Taxi To the Dark Side
by Alex Gibney
List Price:
Our Price: $15.70
You Save: $12.27 (44%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.60 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alex Gibney, Brian Keith Allen, Christopher Beiring, Moazzam Begg, Willie BrandDirector: Alex Gibney
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: Alex Gibney
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-09-30
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Velocity / Thinkfilm
Movie Reviews of Taxi To the Dark Side
Movie Review: America's Deepest Shame
Summary: 5 Stars
In early December 2002, a young Afghani named Dilawar picked up three passengers destined for his hometown, but he never made it there, and he never saw his family again. He was rounded up in a sweep by the US military and incarcerated in Bagram Prison where he was designated as a PUC, or person under control. Deprived of sleep and shackled to an overhang, which prevented him from falling asleep because of the pressure it would put on one's wrists, he began crying out for his mother and father. American soldiers tried to shut him up by kicking him with their knees to the fleshy part of his thighs. Every one of them got their "kicks" and Dalawar died in custody, the second man in as many weeks. He weighed 122 lbs at the time of his death. The coroner listed his death as a homicide. She would later testify that his legs had been "pulpified." They would have had to have been amputated had he survived. His family was given his body and a death certificate--in English.
Dilawar is the beginning story of this fascinating video about an American policy of torture that has taken place in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay. I kept watching this sickening story over and over again with the disbelief that Americans could institute cruelty as evil as what Nazis, Japanese, and Koreans had perpetrated against us and our allies, evils that we have executed past tormentors for.
The enlisted personnel involved make it clear, usually in their own words, that the beatings, deaths in custody, and torture were not random acts of rogue sadists men who decided to act on their own. They were encouraged to torture and humiliate with the tacit approval of their command and from Washington D. C. to commit these acts.
As the video shows, it begins with Dick Cheney, telling Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" that we [Americans] have to turn to the dark side to gather in intelligence in the same manner that our enemies do, and do whatever it takes to get it. This televised interview takes place one week after 9/11.
Next, Alberto Gonzalez writes a policy declaring Afghanistan a failed state. Therefore, he concludes, Article III of the Geneva Conventions does not apply. Anyone taken into custody will not be treated as a prisoner of war.
Mild-mannered John Yoo of the Justice Department belies his soft-spoken nature by doing the rest. He writes an opinion for the White House that states torture can only occur if it results in organ failure or death. (The only problem is that it is too late to realize that you have tortured someone if you achieve one or the other). But, Yoo goes further offering another opinion that the President of the United States can do virtually anything he wants, and it will not be outside the law.
Donald Rumsfeld joins in with a memorandum in which he pens, "What's wrong with standing 4 hours? I stand 10-12 hours a day." This means the gloves are off, and officers and enlisted men who seek guidance on what limits they have are never given any. They are told to get actionable intelligence, and get it fast. The torture begins.
Detainees are stripped naked upon arrival, given cavity searches, and disoriented by darkness and loud sounds. They are then put into isolation and deprived of sleep. (The sleep deprivation boards that list how much time to let a detainee sleep or how long to keep him awake will be removed during International Red Cross inspections). Some will be beaten or water-boarded. The latter makes the victim feel he is suffocating through drowning. And as studies in the 1950s had shown, depriving a person of stimuli, visual and auditory could induce psychosis in as little as two days. Visiting generals and SecDef, Donald Rumsfeld compliment the staff on the fine job they are doing.
Policy is based upon a belief that such treatment will startle the victim into talking, and he will tell the truth. This is tried with one victim who states Saddam Hussein is acquiring nuclear weapons, and that there is a connection between Saddam and Osama bin-Laden, information he is prodded to give through waterboarding. His "confession" will be rushed to the White House and to Colin Powell, in time for his speech before the United Nations. It will become further proof that torture does not provide accurate information.
In Hamden v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court writes an opinion of outrage declaring that Americans are entitled to habeas corpus and detainees must be accorded the status of Prisoners of War. President Bush is furious. He quotes the Geneva Convention: "'...outrages upon human dignity.' That's vague! What does that mean?"
While the Supreme Court thwarts George Bush and Dick Cheney, they are still capable of playing the scoundrels. They threaten to withhold the support of the conservative base of the Republican party from John McCain in his presidential bid, unless he supports the Military Commission Act of 2006. This law bypasses the Supreme Court decision by allowing the accused to have their trials, but they will not be released from custody unless the White House says so. There is also a provision that pardons the President, the Vice President, Rumsfeld and a number of generals from prosecution for torture. It does not include enlisted men.
