Pull the plug on torture by music

Many still think torture by music is merely a rather irritating encounter with someone else's iPod, but its effects can be far more insidious than physical pain.

According to American military authorities, God Himself first wrote the strategy of “Torture by Music” into the field manual, turning the amplifier up to Eleven on the enemy.

Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Dan Kuehl teaches psychological operations, or PSYOPS, at Fort McNair’s National Defense University.

“Joshua's army used horns to strike fear into the hearts of the people of Jericho,” Kuehl opined to the St. Petersburg Times. “His men might not have been able to break down literal walls with their trumpets. But . . . the noise eroded the enemies’ courage. Maybe those psychological walls were what really crumbled.”

Fuck your god and his righteous hatred.
You and your son, you are nothing but absence,
Something not there that controls this planet,
Only deceit do I see in your hallow
If you believe you will dwell in failure.
Fuck Your God…
--Deicide, 'Fuck Your God' (played at prisoners in Iraq, ranked No. 1 on “Torture Playlist”)

It is not clear that God Himself would approve of the entire US playlist. That said, the proponents of torture by music doubtless think that they have come a long way since the early Nineties, when the FBI amplified loud music at the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. Then the repertoire included Sing-along-with-Mitch Miller Christmas carols, an Andy Williams album, and 'These Boots are Made for Walking' by Nancy Sinatra. The idea was to wear the members of the sect down until they gave themselves up. I surrendered just reading the selection.

No matter however unpleasant it may be to have such tunes blasted at your compound, bringing the music into an enclosed interrogation cell was a quantum leap in PSYOPS. Nonetheless, in the strange lexicon of twenty-first-century America, the US military calls this “Torture Lite”. Torture is apparently okay if it is not too “heavy”.

Some bands would not appreciate their music being described as “lite”. Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ has been played at cacophonous levels for hours on end both in Guantánamo Bay and in a detention centre on the Iraqi-Syrian border. One Iraqi prisoner said it was done at “an unidentified location called ‘the Disco.’”

Unfortunately, though annoyed by the "lite" label, some artists are not offended by its use to torture. “If the Iraqis aren’t used to freedom, then I’m glad to be part of their exposure,” James Hetfield, co-founder of Metallica, told his American National Public Radio host. As for his music being torture, he laughed. “We’ve been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?”

Such posturing may go with the territory for an artist of the Metallica genre, so there is no need to speculate about whether Mr. Hetfield is being naïve or willfully ignorant. No sane person voluntarily plays one tune at earsplitting volume, over and over, 24 hours a day, and expects to maintain his sanity.

Despite this, to date the Pentagon’s semanticists have achieved their purpose, and many think torture by music is little more than a rather irritating enforced encounter with someone else’s iPod. To the contrary, the Spanish Inquisition would certainly have used music if only they had invented the sub-woofer in the sixteenth century.

Binyam Mohamed, the British resident still held in Guantánamo Bay, knows a bit about torture. The CIA rendered him to Morocco, where his torturers repeatedly took a razor blade to his penis over an 18-month ordeal. When I later sat across from him in the cell, he described how the PSYOPS methods were far worse. He could anticipate physical pain, he said, and know that the pain would eventually come to an end. The experience of slipping into madness as a result of torture by music and other psychological techniques was something quite different in degree.

Talking about his suffering, he asked: “Imagine, that you are given a choice: Lose your sight or lose your mind?” While having your eyes gouged out would be horrendous, there is little doubt which you would choose. Binyam remains in Guantánamo, and the US military will decide, probably within two weeks, whether to go forward with a military commission, based on ‘evidence’ tortured out of him. He is now on hunger strike, so despondent that he would choose to starve himself to death rather than remain in his Cuban black hole.

Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
Pray the lord my soul to take
--Metallica, 'Enter Sandman' (played at prisoners in Iraq)

To those who have the misfortune to study torture, all this is old hat. Members of the IRA interned in the 1970s recall the use loud noise piped into the cells as the worst aspect of their ordeal.

