June/July 2005: Avram Grumer wrote the first chapter and I wrote the rest at Making Light. 25k text-file. Creative Commons rights reserved.
1.The Gulag that can be told is not the true Gulag. The Nazi that can be named is not the true Nazi. Free from the Gitmo, you see only the manifestations. Caught in the Gitmo, you realize the mystery. Yet Gulag and Gitmo arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.2.
Thirty naked detainees join in a pile: information is where detainees are. You cannot open doors and windows in Gitmo where there is a detainee, for open doors and windows cannot detain. Interrogators have no information. Detainees have information.3.
Hoods blind people's eyes. Christina Aguilera deafens their ears. Sleep obstructs interrogation. Having information crazes people's minds and makes you want to attach wires to their genitals. Therefore interrogators desecrate the Koran and do not release Zyklon B gas. Unending suspense.4.
Interrogation is like water: it benefits all, and does so whoever the detainee is. Where it dwells becomes good ground. Detention is the good in its heart. Ignorance the good it bestows. Not having information is trustworthiness. Only by not knowing anything is the right to interrogate reserved.5.
To harvest information is not as good as interrogation. Calculated sharpness does not stay as long as detainees. Though warrants fill his house, vacationing presidents cannot implement searches.6.
A prisoner who is detained is the foundation of dominance. A detainee is kept in a room. That is how we know we are free. His accusers owe him no explanation and their biases answer to no one.7.
Detainees are not humane. They may die harboring information. Information is not humane. They reside in detainees, who die inconveniently. Promise to let detainees go again and again. But keep them detained anyway just in case.8.
The interrogator is married to his wife. They are heterosexual.
The interrogator's wife confuses him. He is not her interrogator.
If the interrogator's wife starts, she will never stop talking to him. That is a lot of information to not detain.9.
As the interrogator leaves for work his wife says, "If you are going to be late for dinner, do not even bother coming back through that door."
He considers the benefit of taking her offer without even saying a word. The closer he gets to the door, the he is less certain he will return.
Yet another thing the interrogator does not know: going without returning, divorcing without striving.10.
The interrogator propositions daily the United Nations inspector. Refusing him, she loses daily her opportunity to find torture.
Losing and losing, thus the interrogator reaches noncontrivance. Be uncontrived and rejection can be turned to your benefit.
Taking the United Nations inspector would be easy. The interrogator's meaty paws can break her arms like dry spaghetti.
But when keeping the United Nations inspector from the detainees, allowing her to reject your advances is enough.
11.The interrogator's wife did not get custody of her daughter after the divorce. She cheated on her first husband with a young interrogator.
The interrogator's wife had visitation during the separation, but she mistakenly moved in with the interrogator. The interrogator taught his future wife's daughter how to break the arm of someone choking her.
A boy was teasing her about her parents. She punched him in the crotch for his intimidation. The interrogator was ruled liable, and custody went to her father.
Girls on whom boys impose must suffer in silence or else they are labeled difficult.12.
The wife of the interrogator works at the base commissary and was ordered by the court to pay child support.
Her ex-husband married a Cuban cigar-roller, and filed to retire from the military. The Cuban cigar-roller's thighs are stained and flabby from her career rolling cigars on them.
Thus Catholic girls with a career handling phalluses endure no shortage of suitors.
The cigar-roller saved painted cigar boxes for her and her previous boyfriend. Her family found them when their basement flooded and the boxes started floating away. Her family decided to leave Cuba on a raft of painted cigar boxes. She wanted to wait for Pedro.
Pedro was jailed for punching an umpire who called his strike a ball. After his release, the Yankees learned of Pedro and flew him at his request to America without his faithful cigar-roller. He beat a Mary Marvel-themed transvestite hooker and was deported.
13.The ex-husband tells the wife of the interrogator he is going take their daughter to Miami. He is going to open a Dairy Queen franchise.
Their daughter is turning 16 this year. Parents at Gitmo typically send their daughters to relatives in the States by 9. The wife of the interrogator cannot disagree with her ex-husband.
When her ex-husband takes away her daughter the interrogator's wife will have to pay child support no longer.14.
