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Camp Nama: British personnel reveal horrors of secret US base in Baghdad

Detainees captured by SAS and SBS squads subjected to human-rights abuses at detention centre, say British witnesses

British soldiers and airmen who helped to operate a secretive US detention facility in Baghdad that was at the centre of some of the most serious human rights abuses to occur in Iraq after the invasion have, for the first time, spoken about abuses they witnessed there.

Personnel from two RAF squadrons and one Army Air Corps squadron were given guard and transport duties at the secret prison, the Guardian has established.

And many of the detainees were brought to the facility by snatch squads formed from Special Air Service and Special Boat Service squadrons.

Codenamed Task Force 121, the joint US-UK special forces unit was at first deployed to detain individuals thought to have information about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Once it was realised that Saddam's regime had long since abandoned its WMD programme, TF 121 was re-tasked with tracking down people who might know where the deposed dictator and his loyalists might be, and then with catching al-Qaida leaders who sprang up in the country after the regime collapsed.

Suspects were brought to the secret prison at Baghdad International airport, known as Camp Nama, for questioning by US military and civilian interrogators. But the methods used were so brutal that they drew condemnation not only from a US human rights body but from a special investigator reporting to the Pentagon.

A British serviceman who served at Nama recalled: "I saw one man having his prosthetic leg being pulled off him, and being beaten about the head with it before he was thrown on to the truck."

On the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a number of former members of TF 121 and its successor unit TF6-26 have come forward to describe the abuses they witnessed, and to state that they complained about the mistreatment of detainees.

The abuses they say they saw include:

• Iraqi prisoners being held for prolonged periods in cells the size of large dog kennels.

• Prisoners being subjected to electric shocks.

• Prisoners being routinely hooded.

• Inmates being taken into a sound-proofed shipping container for interrogation, and emerging in a state of physical distress.

It is unclear how many of their complaints were registered or passed up the chain of command. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said a search of its records did not turn up "anything specific" about complaints from British personnel at Camp Nama, or anything that substantiated such complaints.

Nevertheless, the emergence of evidence of British involvement in the running of such a notorious detention facility appears to raise fresh questions about ministerial approval of operations that resulted in serious human rights abuses.

Geoff Hoon, defence secretary at the time, insisted he had no knowledge of Camp Nama. When it was pointed out to him that the British military had provided transport services and a guard force, and had helped to detain Nama's inmates, he replied: "I've never heard of the place."

The MoD, on the other hand, repeatedly failed to address questions about ministerial approval of British operations at Camp Nama. Nor would the department say whether ministers had been made aware of concerns about human rights abuses there.

However, one peculiarity of the way in which UK forces operated when bringing prisoners to Camp Nama suggests that ministers and senior MoD officials may have had reason to know those detainees were at risk of mistreatment. British soldiers were almost always accompanied by a lone American soldier, who was then recorded as having captured the prisoner. Members of the SAS and SBS were repeatedly briefed on the importance of this measure.

It was an arrangement that enabled the British government to side-step a Geneva convention clause that would have obliged it to demand the return of any prisoner transferred to the US once it became apparent that they were not being treated in accordance with the convention. And it consigned the prisoners to what some lawyers have described as a legal black hole.

Surrounded by row after row of wire fencing, guarded by either US Rangers or RAF personnel, and with an Abrams tank parked permanently at its main gate, to the outside observer Camp Nama seemed identical to scores of military bases that sprang up after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Once inside, however, it was clear that Nama was different.

read morehttp:// www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/01/camp-nama-iraq-human-rights-abuse
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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I don't have a review in me for that film. I was disturbed it's morality free zone. I think it demonstrated that the US is a morally bankrupt nation. I found nothing profound in it. It was devoid of characterisation or meaning. It was myopic in its world vision.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Frem and Magon's,

I thought that was the point of the movie. I don't blame the film makers for the fact that people didn't get the message.

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Originally posted by G:
I mean consider the risk a studio runs of having the first one be more obviously questioning of US policy? Whatever you may want and believe, that ain't happening, that movie isn't going to get made for decades, if ever. So I'm saying half full and thank god for that.

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If it gets your reaction Frem, then it's working isn't it?

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The problem with the torture ingredient, which is covered repetitively and at length over the first hour, is not that Ms Bigelow depicts it; it’s the fact that she shows it without any moral or historical perspective. Neither her film nor her heroine cares anything for the tortured.

The film is interested purely in whether the torturers — who otherwise seem like decent guys — gain anything from the exercise. And in the film, if not in real life, they do.

There was the opportunity here to examine a complex, important subject central to the history of our time. However, complexity, depth and character are not Ms Bigelow’s forte. She is very much an action director, and the most memorable sequence — where another female CIA agent (Jennifer Ehle) awaits an informer — involves suspense and explosive action.

Zero Dark Thirty is very much in tune with Hollywood action movies and gung-ho American foreign policy. It begins with terrified voices of people about to die in 9/11 and ends by giving us the catharsis of violent revenge.

The only other idea in its head is to glorify female determination and persistence in a world dominated by men.

Frankly, that’s a superficial, foolish and parochial way to approach the war on terror, and this is a silly, at times despicable film that never remotely deserved an Oscar nomination. Compared with this, Team America: World Police was a think piece.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Hey Magons,

Yeah, that is so not the movie I saw. How does all that square with Ms. Bigelow's own professed pacifism? Is she lying? Totally incompetent as a film maker? A pathetic, greedy sellout?

HKCavalier

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The film has been both criticized and praised for its handling of subject matter, including the portrayal of harsh interrogation techniques, commonly classified as torture. The use of these techniques was long kept secret by the Bush administration. (See Torture Memos.) Glenn Greenwald, in The Guardian, stated that the film takes a pro-torture stance, describing it as "pernicious propaganda" and stating that it "presents torture as its CIA proponents and administrators see it: as a dirty, ugly business that is necessary to protect America."[65] The critic Frank Bruni concluded that the film appears to suggest "No waterboarding, no Bin Laden".[58] Jesse David Fox writes that the film "doesn't explicitly say that torture caught bin Laden, but in portraying torture as one part of the successful search, it can be read that way."[66] Emily Bazelon said, "The filmmakers didn't set out to be Bush-Cheney apologists", but "they adopted a close-to-the-ground point of view, and perhaps they're in denial about how far down the path to condoning torture this led them."[67] Journalist Michael Wolff slammed the film as a "nasty piece of pulp and propaganda" and Bigelow as a "fetishist and sadist" for distorting history with a pro-torture viewpoint. Wolff disputed the efficacy of torture and the claim that it contributed to the discovery of bin Laden.[68] In an open letter, social critic and feminist Naomi Wolf criticized Bigelow for claiming the film was "part documentary" and speculated over the reasons for Bigelow's "amoral compromising" of film-making, suggesting that the more pro-military a film, the easier it is to acquire Pentagon support for scenes involving expensive, futuristic military equipment. Wolf likened Bigelow to the acclaimed director and propagandist for the Nazi regime, Leni Riefenstahl, saying: "Like Riefenstahl, you are a great artist. But now you will be remembered forever as torture's handmaiden."[69] Author Karen Joy Greenberg wrote that "Bigelow has bought in, hook, line, and sinker, to the ethos of the Bush administration and its apologists" and called the film "the perfect piece of propaganda, with all the appeal that naked brutality, fear, and revenge can bring".[70] Peter Maass of The Atlantic said the film "represents a troubling new frontier of government-embedded filmmaking".[71]

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, who has published The Dark Side, a book about the use of torture during the Bush administration, criticized the film, saying that Bigelow was

"milk[ing] the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked". She said: by "excising the moral debate that raged over the interrogation program during the Bush years, the film also seems to accept almost without question that the CIA's 'enhanced interrogation techniques' played a key role in enabling the agency to identify the courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden."[72]

The author Greg Mitchell wrote that "the film's depiction of torture helping to get bin Laden is muddled at best – but the overall impression by the end, for most viewers, probably will be: Yes, torture played an important (if not the key) role."[73] Filmmaker Alex Gibney called the film a "stylistic masterwork" but criticized the "irresponsible and inaccurate" depiction of torture, writing:

"there is no cinematic evidence in the film that EITs led to false information – lies that were swallowed whole because of the misplaced confidence in the efficacy of torture. Most students of this subject admit that torture can lead to the truth. But what Boal/Bigelow fail to show is how often the CIA deluded itself into believing that torture was a magic bullet, with disastrous results."[74]

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in an article for The Guardian, criticized what he perceived a "normalization" of torture in the film, arguing that the mere neutrality on an issue many see as revolting is already a type of endorsement per se. Žižek proposed that if a similar film was made about a brutal rape or the Holocaust, such a movie would "embody a deeply immoral fascination with its topic, or it would count on the obscene neutrality of its style to engender dismay and horror in spectators." Žižek further panned Bigelow's stance of coldly presenting the issue in a rational manner, instead of being dogmatically rejected as a repulsive, unethical proposition.[75]

The journalist Steve Coll, who has written on foreign policy, national security and the bin Laden family, criticized the filmmakers for saying the film was "journalistic", which implies that it is based in fact. At the same time, they claimed artistic license, which he described "as an excuse for shoddy reporting about a subject as important as whether torture had a vital part in the search for bin Laden".[34] Coll wrote that "arguably, the film's degree of emphasis on torture's significance goes beyond what even the most die-hard defenders of the CIA interrogation regime [...] have argued", as he said it was shown as critical at several points.[34]

U.S. Senator John McCain, who was tortured during his time as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, said upon watching the film that it left him sick – "because it's wrong". In a speech in the Senate, he said, "Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information."[76] McCain and fellow senators Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin sent a critical letter to Michael Lynton, chairman of the film's distributor, Sony Pictures Entertainment, stating, "[W]ith the release of Zero Dark Thirty, the filmmakers and your production studio are perpetuating the myth that torture is effective. You have a social and moral obligation to get the facts right."[77]

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Billions of taxpayer dollars over ten years to kill one man. What a joke. And all because Bush gave the Taliban 30 days grace period to turn over Bin Laden. If he had bombed Kabul on 9/11, or dropped in 50 special ops guys, he could have killed 'em all....Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. Instead, we've squandered tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives for nothing. And Zawahiri and Omar are just waiting it out until we leave. I'm sure they'll appreciate the upgrades in accomodations we've provided for their return.

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Originally posted by G:


We saw different films. You saw the film that a lot of Amerika haters saw. That's fine, that film exists, I just get pissed when they think they are the only ones that own that hatred, that the overwhelming percent of the US must love it and think it's rah rah glory filmmaking. Many of us do not - again, FOX isn't the majority.

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And just curious.. you know that the Team America was scathing satire right?

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
We saw the same film, we just have different opinions of it.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Hey Magons,

Yeah, that is so not the movie I saw. How does all that square with Ms. Bigelow's own professed pacifism? Is she lying? Totally incompetent as a film maker? A pathetic, greedy sellout?

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No idea. Is that for me to guess at? Shouldn't a film stand alone without having a film maker profess to certain views?

You seem to imply that I have missed certain undertones to the film that make the narrative some sort of anti war, anti intelligence movie. Yes, I did miss all that, if it existed, but I'm not the only one.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I know that this film was a critical success, and I think it is technically well done. I just felt very strong revulsion at it, and its abhorent morality. I disagree with previous posters who claim that the film depicts events without endorsing them. Filmmakers use their craft to demonstrate their own implicit values around events, even documentary film makers do this. Some do it like hitting you on the head with a hammer "this is what you should think audience" and some do it with subtlety, but the filmmakers own moral perspective is always at the heart of any film. To believe that a film simply depicts events and that the filmmaker has no part in constructing a narrative within a moral framework is naive thinking.

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Originally posted by Storymark:


So, by that "logic" Steven Spielberg is a Nazi sympathizer, and David Fincher endorses serial killing.

What a silly way to approach the world.

Again - just depicting that it happened (quick point of fact: it DID happen) does not mean they endorse it. Its overly simplistic and frankly stupid to insist otherwise.

Pretending it did not happen - denying the ugly reality of it - would be more harmful, I feel.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

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Originally posted by Storymark:


So, by that "logic" Steven Spielberg is a Nazi sympathizer, and David Fincher endorses serial killing.

What a silly way to approach the world.

Again - just depicting that it happened (quick point of fact: it DID happen) does not mean they endorse it. Its overly simplistic and frankly stupid to insist otherwise.

Pretending it did not happen - denying the ugly reality of it - would be more harmful, I feel.

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You seem unable to understand how filmmakers construct narratives. None of them 'just' depict events. They choose how to tell a story and the values that they hold are implicit or explicit in their storytelling.

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Originally posted by G:


Of course we literally saw the same film, but we each brought different backgrounds with us so we interpreted it differently. Just like the critics we each quoted. They were on different sides of the torture discussion - lots of smart people all very certain of what they saw and yet not in agreement. It's more like an inkblot test.
I'm guessing that the majority of people who hate Amerika would have the same reaction to the film you had. Do you hate the US? You tell me? You could just hate the popular media version of the US that you see from where you live - I'm not sure what that looks like but I know other countries can focus on the negative aspects of the US (to be fair, we make it easy and they run with it).

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Aw geez.

Schindler's List was made nearly 50 years after the events it depicts. Production on ZDT was begun less than two years after the death of OBL! There is no way in hell a Schindler's List could have been made in 1947 and not because the American people would have been too squeamish. It's just the nature of art and human beings; processing these kinds of atrocities takes time. Movies about the first decade of the 21st century will be a lot more polished and morally settled in 50 years, I promise.

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The full extent of collaboration between the CIA and the makers of the movie Zero Dark Thirty has been revealed in a memo obtained by website gawker.com using America's freedom-of-information laws.

