Taxi to the Dark Side Page #4

Synopsis: Using the torture and death in 2002 of an innocent Afghan taxi driver as the touchstone, this film examines changes after 9/11 in U.S. policy toward suspects in the war on terror. Soldiers, their attorneys, one released detainee, U.S. Attorney John Yoo, news footage and photos tell a story of abuse at Bagram Air Base, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay. From Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Gonzalez came unwritten orders to use any means necessary. The CIA and soldiers with little training used sleep deprivation, sexual assault, stress positions, waterboarding, dogs and other terror tactics to seek information from detainees. Many speakers lament the loss of American ideals in pursuit of security.
Director(s): Alex Gibney
Production: ThinkFilm
  Won 1 Oscar. Another 10 wins & 4 nominations.
 
IMDB:
7.6
Metacritic:
82
Rotten Tomatoes:
100%
R
Year:
2007
106 min
Website
447 Views


And in my view, far more serious fashion than the photographs we saw,

Were 98 deaths of people in detention,

Which I understand now from my army colleagues is up to some 25

of which have been declared officially by the Army as homicides.

People say, "Well, these photographs from Abu Ghraib, they weren't real torture."

I look back at those people and say, "Murder is torture. Murder is the ultimate torture."

In the case of Dilawar, he was subject to certainly cruel and unusual punishment,

And ultimately, he was subject to torture because he died.

[Carlotta Gall] "First, we're not chaining people to the ceiling." That's what he says.

Carlotta Gall is a New York Times journalist based in Kabul.

Unsatisfied with the Military's explanation of the two deaths at Bagram,

She set out to investigate.

[Carlotta Gall] It took a long time to find the family because the Military didn't tell us who they were.

And we started calling around: Governors.

They are a very simple farming family. They don't speak English.

But they showed me a paper that was given to them with the body.

And that's when I opened it up and read it. It was in English.

And it was signed by a U.S. Major who was the pathologist.

And of the four boxes, she checked the box for Homicide.

I said, "My God, they've killed him."

And we then had to tell the family, "Do you know what's written here?"

And they said, "No, it's in English. We don't understand."

And I think maybe the Red Cross who helped return the body had explained, but they hadn't taken it in.

And then the Pathologist had said it was this blunt force trauma to the legs.

[Carlotta Gall] "Presently have no indication of that." You know,

There's been a death certificate signed by his people and he says,

"Presently I have no indication of any blunt force trauma."

And it's written on the death certificate which I've seen.

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] The story probably would have gone away had it not been for my colleague, Carlotta Gall,

Who tracked down Dilawar's family and found the knife-in-the-back clue

That told everyone that this incident had been something other than the Military portrayed.

Tim Golden picked up the trail of the story

And obtained a confidential file of the Army investigation,

Including hundreds of pages of testimony from the soldiers involved.

[Tim Golden, New York Times Reporter] Part of what made the story compelling to me was that

You had these young soldiers with very little training or preparation,

thrown into this situation in the aftermath of 9/11, just as the rules were changing.

And they weren't told what the new rules were.

And you had this young Afghan man who came into this system

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Alex Gibney

Philip Alexander "Alex" Gibney (born October 23, 1953) is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time".His works as director include Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (winner of three Emmys in 2015), We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (the winner of three primetime Emmy awards), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (nominated in 2005 for Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature); Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (short-listed in 2011 for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature); Casino Jack and the United States of Money; and Taxi to the Dark Side (winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature), focusing on a taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed at Bagram Air Force Base in 2002. more…

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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