silent sounds?

November 6, 2004 12:59 PM

Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib , and Matchbox Twenty
posted by Espoo2 (9 comments total)

Prostitutes were flown in from the US - he doesn't know whether they were there to smear their menstrual blood on the faces of the more devout detainees. Or perhaps they were brought in to have sex with the soldiers, and some psychological operations (PsyOps) boffin - a resident cultural analyst - devised this other job for them as an afterthought, exploiting the resources at the army's disposal.

"One or two of the British guys," Jamal told me, "said to the guards, 'Can we have the women?' But the guards said, 'No, no, no. The prostitutes are for the detainees who don't actually want them.' They explained it to us: 'If you want it, it's not going to work on you.' "

"So what were the prostitutes doing to the detainees?" I asked.

"Just messing about with their genitals," said Jamal. "Stripping off in front of them. Rubbing their breasts in their faces. Not all the guys would speak. They'd come back from the Brown Block [the interrogation block] and be quiet for days and cry to themselves, so you know something went on, but you don't know what. But for the guys who did speak, that's what we heard."


these Pentagon guys must have watched too many Girls-Gone-Wild videos

on the other hand, the Bashir anecdote is priceless
posted by matteo at 1:05 PM on November 6, 2004

Uh, name three things that suck?
posted by psmealey at 2:14 PM on November 6, 2004

posted by keswick at 2:27 PM on November 6, 2004

read part one of the series of articles here

part two here
posted by sunexplodes at 3:24 PM on November 6, 2004

he describes the discordant sounds and apparently random music played to him

Sounds like my house.
posted by srboisvert at 4:14 PM on November 6, 2004

id crack after ten minutes of matchbox twenty. i dont know what the big mystery is.
posted by tsarfan at 7:57 PM on November 6, 2004

Here's a link to the First Earth Battalion Manual that he references.
posted by dejah420 at 8:22 PM on November 6, 2004

Jon Ronson is my hero.
posted by ph00dz at 9:09 PM on November 6, 2004

I don't think you have to be a 'conspiracy nut' to think it's reasonable that techniques involving subaural sounds might be used on prisoners. But it sounds to me like the soldier who played those CDs had realized that the prisoner didn't belong there, and was just trying to be nice.
posted by bingo at 8:29 AM on November 7, 2004