It seems that the US military is intent on ignoring the lessons of history. One Guantánamo interrogator blithely estimated that it would take about four days to ‘break’ someone, if the interrogation sessions were interspersed with strobe lights and loud music. ‘Break’ is another euphemism bandied about among torturers, as if ‘breaking’ a person was some kind of psychological truth serum. Of course the ‘results’ you get from a ‘broken’ prisoner have little to do with truth.

Beyond pure barbarism, there are various reasons music torture fails in its ambition. As has ever been true in this ‘War on Terror,’ there is a total disconnect between the purported goal of the American forces (here, “actionable intelligence”), and the methods used to achieve that goal. An order comes down from on high, from a Bush bureaucrat who has a bright idea, and it is left to soldiers in the field to use their imagination.

The love that I was giving you was never in doubt.
And feel it now. Let go your heart, let go your head, and feel it now.
David Gray, 'Babylon' (played at Abu Ghraib, Iraq)

How some bored soldiers came up with 'Babylon' as a torture track defies rational analysis. Sometimes, as with Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA', people simply misunderstand the meaning of the lyrics. Ronald Reagan did the same thing in 1984 when he tried to co-opt this hymn about government betrayal of Vietnam veterans as a patriotic anthem to get himself re-elected.

Sometimes the selections are wryly appropriate for prisoners being held without trial for years on end:
I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime
– Queen, 'We Are the Champions' (played at Camp Cropper, Iraq)

Some unwittingly give voice to what must be the prisoners’ inner thoughts:
Killing in the name of!
Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses
***
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Motherfucker! Uggh!
-- Rage Against the Machine, 'Killing in the Name Of' (played at Guantánamo Bay)

Inevitably, when poorly trained interrogators are encouraged to let their imaginations soar, they veer towards their own idiosyncratic perversions. One budding Emcee (‘Master of Coercion’?) artfully mixed the sound of crying babies (which humans seem hardwired to abhor) with the television commercial for Meow Mix cat food, a jingle sung by melodic moggies:

Meow meow meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow meow meow
-- Later version of the Meow Mix jingle (played at Guantánamo)

I must be honest and admit that I have yet to establish which version of the lyrics they used. Originally the cats sang, “I want tuna, I want chicken, Meow Mix flavours keep me lickin’.” Another time they went with, “I like chicken, I like liver! Meow Mix! Meow Mix! Please deliver!”

Ultimately, though, the most overused torture song is Barney the Purple Dinosaur. The lyrics may seem deeply inappropriate on their face:
I love you, you love me -- we're a happy family.
With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you,
Won't you say you love me too?
Barney (played in US military PSYOPS training, as well as in Iraq, and in Guantánamo)

But anyone whose child watches the programme will know its terrible power.

All this is called ‘Futility Music’ in the trade – the torture trade, that is. The thesis is that earsplitting Western music will convince the prisoner of the futility of maintaining his position. Perhaps one day the Pentagon will recognise which foot the futility shoe fits.

Meanwhile, for those musicians who oppose the use of music to torture fellow human beings, it’s time for them to make some noise on their own account. President Bush is coming to London on his valedictory tour of Europe this Sunday. As fortune has planned it, his visit coincides both with the urgent crisis in Binyam Mohamed’s case, and with the Meltdown festival curated by Massive Attack (focusing on torture by music).

Some well-known people will be joining Reprieve to put on a side show to welcome President Bush: readers of this article can predict at least some of the playlist. It is one way of reminding Mr. Bush and and his host Gordon Brown that they should discuss the immediate return of British resident Binyam Mohamed to London.

Guardian readers are welcome to check the website for plans (www.reprieve.org.uk).

If it’s a hit, the next step is clearly a variation on the compilation discs that have plagued us for a generation. It will be titled Now that’s what I call Torture, President Bush’s selection of eight songs he would take to a Desert Island, blasted at him for all eternity.

This article also appeared in the Guardian newspaper.