Taxi to the Dark Side. Came to mind today. Tragic story early on in Afghanistan.

[madfloridian]

I had forgotten that Alex Gibney of Going Clear on HBO also directed one of the most tragic films about our torture in Iraq. It was about a man called Dilowar.

Taxi to the Dark Side and the 2002 death of taxi-driver Dilawar in Bagram.

From Brave New Films:

Jonathan 'DJK' Kim reviews the documentary 'Taxi to the Dark Side'.

Alex Gibney's Oscar-winning documentary 'Taxi to the Dark Side' tells the story of the Bush administration's torture policy through the case of Dilawar, an Afghani taxi driver with no ties to Al Qaeda who was tortured to death while in US custody at Bagram prison.

Here is a trailer. I can't find the whole documentary online except as a DVD at Amazon.

From NPR's Oath Betrayed. More about Dilawar's death and how his family was told of it.

'Oath Betrayed' Questions Doctors' Roles in Torture

Dilawar was a twenty-two-year-old farmer and taxi driver, whom American soldiers tortured to death over five days at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in December 2002. When the soldiers pulled a sandbag over his head, Dilawar complained that he could not breathe. He was then shackled and suspended from his arms for hours, denied water, and beaten so severely that his legs would have been amputated had he survived. When he was beaten with a baton, he would cry "Allah, Allah!," which guards found so amusing that they beat him some more just to hear him cry. During his final interrogation, soldiers told the delirious, injured prisoner that he would get medical attention after the session. Instead, he was returned to a cell and chained to the ceiling. Several hours later, a physician found him dead. By then, the interrogators had concluded that Dilawar was innocent and had simply been picked up after driving his new taxi by the wrong place at the wrong time.

Dilawar's death was predictable and preventable. The counterintelligence team was inexperienced; only two of its thirteen soldiers had ever conducted interrogations before arriving in Afghanistan. The officers knew that President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld had ruled that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Afghanistan. The interrogation policies were unclear. The base commander had ignored Red Cross protests about the treatment of prisoners, including the practice of suspending them. Army and intelligence officers who knew of the ongoing pattern of abuses at the Bagram facility did not intervene to stop them. In fact, another prisoner, Habibullah, had died at the same facility under similar circumstances six days before Dilawar's death.

An autopsy on December 13 found that Dilawar's death was a homicide, caused by extensive and severe "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease" (inexplicably, "coronary artery disease" is typed on the death certificate in a different font). The Pentagon reported that the prisoner died of natural causes. Later, a coroner testified that Dilawar's legs were "pulpified" and that the body looked as if it had been "run over by a truck." Soldiers delivered the body and an English-language death certificate to his wife and two daughters in January 2003. The family could not read English.

Later in February, reporters went to Dilawar's village and located his family, who had the copy of the death certificate stating that Dilawar had died of homicidal injuries. The reporters confronted General McNeil with the death certificate that had been given to the family and asked him to explain why he had told reporters that Dilawar died a natural death of heart disease. General McNeil said that he always gave press the "best information available to him.

The words of Garrison Keillor in 2006 summed it up well....and tragically.

Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. Early on in Afghanistan you mean? nt

[madfloridian]

2. Yes. Thank you.

Did not even notice it until you mentioned it. Corrected.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

5. Sure. As always, I enjoy reading your posts. nt

[Blue_In_AK]

3. That was a heart-wrenching movie.

[madfloridian]

6. It really was hard to watch.

[madfloridian]

4. On a lighter note...I plan to watch Gibney's 2 night Frank Sinatra special April 5,6 HBO

'Sinatra: All or Nothing at All' review: Alex Gibney's documentary on HBO is a fine, largely positive portrait

The Jersey kid set his sights on becoming the next Bing Crosby, biggest singer in the world, and “All or Nothing” says he did it.

We follow his music from teen heartthrob to fully accredited saloon singer, pondering life at closing time in the neighborhood bar.

That image may not have fit all of Sinatra’s well-appointed jet-set life, but happily, Gibney also includes Pete Hamill’s fascinating remembrance of driving around New York at night in Sinatra’s limo, musing on life.

Gibney covers the Mob stuff. He also suggests that in both his personal and professional life, Sinatra left a legacy of tolerance and color-blindness that opened doors and maybe some minds.

[rhett o rick]

7. This should be required reading or viewing for every American.

This story is a good example of why I am pissed at our Pres for dismissing torture as "some folks did it but they were scared." Frack that shit.

[madfloridian]

8. Different prices for video at Amazon...most below 10 including shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B001BEK8FQ

Doesn't seem to be available online as the full documentary.

If you are boycotting Amazon, not sure where else to look.