In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse
By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL
Published: March 19, 2006
As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
In June 2004, Stephen A. Cambone, a top Pentagon official, ordered his deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, to look into allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Nama.
In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.
Yeah, real smart, guys, torture people to get info when you KNOW that it doesn't work and they'll give you a bunch of crap.
The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it."
According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.
Oh, but we don't torture people! We shoot them with paintball guns, beat them, basically treat them like animals, but it's not torture! And we HAVE to so we can get information! Ticking time bomb! WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM?!
Seriously, you know that they're going to start trying to either cover this up or cover their own asses by calling these people "isolated cases" and "not under orders".
Sooner or later, you just know that all this torture stuff's gonna end up biting them on the ass somehow. The insurgents are going to get pissed off about this and more people are probably going to die, Iraqi and American alike. I hate that. I wish that wasn't the case. But it's going to happen, I'm sure of that.
If there was some magic wand I could wave over this war and make it end, if I could bring all the troops home and give Iraq whatever it wants and needs, if I could fix all the problems we have right now, oh, you KNOW I would...
...but I can't. That's why I do this - short of magic, all I have is this one voice. And I'm gonna use it.