The three-page internal memo details a series of discussions between the CIA's Office of Public Affairs – essentially its PR unit – and screenwriter Mark Boal in which the agency requested changes to the script. Of the four direct requests for change, Boal acceded to three.

From an Agency perspective, the purpose for these discussions was to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Laden operation.

The memo is a record of five conference calls between October 26 and December 5, 2011, in which Boal ''verbally shared the screenplay'' of Kathryn Bigelow's movie about the hunt for, and assassination of, Osama bin Laden.

The memo notes that ''from an Agency perspective, the purpose for these discussions was for DPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin [sic] operation''.
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Not everything contained in the memo has been revealed. Its author notes that Boal was advised ''to be mindful'' of using character names that were ''very similar'' to the names of real-life agents in the field. This is followed by a large slab of redacted text, presumably in which the specific names of concern were noted.

Next, the memo notes an issue of veracity around the opening scene in which the film's central character, Maya (Jessica Chastain), is present for an interrogation using various torture techniques. In the movie as released, Maya does not participate in the interrogation, but the memo suggests that is not how the scene was originally written.

''For this scene we emphasised that substantive debriefers did not administer EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques – that is, torture] because in scene he had a non-interrogator, substantive debriefer [that is, Maya] assisting in a dosing [that is, waterboarding] technique.''

The memo adds that ''Boal said he would fix this''.

As Gawker's Adrian Chen notes, the significance of that change is enormous.

''The decision to have Maya abstain from the torture was as significant artistically as it was factually,'' Chen writes. ''Her ambivalence was a key part of her character, and critics picked over every detail of the torture scenes, including Maya's status as an observer rather than a participant, for meaning in the debate over torture that the movie sparked.''

The memo also noted objections to an interrogation scene in which a dog was used, arguing that ''such tactics would not be used by the Agency''.

Again the filmmakers were more than accommodating – ''Boal confirmed ... that the use of dogs was taken out of the screenplay'' – despite the well-documented use of dogs to harass prisoners at Abu Ghraib. (Admittedly, Abu Ghraib was under military control, though CIA officers were involved in interrogations there.)

Another scene of concern that was removed from the screenplay involved a CIA officer firing rounds from an AK-47 after drinking at a rooftop party in Islamabad. ''We insisted mixing drinking and firearms is a major violation and actions like this do not happen in real life.''

Once more, ''Boal confirmed he took this out of the film''.

The one point on which Boal stood his ground was the film's inclusion of scenes in which Maya pores over videotaped interrogations in search of any clue that might have been previously missed. ''We made the point ... that detainee sessions were not videotaped and used for research and analysis,'' the memo notes.

This assertion flies in the face of the revelation in the US District Court that in 2005 the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of post-9/11 interrogations of suspects, in direct violation of a judge's order in 2004 that it produce said tapes for the court.

Boal did object to this point, but not on grounds of veracity – rather, because including such a scene was dramatically convenient. ''He said he understood [interviews were not taped] but visually this is the only way to show research in an interesting cinematic way. We understood but reiterated this didn't happen. We did not request Boal take this scene out of the movie.''

It is possible to read that last exchange as a polite dance designed to save face on both sides while allowing for an outcome that more accurately mirrors the ''known knowns'' of Donald Rumsfeld's famous equation. But the acquiescence to the agency's more egregiously disingenuous demands raises real concerns about how far the filmmakers were willing to go in order to secure the CIA's collaboration and, ultimately, tacit endorsement of Zero Dark Thirty.

Raha Wala, a lawyer with anti-torture organisation Human Rights First, has called the revelation ''the latest in a long line of concerning suggestions that the CIA is trying rewrite history about these so-called enhanced interrogation programs''.

The release of the memo comes a day after a group of civil liberties groups sent a letter to US President Barack Obama urging him to ensure the CIA did not exert undue influence over the White House response to last month's Senate inquiry into the treatment of detainees, which found ''indisputable'' evidence of torture approved at the highest levels.

''As the primary agency under review, the CIA should of course be able to review and provide feedback on the Committee's report,'' the signatories to the letter wrote. ''But it is important the agency's view not be submitted without an independent analysis from other parts of the Executive Branch.

''Most importantly, your administration has a responsibility to ensure that the Executive Branch response to the study is not driven by individuals who might be implicated in the CIA's use of torture.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/cia-vetted-scenes-in-zer
o-dark-thirty-memo-20130508-2j7ft.html#ixzz2SgGDjrPt

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Raha Wala, a lawyer with anti-torture organisation Human Rights First, has called the revelation ''the latest in a long line of concerning suggestions that the CIA is trying rewrite history about these so-called enhanced interrogation programs''.

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