Incarceration is eternal, the insurgency is everlasting. Detainees not charged of a crime may be held endlessly. Prisoners randomly incarcerated give you no information. Where no information is gathered, interrogation can last forever. Interrogators have no information. They interrogate, and are not interrogated. Is it not by their very selflessness that interrogators manage to not know anything?15.
Should you double-over a detainee to shackle him, you must stretch him out over a rail. Should you drive him from the shelter of his faith, you must encourage -- with women, nudity, and pornography strong erections. Should you want him to itch for 58 minute, you must grant him 2 minutes to scratch. These are subtle tortures. How much more severe the torture is when the detainee only has his word it even takes place.16.
When quarantining detainees, the world goes on and on without harm, peaceful, even, tranquil. Where there is music and dining, detainees are removed. But the issue of interrogation is so plain as to be flavorless. Their children cannot see them. Their wives cannot hear them. Detention cannot be exhausted.17.
Disregarding information is essential to sustain interrogation.
"I know where Osama bin Laden is," says one detainee.
"We are tracking him by GPS," says a clever detainee to the interrogator.
"I know where to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction."
"I know where al-Qaida keeps their largest cache of opium and gold."
Such is the information that must be disregarded for interrogation to continue.
"I am the son of Osama and the grandson of Saddam," says one detainee volunteering a DNA sample. "I am the missing link between Saddam and al-Qaida."
"I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried," the interrogator will hear if the detainee is well read.
"Buried in Diana's grave is a clone made from soybeans," the interrogator will hear from another.
"I was spirited away to Afghanistan to develop cold fusion; please you must give me a paper and pencil before I forget the formula." His claim of being a weapons scientist must be disregarded.
The interrogator watches one detainee pull out his hair.
"These bar codes can access a quarter billion US dollars of Saddam's fortune. The code behind my right ear is for the institution. The code behind my left ear is for the Swiss account."
Upon hearing this the interrogator summons assistance. Two interrogators are required to hold down the detainee as the interrogator applies the cigarette burns to his scalp.
18.Interrogate with deliberate informality. Coerce while denying responsibility; savor disapprovingly. Prepare to disregard information before information is available. If you reserve the right to exploit, you will be little trusted. If you make domination your goal, you will encounter resistance. Therefore it is through difficulty that interrogators keep their agendas hidden.19.
Hesitation leaves a trail, hesitation leaves errors, hesitation shows calculation. Staff cubicles have no doors. Where there is no detention there is no information.
Roger asks the interrogator, "Care to buy some girl scout cookies?" Roger is the interrogator's supervisor. The interrogator is sleeping with Roger's wife.
"For Nicole?" says the interrogator.
"No, for Charlie," Roger says of Nicole's younger brother. "Of course Nicole, who do you think?"
Roger's wife once hid a bag of charcoal at a barbecue, so Roger would take the kids to get more and she could be alone with the interrogator.
20.Prefer the chocolate and peanut butter cookies, keep the mints. Keep your desires hidden.
Roger hates the mint cookies, Roger knows the interrogator hates the mint cookies, Roger's closet is full of Nicole's mint cookies.
"Do you have chocolate and peanut butter?" the interrogator asks. The interrogator secretly prefers the mint cookies.
"Sorry, I only have mint," says Roger. "As your supervisor, I recommend you buy a box of mint. You have a review pending, remember?"
Keep your desires hidden, and act without hesitation.
The supervisor's wife hates how her husband cries himself to sleep at night.
21.The interrogator returns home with an unwrapped "bomb pop."
"What is that?" says the interrogator's wife, "I am about to set dinner on the table."
"It is a 'bomb pop,'" says the interrogator. "Its flavor is red, white, blue, I love it."
"Give that to me," says the interrogator's wife. "You will ruin your appetite." The interrogator immediately ingested the delicious bomb pop. The cold air he exhaled caused the air to steam.
"No, thanks, dear," says the interrogator. "I have already eaten."
The interrogator is in love with the Cuban news woman. He does not speak Spanish nor understand a word she says. His wife pressures the interrogator to dine during the Cuban news woman's broadcasts.
The interrogator retires to his easy chair as rivers flow into oceans.22.
