Yep, it is another one of those Iraq and Afghanistan documentaries. I know the burnout rate is high on these, which is probably why I almost did not bother, but nothing else was showing. Man, was I happy I saw this! It has rekindled my hate for the Bush administration, which had turned to apathy over the last year. This tells the story of an Afghani taxi driver that is mistakenly picked up as a Taliban supporter, but before they find out he was innocent, he has been beaten to death by his American torturers.
This film has interviews from all of the guards that were responsible, JAG officers, FBI people, CIA agents on the ground etc. And you see that all of the blame lies with Ashcroft and the Bushies, who gave one vague order after another that they wanted confessions and they wanted them quickly, with a wink and a nod about what kind of methods to use. So you have these frustrated high school drop-outs presiding over these people thousands of miles from anywhere, and they won't confess. So, beatings and humiliations follow. And when the crap comes out, the Bush administration passes a bill that absolves all higher-ups from any responsibility and they start to bust the enlisted men and women, who were following orders. Pathetic. Of course, we also find out that over 95% of the prisoners being held, were captured by Pakistanis and Northern Alliance people, WHO were paid by the US government for each person they turned over, guilty or not guilty. And you wonder why meaningful confessions were so hard to come by. It reminds me of the scene from Full Metal Jacket, where the psycho army guy shoots the Vietnamese farmers from his helicopter. He says the ones that run are VC, the ones that don't run are well trained VC. Very tragic.
