May 21, 2004

• Something I need to share (dump):
  
  
  Rough afternoon here, full of ups and downs.  A couple of brief
  power outages lost me unsaved writing on the computer and some unsaved
  gaming time on the PS2 where I’d gone for a break after losing my work
  at the computer.

  Then, a definite up.  I had been unable for unknown reasons to
  send or receive email for several days.  The problem started the
  day Greyfox had been home and had blogged.  Doug and I just
  figured it was the Niels Bohr effect (Greyfox’s “Mr. Breakit”
  talent–I’m Ms. Fixit), and either it would fix itself or one of us
  would gird the loins and call tech support.  When I restarted the
  comp after the outage, email worked.

  After that, I got a bump that sent me in a different direction,
  sideways I suppose.  Regular readers here might have noticed that
  I sometimes quote Brian Kenny or repost announcements or articles that
  I’ve received from him in his Got Caliche? newsletter of Southwestern
  Archaeology.  The only way I can appropriately share this “misc
  note” from the backed-up flood of email that just came in is in its
  entirety.

  (not anthropology)

  a personal, highly graphic note

  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pwgers/message/118607 (propwash gang) From: bones@aztecfreenet.org
  (Brian Kenny) Date: Wed May 5, 2004 3:42 pm Subject: Fairchild pow
  interrogation training: I served in special intelligence units during
  and after the end of the Vietnam war era and flew combat crew missions
  throughout Asia. Flyboy training was interesting. After attending
  several air crew survival, and Escape and Evasion (EE) schools, I wound
  up at “Fairchild” in the pow camp. I saw airmen jumping up and down on
  an American flag and urinating on it — the camp guards had them doing
  it under duress.

  I was sleep deprived and starved. Put into a small box upside down,
  somehow I figured out how to turn right side up. So they took me out
  and sleep deprived me some more. And then they locked me in a black box
  in which I could not stand up straight, nor sit down. I remember
  hallucinating that there was a cot in the corner of the black, dark
  room, and I kept trying to lie down. The guards were laughing at me
  because they heard me as I kept banging my head in to the wall where I
  thought an army cot was situated.

  Sometime later, a slot opened at the bottom of the door. I was ordered
  to bend over, and stick out both of my hands. The guards put a metal
  canteen cup in my hands, and poured in a dribble of gruel, a sardine
  fish head and some broth. When I tried to retrieve the cup, I found I
  could not pull it through the door because the old-fashioned metal
  canteen cup was too tall and the slot was too low. I put my hand over
  the top of the cup, turned it sideways and pulled it through the slot,
  losing about half of “my food” on the floor. One of the guards bellowed
  “Hey look at this stupid animal. He thinks he is clever.” And he kept
  repeatedly yelling “Animal!” at me through the locked door. As long as
  he was on the other side what the fuck did I care?

  They then took me out of the box and made me stand naked in a cold room
  for several hours and continued to yell at me. They ridiculed my body
  shape and my sex organs. Every time I fell over they threatened me and
  made me stand up again. I then was dressed and sent to special
  interrogation. An American air force officer of Hawaiian descent
  (didn’t know that at the time) was dressed as a North Korean officer.
  He interrogated me in Korean… “Kegup moyah? Irum moyah?” (What’s your
  rank? name?) etc, using bellicose language. He then made me sit on a
  pointed wobbly stool that poked into my ass. He ranted at me and
  accused me of fostering bastard children (not true), and he accused me
  of homosexual sex (not true). He was yelling and screaming and shaking
  in my face, and then, I lost it and just started laughing out loud. He
  got so mad and flustered, he punched me in the face and broke my nose,
  and knocked me down. I was dripping blood in rivulets down my chin and
  on my shirt.

  The interrogation was halted and a real air force flight surgeon was
  summoned into the room to inspect me. He declared that my nose was
  broken but that I was “OK.” I received no medical treatment. Instead,
  the guards took me to the prison camp yard and stuffed me down into a
  small hole underground until the prison camp was “liberated” several
  hours later and I was freed to American custody.

   In the end, they told me that this is what would happen to me –
  but only worse — if I got “shot down” due to hostile action, or had to
  “bail out” over hostile or denied territory. I sometimes think about
  those terribly realistic training days in the “POW camp,” as well as my
  combat crew air missions (ancient flying history), and I’ve come to the
  conclusion that those interrogators actually enjoyed their work just a
  bit more than too much. And whether it’s the Screw running the prison
  cell, or the Airman flying the impersonal mission, or the Grunt in the
  LZ, it is quite easy to de-humanize others…

  Brian Kenny (former USAF SS, decorated; 6990th / 6903rd)…

  Brian W. Kenny
  Applied Anthropologist
  MBA International Management

  Doctoral Candidate (Class of 2005)
  CWRU Weatherhead School of Management
  weatherhead.cwru.edu/edm/; bwk5@cwru.edu

  Southwestern Archaeology, Inc.
  602.697.5754 (w/voicemail); 602.372.8539 fax
  www.swanet.org; archaeologist@rocketmail.com

  My own experiences in prison and among outlaw bikers confirm
  Brian’s conclusion about how easy it is to dehumanize others. 
  We’ve seen it recently at Abu Ghraib prison and in the video of Nick
  Berg’s beheading.  We’re animals, yes?  Maybe some of you
  have the luxury of denying it, but I’ve had the beast brought out in
  me.  I know how close to the surface it lurks.

  

  • 11:22 pm
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