More than a dozen investigations begin with all them aiming downward, not one officer is convicted by a court martial. Instead of the President following the recommendation that Major General Miller be disciplined for bringing his Guantanamo style of incarceration to Abu-Ghraib, he is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and retires.
Our military picked up seven percent of the detainees. Ninety-three percent were turned over to the US by forces of the Northern Alliance, Pakistan, or from neighbors who were eager to get the $5,000 bounty that the US government was offering. This also allowed the snitch to take over the neighbor's farm or poppy crop. There have been 87,000 detainees in American custody. Not one of them has been brought to trial.
The Northern Alliance guard who turned in Dilawar, the taxi driver was himself later brought to custody for having directed fire against US bases, and for having turned in innocent victims after each attack.
This DVD should not be missed. It will command your attention. It should be burned into your memory forever. It should serve as a reminder that being American does not exclude one from becoming a Nazi, and if we don't hold our leaders accountable, we are no different than they are.
In twelve more days and a wake-up we should start finding more answers.
This is dedicated to Army Specialist Joseph M. Darby for having had the guts to act like a true soldier.
ALSO RECOMMENDED:
Mayer, Jane, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," Doubleday, 2008
Hurwitz, Tom, "The Ghosts of Abu-Ghraib," DVD
Miles, Steven, M. D., "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Complicity, and the War on Terror," Random House, 2006.
Milgram, Stanley, "Obedience to Authority, An Experimental View, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2004
Zimbardo, Philip, "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil," Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2008.
Wright, Ann, "Voices of Conscience," Koa Books, 2008.
Summary of Taxi To the Dark Side
TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE - DVD MovieAmong the slew of documentaries inspired by the post-9/11 war, arguably none is more important than Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side. The story it has to tell, with compelling thoroughness and no recourse to rhetoric, should be as disturbing to Americans supporting the war as it is to opponents. In December 2002, Dilawar, a young rural Afghan cabdriver, was accused of helping to plan a rocket attack on a U.S. base, clamped into prison at Bagram, and subjected to physical torture so relentless that he died after two days of it. But Dilawar was innocent--and he'd been denounced by the real culprit, who thereby took the heat off himself and won points with U.S. forces by giving them "a bad guy." Dilawar was the first fatal victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's devotion to "working the dark side"--torturing, humiliating, and otherwise abusing prisoners in the "Global War on Terror." His story, developed in horrific detail with testimony from the soldiers who tortured him, and also from two New York Times investigative reporters, becomes a prism for slanting light onto the "dark side" policy and the mindset behind it. The program at Bagram was deemed such a success that it served as the model for Abu Graibh the following year in Iraq, and both prisons became pipelines to the detainee facility at Guantánamo, Cuba.
The film's impact is powerful and complex. We come to see the very soldiers who broke Dilawar's body and spirit as victims, too--and patsies of a policy that, from Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on down, ignored the Geneva Convention and shrouded itself (and commanding officers) in "a fog of ambiguity" while the grunts took the fall. A lot of these grunts testify here, and the accumulation of their individual perspectives on a shared tragedy is devastating. The latter half of the film features penetrating commentary from critics of torture as a policy (Senator John McCain was still one at the time), all of whom agree that it doesn't work and it only damages us. And for Theatre of the Absurd, there's a PR tour of (a discrete portion of) the Guantánamo facility, which turns out to be kinda like summer camp: "They get ice cream on Sundays." Finally, Taxi to the Dark Side isn't about torture or politics or the justness or unjustness of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gibney is entirely correct when he says, "It's really about the American character and whether we have become something rather different from what we imagine ourselves to be." He's asking; he doesn't want it to be true. --Richard T. Jameson
Similar DVD Movies
Man on WireMagnolia Pictures; Release date: 2008-12-09; DVD
Best price: $12.27
Price in other shops:
The CorporationZeitgeist Films; Release date: 2005-04-05; DVD
Best price: $16.84
Price in other shops:
Hoop Dreams (The Criterion Collection)Fine-line; Release date: 2005-05-10; DVD
Best price: $13.73
Price in other shops:
GaslandNVG; Release date: 2010-12-14; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Waltz With BashirSony; Release date: 2009-06-23; DVD
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops:
Why We FightSony; Release date: 2006-06-27; DVD
Best price: $5.83
Price in other shops:
Jesus CampMagnolia Pictures; Release date: 2007-01-23; DVD
Best price: $12.26
Price in other shops:
Brother's KeeperNew Video; Release date: 2003-07-29; DVD
Best price: $14.90
Price in other shops:
Standard Operating ProcedureMORRIS,ERROL; Release date: 2008-10-14; DVD
Best price: $2.72
Price in other shops:
The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the life of Robert S. McNamaraSony; Release date: 2004-05-11; DVD
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops: