re context for Slothrop's interrogation, sexual/racial fears, & etc.

[pynchonoid]

THE GRAY ZONE

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.

Issue of 2004-05-24
Posted 2004-05-15

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie no  in
the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservist  but
in a decision, approved last year by Secretary o 
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secre 
operation, which had been focussed on the hunt fo  Al
Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq 
Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the America 
intelligence community, damaged the effectivenes  of
élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospect  in
the war on terror. 

According to interviews with several past and present
American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s
operation, known inside the intelligence community by
several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged
physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi
prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence
about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A.
official, in confirming the details of this account
last week, said that the operation stemmed from
Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of
America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from
the C.I.A. 

[...] The notion that Arabs are particularly
vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking
point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the
months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One
book that was frequently cited was “The Arab Mind,” a
study of Arab culture and psychology, first published
in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist
who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and
Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a
twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting
sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. “The
segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . .
. and all the other minute rules that govern and
restrict contact between men and women, have the
effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in
the Arab world,” Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, “or
any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all
other expressions of sexuality, is never given any
publicity. These are private affairs and remain in
private.” The Patai book, an academic told me, was
“the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.” In their
discussions, he said, two themes emerged—“one, that
Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest
weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation.” [...] 

...read it all:
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact





	
		
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