Music as Weapon

A recent leak revealed that music is being used to "soften up" detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo, often bringing them to the point of trying to commit suicide or mental insanity. The news continues to paint an even uglier portrait of the US military and only adds to the mounting cases of war crimes, accusations of torture, and global criticism of the US as a whole. The news also outraged the many musicians whose very music was being used to torture prisoners. It has been reported that music is blasted for several days without stop into the holding cells. And while these reports of torture don't perhaps sound as horrible as those of the recent past (the Abu Ghraib scandal being the most notorious, but perhaps only because it was the most reported and mediated), it seems a sick irony to compare levels of torture. Once again, we are asked to consider what has become "standard operating procedure" (because these are not cases of exceptional "bad apples") and what sort of accountability can exist for a power as unbridled as that of the US military.

"One of the most startling aspects of musical culture in the post-Cold War United States is the systematic use of music as a weapon of war. First coming to mainstream attention in 1989, when US troops blared loud music in an effort to induce Panamanian president Manuel Norriega’s surrender, the use of “acoustic bombardment” has become standard practice on the battlefields of Iraq, and specifically musical bombardment has joined sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation as among the non-lethal means by which prisoners from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo may be coerced to yield their secrets without violating US law."
Read the essay, Music as torture / Music as weapon here: www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm

A pretty good account of "Music Torture" in general (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_torture

Sesame Street breaks Iraqi POWs: Heavy metal music and popular American children's songs are being used by US interrogators to break the will of their captives in Iraq.
Read the article here: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3042907.stm

Musicians don’t want tunes used for torture: Nine Inch Nails, even ‘Sesame Street’ theme used for interrogations
The U.S. has used loud music against those held in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, and detainees now aren't the only ones complaining: Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons.
Read the article here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28144557/

And, finally, an interesting article about two soldiers (one of whom is Darby, the Army reservist who turned in the Abu Ghraib photos) who are now living with the burden of their time as prison guards in Iraq.
Read the article here: www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/am-i-a-torturer-3.html