Russ McBee

This article in Forbes (via Whitescreek) tells the story of two Americans working in Baghdad who blew the whistle on some nasty illegal activity. After feeding the FBI documentation of illegal arms sales to civilians, the two whistleblowers were kidnapped and taken to Camp Cropper, the US military prison where Saddam Hussein was held. During his 97-day captivity in the prison, Donald Vance was tortured by US military personnel.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

[...]

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

Go read the entire article. It details the complicity of the US Embassy in Baghdad in their detention, their kidnapping by US Special Forces, and the Bush Justice Department's curious refusal to support whistleblower cases in court.

Many defenders of Bush's torture policy think torture is only used on terrorists, and that its use won't spread beyond that narrow exception to the rules of civilization. Those people (most shockingly, Alan Dershowitz) simply are not thinking very clearly. Once power is granted, its abuse becomes inevitable. If we had read about whistleblowers in some Third-World country being tortured for exposing military corruption, our government (and the rest of the world) would have been rightly furious at the outrage to human rights.

So someone remind me again what there is left to distinguish us from some ratty, tin-pot Third-World dictatorship? Good roads? Better TV programs? Whatever it is, it sure isn't the rule of law or respect for human rights.

And does anyone want to take bets on how long it'll be before torture becomes routine and legal in US civilian prisons?