Project Itoh - Genocidal Organ

“Eugene and Krupps had the privilege of using the results of our R and D department’s research to present a plan to the US government last September. A plan to capture alive Public Enemy Number One for the region, a certain Ahmed Hassan Salaad. Using numerous cross-corroborated sources from within the insurgency, we were able to convince the Senate Budget Committee that our plan was viable and stood a good chance of success.”

I was hearing the businesslike spiel from this woman in front of me, and indeed she was painting a picture of an efficient bureaucratic procedure. But I had seen the other side—the reality that lay behind the anodyne, whitewashed words.

The walls painted red with the blood spurting out of the former brigadier general’s throat.

The burning bodies of the bullet-riddled men and women.

The corpse of the little girl who had her pink brains spilling out from the back of her head.

The images piled vividly on top of each other. Erica Sales talked of being able to “present a plan” and had managed to weave all these words and phrases into her speech that seemed singularly inappropriate when describing war. Her words carefully chosen for their blandness had the effect of erasing all the colors of the battlefield, and it was as if in the version of war that she was weaving, nobody ever died and nobody ever killed, as if war was just like any other ordinary civilian enterprise. A whole layer of meaning was being stripped away …

… the layer that allowed you to describe in words the surprise, the astonishment, the sheer freshness of what it was like to be in the middle of battle where anyone and everyone could kill and be killed.

“After that, the Senate Budget Committee presented the précis to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, and once they’d greenlighted it, SOCOM was consulted,” continued the USD.

Colonel Rockwell nodded. “Yes, and our answer—much as it pains me to say it—was that the plan was well conceptualized and completely viable.”

“As such, we had an Extraordinary Grant approved by the budget committee and then assembled a unit to put the plan into effect. Our company suffered no casualties in the execution of the plan, and there were no unanticipated factors that interfered with the smooth running of the operation. Everything proceeded to plan, you could say,” Erica Sales continued.

I looked at the man in the picture again. The top left corner of the screen showed the date and time, currently paused, and the coordinates where the recording was taken. The jerry-rigged interrogation room was a bleak white box, and we had our Ahmed sitting on a chair in the center. By the looks of it, this was right after he had been captured.

The man was trembling.

“Is this man really a key figure in the armed insurgency?” Williams asked bluntly, pointing a finger at the man. “Wouldn’t one of these two-bit dictators be more likely to denounce us for illegally detaining him and for our Western imperialist ways, rather than just sit there trussed up like a trembling chicken?”

“Well, Ahmed Salaad is Oxford educated. He’s familiar enough with the developed world to know that we’re not about to torture a prisoner of war to death.”

“So why does our boy Ahmed look like he’s about to shit his pants, assuming he hasn’t already?”

“Just sit tight and all will be revealed, sonny.” The undersecretary of defense gave the signal, and I could tell that the footage was rolling again only by the fact that the timer in the top left corner had started counting. When all you were looking at was a single, motionless prisoner in restraints, it was hard to tell the difference. Then an off-screen interrogator started speaking to him in English.

Interrogator: We are an organization acting as a legal proxy of the United States of America, and you are being held as our captive. One of the explicit conditions of our contract with the United States government is that we voluntarily adhere to all the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We will be handing you over to the US government in due course, and provided you do not act in a violent manner yourself, no illegal force will be used on your person. Ahmed: Aren’t you using illegal force now? Interrogator: Our client, the government of the United States of America, has gone through all the correct channels to ensure the international legitimacy of our actions in apprehending you. United Nations Resolution number 560097 gives us full authority to take whatever steps necessary to bring about the cessation of hostilities in Somalia. Ahmed: So this is a legitimate military operation. I wonder who gets to decide what exactly it is that makes an act of aggression legitimate. Interrogator: Perhaps it is the fact that an overwhelming majority of the international community sanctions our actions? Ahmed: You know, our actions were also sanctioned by our community. We were supported by the vast majority of our people. Everyone wanted it to happen.

“Seems he’s not shy after all, shaking or no shaking,” said Williams, who almost seemed relieved. “Looks like this is just another run-of-the-mill mass murderer, then. A fanatical worshipper of what’s ‘right.’ ”

“Of course he is,” the USD shrugged. “But keep watching—this is where he starts to get all philosophical on us.”

Interrogator: The people can be wrong, of course. Look at how the German electorate voted in Hitler. Ahmed: Then who’s to say that the people of the world aren’t wrong about interfering in Somalia’s internal affairs? Interrogator: You have murdered huge numbers of your own countrymen. Ahmed: We had no choice. Interrogator: Are you honestly expecting me to accept that in the space of the last six months you have come to believe that there were all these people in your midst that you now just had to kill? I don’t accept that people can just flip a switch and go from living harmoniously with their neighbors to wanting to kill them just like that. Ahmed: And yet that’s exactly what happened. Interrogator: But why? Ahmed: Who knows? All I know is that we had good reason to kill them. Interrogator: And yet one year ago such a notion would have been inconceivable to you. Ahmed: That’s right … you’re probably right about that. Interrogator: But how could such a mindset develop in such a short time? I can just about understand it happening in one person. But for such a large, disparate group of people to suddenly develop such intense hatred that they felt the need to go about systematically murdering their fellow countrymen? Impossible! Ahmed: I think you’ll find that we’re living proof that it’s very possible.

The clip came to an end.

“It’s estimated that there were a total of forty-six thousand victims of the Black Sea Massacre,” Erica Sales said, her voice dispassionate. “What we have to remember is that Ahmed here was an agent for peace in Somalia up until a year ago. There were bouts of civil unrest in the late twentieth century, but by the middle of the 2000s, that appeared to have been resolved once and for all. Somalia was about as stable a country as you could have found in the region.”

I asked if some foreign military power had intervened to put an end to their previous civil strife. I was embarrassed to say that Somalia barely registered on my radar, and I couldn’t have told you much about it. I’d been too occupied with work and eating pizza and watching Saving Private Ryan previews that my worldview was shaped almost exclusively by a combination of the dossiers handed to me in the line of duty, CNN, and the occasional TV movie.