high value detainees. Interestingly, we now know that none of these prisoners had any actionable intelligence whatsoever, and that these prisoners were mostly local criminals that were picked up in street sweeps during raids.

Captain Donald J. Reese, the 372nd Military Police Commander since December 2002, stated in court that one wing of the hard site had Military Intelligence, and the other had Military Police who were responsible for taking care of the prisoners and transporting them within the compound. It was tier 1A where the “rotten apples,” most of whom were from the 372nd Military Police Company, were assigned to work the night shift—a curious assignment for the 372nd, as their training was as a combat support unit for supply route and convey security escorts, and not at all as prison guards. Says Reese, “The Iraqi detainees were there for different reasons. Some inmates were there as MI holds, CID holds, and Iraqi on Iraqi criminals. There was a mix of detainees” (June 24, 2002, SHCM). However, this “mix” also included women and children detained at Abu Ghraib in tier 1B, a crime that is explicit in the Geneva Conventions. In addition, there were tent and fence prisons surrounded with Constantine wire around the prison compound that extended the prison itself. Camp Ganci housed common, general population prisoners, such as Iraqi on Iraqi crimes, who are not believed to have military intelligence value. The other tent prison within Abu Ghraib was Camp Vigilant and this area housed high value/priority detainees (“insurgents”). However, Abu Ghraib was not just a prison—it was an Army base called FOB (Forward Operating Base) Abu Ghraib, and contained non-prison related troops and services.

Although it was the spring of 2004 when the photos of abuse at the hands of American military soldiers were leaked to the media, the abuse itself (and thus the infamous photographs) took place in the fall of 2003. By the spring of 2004, several military investigations into the abuse were under way. In May of 2004, United States President George W. Bush announced plans to demolish Abu Ghraib prison. However, Attorney Paul Bergrin (viewed as the lead defense attorney in the pool of attorneys representing the “rotten apples”) objected to this closure, claiming that the prison was a crime scene and could not be demolished. Judge Colonel James Pohl, the judge for all of the “rotten apple” companion cases, agreed and stopped the demolition of Abu Ghraib, contrary to the wishes of President George W. Bush and his request to destroy Abu Ghraib prison. Also in the summer of 2003, Major General Geoffrey Miller came to Abu Ghraib from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the expressed purpose to make the prison more like Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, or to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib (Mestrovic 2007). Between May of 2004 and September 2005, seven soldiers (the so-called “rotten apples”) were charged and convicted with various violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) such as dereliction of duty, maltreatment of prisoners, and conspiracy, among other

Figure P.2 Abu Ghraib prison cell

Source: Photograph provided courtesy of the author.

violations. While some officers were reprimanded or demoted, such as now Colonel Karpinski, for the abuse at Abu Ghraib, not a single commissioned officer was ever charged or prosecuted with a crime, and in fact several were promoted. Indeed, Abu Ghraib is one of the world’s most notorious prisons, where memories of terror and torture at the hands of not only Saddam Hussein, but also American occupation forces and other interrogators reveals the history of suffering within its walls. The obvious two questions that surface are: How did American occupation forces perpetuate suffering at this notorious prison? And why?

Gender Categories as Code

Over the last 20-30 years, gender has become an important focus for analysis in the social sciences. Feminists, gender and social theorists, those concerned with women’s issues, and others, have analyzed society and culture using gender as a focus for understanding many different phenomena. In order to show how different social theorists come to interrogate gender in different ways concerning Abu Ghraib, I present my notion of gender in order to provide a theoretical mechanism of comparison and entry into discussions about gender and power within social theory. Throughout this discussion, what is clear is that sociologically, gender has been, and continues to be socially constructed in different ways throughout our social-theoretical cannon, and I am quick to point out that the reality of these social constructions has always been about power. I draw out the gender suppositions of social theorists such as Talcott Parsons, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler, and Philip Zimbardo—some of the most well-known names in social theory, yet many of who are not really considered gender theorists at all (except of course Judith Butler). However, I argue that all of these theorists conceptualize power and gender in different ways given their theories of the social and cultural world and my project aims to outline the gender variations within these theories, and also the consequences that these understandings have for explaining the abuse at Abu Ghraib. In addition, coupling these social theorists’ ideas with the gendered nature of the military, it is possible to obtain a new perspective and thus explanation for what happened at Abu Ghraib and the associated courts-martials. Gender thus remains an important means for analysis within this project, woven through social theory and accounts of power, as gender is the vehicle I use to explain the abuse at Abu Ghraib and the events of the courts-martials themselves.

I view gender as something that we are socialized to within a culture, where social and cultural norms prescribe the boundaries for categorical understandings of “masculinity” and “femininity.” These gender norms, or the socially constructed tules of “masculinity” and “femininity,” are basically the set of conventions that a culture uses to make sense of gender for the individuals of that specific culture. I call these conventions “gender code” as they supply the cultural translations or shared set of meanings that a culture uses to make sense of gender performances. (Literally, these normative gender codes “de-code” the meanings associated with gender so as to inform and prescribe for the larger dominant culture.)

These gender rules or codes are not natural, in that they did not derive from biology or divine law. Instead, they are a shared, symbolic, and agreed upon set of practices that have been reified over time by a group of people who share a culture—that is, they are socially constructed.’ In this way, we imagine categories as a certain general measure for conceptualizing gender, and we pass this kind of knowledge on through our social interactions and socialization practices, as our gender code is thus conceived of as a process that we learn from our culture. This process informs our behavior (how we act), our viewpoint (how we see the world and others), and our perspective (our outlook or how we think). This gender code gets inside of our minds and starts to function such that it might begin to feel like something natural, normal, or even like it has always somehow continuously been there informing our every move, decision and way of seeing. Some say that our gender perspective is similar to wearing a pair of glasses with a specific prescription, in that this pair of glasses causes us to see the world in a certain way. After a while, with these culturally informed gender glasses on, gender itself becomes unquestioned and assumed correct, such that the normative assumptions

5 Social constructionists work to document and analyze the processes through which social reality is constructed, and how that constructed reality begins to work back upon society itself.

and socializations that we use, inscribe, share with others, etc., is actually the “truth” of gender. In some ways, gendering can be conceived of as a ritual practice associated with categorizing, cultural meaning creation, and identity.

However, understanding gender is not just as easy as understanding a rule book of norms associated with culture; in fact, it gets even more confusing, because all of these gender divisions and gender rules—or the politics of gender—are socially constructed and vary based upon specific cultures, complex discourses, time periods, or contexts, and are imbued with power such as hierarchies and stratifications. First, this means that what one culture views as the norm for understanding gender might be different, or even completely opposite, from another cultural understanding of gender. Hence, it is quite possible then to have varied, different, and opposing systematic cultural approaches to gender. What one culture views as feminine or masculine might be socially constructed differently in dissimilar cultures. This mostly applies to gender roles, where what is considered to be “masculine” labor in one culture is identified as “feminine” in another, or vice versa. Second, even varied time periods within same cultures may have different conceptions of gender, which can be seen with changing concerns over women’s rights in different waves of feminism, as well as changing gendered fashions, to name a few. Third, gender can be understood in certain contexts as either strictly associated with some standard or law, such that gender is defined in a rigid way, such as within stereotypes, fantasy, or archetypes; or, gender can be critically challenged as conforming to a certain law (such as heterosexuality) or in reference to some dominant standard for value (such as patriarchy), where it is claimed that this law or standard constrains the ability to render certain projects of gender viable or valuable (Butler 1993b; Rubin [1975(2002)]). Finally, one thing that is certain about gender is that it does indeed become entangled with power differentials and structures, such that how we locate ourselves within the geography of feminist theory and in terms of gender is political.* Indeed, we should not assume that all women of the same culture experience that culture in exactly the same way, even though they are all women existing within the same cultural context. Drawing from the idea that the “personal is political,” I think that viewing gender as one component of an intersected identity is important, where race and ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, among other identities are considered when determining the level of subordination a person will experience in any culture. These identities function as additional schema intersecting with gender to provide a crucial understanding of cultural stratification.’ What is actually different for each individual in any gender performance is the subjective experience within their context that creates a differing gendered epistemology, as an individual’s

6 Iam indebted to Victoria Rosner for this notion of feminist theory and gender theory as geography.

7 Another way to understand this is in terms of “gender capital,” where reward and social status or value follows what is viewed as the legitimate empirical cash value for gender identity performance within that specific context alone.

gender identity is affected by their other and varied identities, which thus impacts one’s ability to construct their gender project in the first place.* In this way, gender conceptualizations change, gender itself is multifaceted and fluid, yet also has a staged and referenced standard. One could go so far as to say that the code for gender is thus so malleable to the point of theoretical inconsistency (being that it culminates in the actual lack of a code at all), as it seems to represent nothing stable. Gender is both performatively and radically constructed, but is also socially understood according to rules, norms, discourse, and power, as these provide the basis for social value within the larger population. These social constructions of normative gender codes are basically the language of gender that allows for gender translations to be made at the cultural level so that conversations about gender can exist; however, these norms are and should be critically questioned.

Although I find that the theoretical perspective of social construction is a valuable starting point for understanding gender, as it allows for the varied conceptualizations of gender to be brought forth, I also add that a critical power analysis that outlines how power functions to determine or limit conceptualizations of gender is also imperative to theorize in that it shows that, within different perspectives, cultural or otherwise, the possibilities for thinking (or not thinking) about gender exist.” So, for example, when we consider the many places that gender codes exist, such as the marketplace (where we shop for things like toys, clothing, and fragrances), we realize that from a very early age ideas about gender are passed onto our children through these cultural spaces. Specifically, gender socialization occurs based on how we treat our children differently, how we interact with them, how we encourage them to interact with others, the kinds of toys we purchase for our children to play with, the activities we encourage them to engage in, and so forth. As Cynthia Enloe (2000) rightly points out regarding the gendering of toys, the G.I. Joe action figure is called a soldier, while the G.L Jane female version is not called a soldier, but instead is described as a doll “in authentic military gear” or even a “female action figure” (Enloe 2000: 10). This is a tremendous socially constructed message regarding gender, and one that is based in social value (doll versus soldier) that deserves an analysis focused on power.