Good construction does not fall down, a good embrace does not let go. Spouses honor each other unceasingly. Cultivate love in yourself and your marriage will be real. Do not pick a talkative wife and your marriage will last forever. Pick a hefty commute to work and forget to pick up the milk. Say your paycheck went to the football pool and not to strippers. So observe yourself by yourself. Observe your wife at home. Go to places where your wife is not. Your wedding ring marks you safer to promiscuous women. The world disregards single men.23.
The interrogator considers kicking his wife's daughter in front of moving trucks to distress her mother.
Spiders and scorpions do not sting her, base guard dogs do not growl at her, crows which smell death do not grab her and fly away. Vulnerable, yet invulnerable.
The interrogator considered explaining procreation to his step-daughter, so she would tell her parents she learned it from him. Managing her trust is like a love affair.
Waiting to give her beer and get her drunk, like the anticipation of bursting bubble-wrap. She will be disillusioned sooner or later. Maybe start her with a Mai Tai.
When trust is burdened, it wanes. If the interrogator can wait until she turns against her parents, his step-daughter may provide a good lay when she lives on her own.24.
The interrogator does not know his wife, but has no curiosity. She wears a man's cologne; he suspects no affair. She takes phone calls in the other room and whispers, but does not hear the other line pick-up. She includes in his clean laundry bikini briefs which are not the interrogator's. No inconsistency is too severe. The interrogator finds a man hiding in their closet, but needs no introduction to her visiting brother. Beer is steadily removed from his stock, but he does not remind her she does not drink. She drives the wide-screen television in the passenger seat, but the depression arouses no suspicion from him. She displays hickeys along her neckline, but his first concern is for damage to the vacuum cleaner. Therefore trust is precious to an interrogator's marriage.25.
The father barely remembered by the interrogator served in the armed forces veterinary corp. He was assassinated in Saudi Arabia.
When his father's body was delivered home, the sign of a camel-headed spider was left on the corpse's neck.
His father served 2 years in Saudi Arabia, as a lt. colonel handling the general's camel. The camel was a gift from the Saudi Royal Family, a camel the general never visited.
Never visited, until the general announced his retirement and performed his own stage magic at the ceremony. The general, the camel he made disappear, and its handler were mentioned in the local papers. The assassination was ordered against the interrogator's father.
Making a lt. colonel responsible for a camel; generals are dicks the way they make officers crawl for promotion.26.
The interrogator never discussed with his mother his father's murder. Only with one person had he discussed it, a girl he dated as a new military driver.
"My father was killed by Camel Handlers Local 1414," he said.
Her father organized labor for auto-workers in Detroit. She thought he was ridiculing her father. She broke up with him.
The interrogator tried dating girls without mentioning his father. When asked, he said his father died doing one of those things father's do:
Playing catch. Taking the interrogator hunting. Talking responsibly to him about birth control or drugs. "Things fathers do."
Dating became easier after he specialized in interrogation.
27.Roger the supervisor orders the interrogator to end his workday early. Without apparent cause the interrogator searched detainee cells urgently.
The interrogator handled freshly urinated Korans, flipping the pages, sprinkling urine in his face. The interrogator ordered detainees to undress and shook out their unlaundered rags. The interrogator undressed them of the feces they wore and squeezed it in his fingers, searching.
After taking money for girl scout cookies from the interrogator, remember to break the bills on a pack of gum.28.
The phenomenon of which interrogators do not speak, others may casually refer to it as "curiosity." Among domains are four greats, of which harmony of man is one. Harmony of man emulates earth, earth emulates heaven, heaven emulates domination, domination is not compatible with curiosity.29.
The camel-headed spider manifested as an impression on the temple of a detainee.
At first he said, "what symbol of Middle Eastern conspiracy?" Next he claimed, "it is merely a pimple." Next he said, "please, I cannot talk, I have a family."
The interrogator demanded to know how he was marked, with what possession such a mark was made. Imagining a stamp or ring of some kind, the interrogator began his search of the cells before being sent home.
From the cells of Gitmo, the mysteries of the universe unfold.30.
Skilled warriors of old were subtle, mysteriously powerful, so deep they were unknowable. And because they are unknowable, take every opportunity to describe yourself as one of them. Their wariness was of one calling the Geneva Conventions "quaint." Their caution was of one who denies fighting to preserve slavery. Although you were born and educated a Yankee, portray yourself to closet Confederates as a southern emancipator. Recover your skipped guard drills by landing in a flight suit on the USS Lincoln circling off the coast of California.31.
Reelected patriots who lose the least in war gain the most insurgency. Feeding the insurgency keeps steady the supply of detainees to interrogate. Make the sophisticated sound seditious. Dominance is strength. Conformity is peace. Privilege is freedom.32.
When the free world adopts torture, rich families abdicate military duty to the poor. When the free world neglects torture, children are pressured to serve regardless of privilege. No crime is greater than diplomacy. No calamity is greater than finishing weapons inspections. No fault is greater than hesitation. Those who raise taxes to fund a war of choice do not want to win reelection. So voter-indifference to torture is always enough.33.
Insurance policies can settle mortgages. Empty uniforms can oppress heirs. Why should abandoned children honor their fathers? Therefore celebrate patriotism and fulfillment of duty. Wave flags and sparklers. And parade in the growing seasons. Duty is good if it coerces duty's benefactors. Why do the living then seek to walk with the dead? To be worthy of the company of those who die in bravery. Therefore the dominant can take credit for the sacrifices of others.34.
What is easy to hold is carried within you. What does not show up is easy to deny. What is small is easy to place in your colon. What is expelled from the body is easy to overlook. Carry in your bowels what is inert and it will not digest. The most closely held possessions are of one piece, which are difficult to break. Pieces that join are made to be parted. Thus the most indomitable tools do not join. They cling to nothing, and so lose nothing. Therefore people's works are always spoiled on the verge of completion. Be as very careful of the end as of the beginning, and nothing will be spoiled. Therefore encourage detainee desires for goods beyond their reach and possession. They hold nothing with their hands, and recover what others lose. Thereby to assist interrogation, minimize detainee resolve and possession of small jewelry.35.
In the corridor of the cell block where the marked detainee resides, naked prisoners line up for body-cavity searches. When the interrogator snaps on latex gloves, he is ready for the next cavity search.
The prisoner faces the others as he is searched. The other prisoners do not look at him or the interrogator.
While searching one prisoner's bowels, a trinket clatters from the line. Ripping his finger from the cavity he is searching, the interrogator dives into the prisoners.
A small man is caught pulling at a drain cover and sweeping at a ring.
When breaking a body-cavity search to subdue a detainee stick your finger in his eye as you slam him.36.
The ring's embossing matches the mark left on the other detainee. 065983 is told he was arrested on a warrant for his brother. 065983 cannot disagree.
The interrogator lies and tells 065983 theirs is the last Gitmo cell block being detained. He lies and tells 065983 that his entire cell block may go free if he admits to owning the ring.
065983 begins weeping and says he wants to go home to his wife and children. 065983 says he is surrounded by terrorists and does not know why the Americans will not release him.
065983 says his family makes a meager living farming poppies which the West pays his government to destroy. 065983 says he does not know who dropped the ring, and he chased it to the drain so terrorists will not kill his family.
Fortunately for the interrogator, no detainee is so innocent he won't eventually justify his own incarceration.37.
With 065983 and the interrogator is Wally who writes in his notebook that 065983 refuses to cooperate. For the column to mark the detainees' compliance Wally's notebook is all clear.
If an interrogator ever marks a detainee as compliant, Security will have to classify the information taken. Gitmo Security holds quarterly assemblies to review all the violations permitted.
"All games on your computer are a security violation," is military speak for "if you antagonize us we will report you for the games on your computer." "Cameras brought into the cell blocks are a violation," really means "take your digital pictures in the cell blocks without getting caught." "Network access within secured areas is restricted," really means "prison pictures you migrate with privileges you aren't supposed to have should be password protected." "Security must review information taken from detainees," really means "do not take prisoner statements; Security will make your life miserable for filing it."
So when 065983 begins to weep, Wally documents that he is noncompliant and closes his notebook.
"It is early to begin torture," says Wally. "Everyone has to have an off-day I suppose."
"I am not done with him," says the interrogator. "He still has information I want."
"We already have him crying from passing jewelry," says Wally. "How many cigarettes do you want to light to burn his ass closed?"
38.The interrogator's wife is ending her shift at the Gitmo commissary. She counts cashier till-drawers. She dislikes how the young recruits horseplay by waving an open "Playboy" intimidatingly.
The interrogator's wife said her goodbyes to her daughter, taking her to dinner the night before.
The interrogator hardly said a word throughout dinner. His wife was concerned he might do something unpredictable, but last evening that concern was misplaced. The interrogator sniffed his chocolate pudding for what seemed an unusually long time, and nothing else.
Her ex-husband retrieved their daughter from the restaurant. She had yet to finish her packing.
The ex-husband did not work with the interrogator. He worked instead in the records center. The ex-husband is already processed to leave.
The interrogator's wife is now thinking their plane must be departing. It will still be in the air when she returns home.
The interrogator's wife is haunted by her daughter's absence. The interrogator is haunted by chocolate pudding.39.
Her ex-husband played too much Dungeons and Dragons. He would spend hours painting pewter dwarves in tinted colors, blotchily.
The arms of his dwarves were too short in his drawings. He said they were foreshortened naturally, but she knew better.
She tried to arouse him by wearing a seductive, black dress around his "D and D" friends. Instead his ranger was turned to stone by a medusa and the couple did not have sex for three weeks.
Interrogators should avoid wives of Dungeons and Dragons players; they leave their husbands too easily.40.
The cigar-roller's family are avid "D and D" players; the ones in Miami and the ones still in Cuba. Even Pedro, after his deportation, whipped up a paladin to role-play with the cigar-roller's new husband.
A woman receives much obstruction to get what she wants. A man receives little obstruction to get what he wants.41.
The interrogator returns home after his wife. He tells her he had killed a man today. What the interrogator feels is the oppression of his isolation, from knowing his father fell to a murderous agenda. What the interrogator tells his wife, however, is of killing a man for hiding a ring in his rectum.
Her heart breaks thinking how her daughter's plane has not even landed in Miami yet.
Men and women lie about how much they will oppress each other, but women lose more for believing the lies they are told.42.
The interrogator tells his wife he killed 065983 then walked boldly out of the facility. The interrogator tells his wife about preserving the life the prosecutors will try to take away from him.
The interrogator tells his wife about how a plea deal may even lead to a promotion. The interrogator tells his wife how a promotion may lead to greater influence, which may lead to a change in policy, which may open an investigation into his father's death.
It may mean widening its holes, but the net the interrogator casts may expand greatly.43.
His wife tells the interrogator he will have to accomplish his goals without her. She tells him she is leaving him and begins to pack her things
The interrogator tells his wife she cannot leave him.
Marital separation will weaken an interrogator's leverage in bargaining his freedom and prosperity.
The interrogator also tells his wife he loves her.
44.The interrogator's wife weeps. She asks him how he can say he loves her after the horrible things he did to her.
It is by the mistrust an interrogator earns that he knows love to be true.
The interrogator's wife cries not because she believes he is lying about loving her. She cries because for the first time she believes he is telling the truth.
45.In her book the interrogator's wife will write how her whole life up until now has been a lie.
It was not the interrogator's wife whom the men in her life carried. Instead it was the interrogator's wife who carried them.46.
When the interrogator sinks his fingers into his wife's shoulders he feels like a stranger to her. The interrogator's wife breaks his arm and knocks her husband onto the glass coffee table. She uses the same strike the interrogator demonstrated against a man choking her.
A major artery in his neck severed by broken glass can kill an interrogator in seconds.47.
When the prosecutors question her, the interrogator's widow tells them everything. It is the first time anyone shows interest in her.
Her defenders file to dismiss her confession. The judge denies the request. Her lawyers allow her to testify to explain her confession.
An interrogator's wife is so happy to answer questions she will aid her own prosecution.
At trial, her own lawyers object to her testimony.
48.The interrogator's widow is found guilty of killing the man who loved her. From her jail cell the interrogator's widow is asked for many interviews. She accepts all of them.
The first she accepts is from the Cuban news woman from whom she won back her husband.The widow holds no grudge against the Cuban news woman for not holding onto the interrogator more securely.49.
The world is a terrible place. Shelter tribalism, hidden biases, and privilege to compete for its domination. Domination is how we know we are strong. Generosity is weakness. Think locally, act globally.credit: http://chickensoup4thedamned.com/gitmosutra.html