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Sex Crimes in the White House
By Naomi Wolf, Huffington Post
Posted on July 7, 2008, Printed on July 11, 2008
https://www.alternet.org/story/90657/
Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the
outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United
States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators
of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special
session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual
violence as a weapon of war.
I
had a sense of deja vu when I saw the photos that emerged in 2004 from
Abu Ghraib prison. Even as the Bush administration was spinning the
notion that the torture of prisoners was the work of "a few bad apples"
low in the military hierarchy, I knew that we were seeing evidence of a
systemic policy set at the top. It's not that I am a genius. It's
simply that, having worked at a rape crisis center and been trained in
the basics of sex crime, I have learned that all sex predators go about
things in certain recognizable ways.
We now know that the torture
of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by
former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick
Cheney, and Rice -- who actually chaired the torture meetings. The
Pentagon has also acknowledged that it had authorized sexualized abuse
of detainees as part of interrogation practices to be performed by
female operatives. And documents obtained by the American Civil
Liberties Union have Rumsfeld, in his own words, checking in on the
sexualized humiliation of prisoners.
The sexualization of torture
from the top basically turned Abu Ghraib and Guantnamo Bay into an
organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were
US-held prisoners. Looking at the classic S and M nature of some of
this torture, it is hard not to speculate that someone setting policy
was aroused by all of this. And Phillipe Sands' impeccably documented
Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, now
proves that sex crime was authorized and, at least one source reports,
eroticized: Diane Beaver, the Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo who
signed off on many torture techniques, told Sands about brainstorming
sessions that included the use of sexual tension, which was "culturally
taboo, disrespectful, humiliating and potentially unexpected."
"These
brainstorming meetings at Guantanamo produced animated discussion,"
writes Sands. "Who has the glassy eyes?" Beaver asked herself as she
surveyed the men around the room, thirty or more of them. She was
invariably the only woman in the room, keeping control of the boys. The
younger men would get excited, agitated, even: "You could almost see
their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas" [reported Beaver]. A
wan smile crossed Beaver's face: "And I said to myself, you know what,
I don't have a dick to get hard, I can stay detached." [Sands, p 63]
The
nonsexual torture that was committed ranged from beatings and
suffocation, electrodes attached to sensitive areas, and forced sleep
deprivation, to prisoners being hung by the wrists from the ceiling and
placed in solitary confinement until psychosis was induced. These
abuses violate both US and international law. Three former military
attorneys, recognizing this blunt truth, refused to participate in the
"military tribunals" -- rather, "show trials" -- aimed at condemning
men whose confessions were elicited through torture.
Though we
can now debate what the penalty for waterboarding should be, America as
a nation, maintaining an odd silence, still cannot seem to discuss the
sex crimes involved.
Why? It's not as if the sex crimes that US
leaders either authorized or tolerated are not staring Americans in the
face: the images of male prisoners with their heads hooded with women's
underwear; the documented reports of female US soldiers deployed to
smear menstrual blood on the faces of male prisoners, and of military
interrogators or contractors forcing prisoners to simulate sex with
each other, to penetrate themselves with objects, or to submit to being
penetrated by objects. Indeed, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was
written deliberately with loopholes that gave immunity to perpetrators
of many kinds of sexual humiliation and abuse.
There is also the
testimony by female soldiers such as Lynndie England about compelling
male prisoners to masturbate, as well as an FBI memo objecting to a
policy of "highly aggressive interrogation techniques." The memo cites
a female interrogator rubbing lotion on a shackled detainee and
whispering in his ear -- during Ramadan when sexual contact with a
strange woman would be most offensive -- then suddenly bending back his
thumbs until he grimaced in pain, and violently grabbing his genitals.
Sexual abuse in US-operated prisons got worse and worse over time,
ultimately including, according to doctors who examined detainees, anal
sodomy.
All this may sound bizarre if you are a normal person,
but it is standard operating procedure for sex offenders. Those who
work in the field know that once sex abusers control a powerless
victim, they will invariably push the boundaries with ever more extreme
behavior. Abusers start by undressing their victims, but once that line
has been breached, you are likely to hear from the victim about oral
and anal penetration, greater and greater pain and fear being
inflicted, and more and more carelessness about exposing the crimes as
the perpetrator's inhibitions fall away.
The perpetrator is also
likely to engage in ever-escalating rationalizations, often arguing
that the offenses serve a greater good. Finally, the victim is blamed
for the abuse: in the case of the detainees, if they would only
"behave," and confess, they wouldn't bring all this on themselves.
Silence,
and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a family.
Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding sex
criminals in their midst through silence.
Just as sex criminals
-- and the leaders who directed the use of rape and sexual abuse as a
military strategy -- were tried and sentenced after the wars in Bosnia
and Sierra Leone, so Americans must hold accountable those who
committed, or authorized, sex crimes in US-operated prisons. Throughout
the world, this perverse and graphic criminality has added fuel to
anxiety about US cultural and military power. These acts need to be
called by their true names -- war crimes and sex crimes -- and people
in America need to demand justice for the perpetrators and their
victims. As in a family, only when people start to speak out and tell
the truth about rape and sexual assault can the healing begin.
Naomi Wolf is the author of 'The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot' (Chelsea Green, 2007).
