SHOCK AND AWE

In 2003, I lived in Gainesville, Florida. I was married to my first wife and had just turned twenty-one. I lived with her and my best friend in a ghetto apartment called Town Parc off of SW 23rd Terrace. You could tell how ghetto it was by the way they spelled "Parc" with a C, catering to the clientele who reveled in the ghetto lifestyle. Gunshots at night, murders next door, drugs and gangs and safety only for the circumspect. At the time, minimum wage was $5.15, and it was a struggle to pay the rent and electricity and put food on the plate. I didn't have a car and rode my bike everywhere. I had two part time jobs that were barely enough to cover my portion of the bills. I worked for the University of Florida calling people for research surveys and washing dishes at a Thai buffet.

March 14th was a Friday. I got off work around 9:30, climbed on my bike and pedaled home. I rode up 13th onto Archer Road, past Shands hospital. Night had fallen, but streetlights lined the road. About a mile down, I reached my street, Southwest 23rd Terrace. I turned onto it and was riding down the sidewalk when a police officer behind me flashed his lights and signaled for me to stop.

He got out of the car and asked me if I knew why he had stopped me. I said no, I had no idea. "Your bike doesn't have any lights," he said, "and it's dark, and that's illegal." I looked at him and said in disbelief, "But I'm on the sidewalk. I pose no danger to anyone, why would you pull me over for riding on the sidewalk?" I pointed to the apartment complex across the field behind the fence. "I live right there in Town Parc. I can see my front door."

"Well," he said, "that might be true, but I'm going to need to see some identification." I pulled my wallet from my backpack and showed him. "Here's my license. Do you see the address? It's for 23rd Terrace, Town Parc, right there. That's my apartment door, the one with the light on."

"I'd like to search your backpack to make sure you don't have any weapons or contraband on you." I was just coming from work. I just wanted to get home. I just wanted this to be over. All I had was the change of clothes from my jobs. "Certainly, you can search it. No problem."

A month earlier, on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell stood before the United Nations Security Council with a vial of white powder, telling the world about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. If Powell said it, it must be true. The mobile biological weapons laboratories he described with such certainty were hydrogen production facilities. The aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment were conventional rocket casings. Iraq was hiding weapons from UN inspectors, he claimed, moving materials from site to site to evade detection. He said Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, including VX, sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox. None of it was ever found.

`He flipped open the main compartment and rummaged around. Nothing. He opened the smaller side compartment, reached his hand in. His hand closed onto something. A smile crossed his face as he extracted a glass marijuana pipe.

"What's this?" he said. "Got something here that you didn't tell me about." I looked at him blankly. He opened his hand and showed it to me. Oh shit. The night before, I'd gone to the neighbor's house with my wife and my best friend. We smoked some pot. As we were leaving, my wife stuck the pipe into my backpack. When we got home, she forgot to take it out. I didn't know it was there.

He told me to put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me, put me in the backseat of his car, and said he was taking me to jail for possession of paraphernalia, a Class C misdemeanor in Florida.

"How can this be happening? My front door is right there. I was just riding my bike home on the sidewalk. Surely you shouldn't go to jail just for having a pot pipe." I told him so. "This is crazy, unreasonable, and unjustified."

But the cop just looked at me dead-eyed. "That's the law," he said.

On March 6, 2003, President George W. Bush held a press conference about Iraq. "War crimes will be prosecuted," he said. "War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, 'I was just following orders.'"

He put my bicycle in his trunk along with the backpack and got into the driver's seat. Over the radio, he signaled that he had one for transport to the Alachua County Jail. During the twenty-minute ride, I sat in his backseat, silent. There was no way out of this. I didn't even have a phone, no number I could call.

When we got to the intake of the jail, they made me strip down. Two officers looked on as another peered inside my mouth with a flashlight, searched between my fingers and toes. They made me lift my testicles and show them underneath, made me squat, spread my butt cheeks apart and cough. They gave me black and white striped clothes that said Alachua County Jail, like something from an old prison movie, and put me into a waiting room with several other men.

After they took my fingerprints, they led me through the jail to Pod A, the drunk tank for lesser crimes. We went upstairs to cell 8. The officer opened the door and gestured me inside, calling to the man on the bottom bunk, "Got you a new roommate." I stepped inside. The door closed with a click. I was locked in an 8 by 12-foot cell.

A metal toilet. A metal sink above it. A reflective piece of scuffed burnished metal that passed for a mirror. No windows, just concrete blocks and two metal bed slabs jutting from the wall. On the top bunk was a plastic mattress. The main lights were off. In the corner of the ceiling, an orange halogen bulb glowed in its metal and plastic housing, casting shadows across the bare room.

The man on the bottom bunk was lying facing the wall. He turned and looked at me briefly over his shoulder and gestured to the top bunk, saying, "Make yourself at home." I put my foot on his bunk, pulled myself up to the top, put the cotton sheet over the plastic mattress, put the pillowcase over the hard plastic pillow, covered myself with the two scratchy wool blankets, and lay there staring at the ceiling. No one knew where I was. I was just gone.

At that same press conference, Bush had declared: "We have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror."

We didn't have a phone in the apartment, and a cell phone wasn’t something I could afford on a dishwasher's pay. Would I be fired when I didn't show up to my jobs the next day? What would my wife think when I didn't come home? What was going to happen to me?

An intake officer told me I wouldn't go to court until next week. They only did misdemeanor court on Thursdays, and since today was Friday, I would have to wait almost a whole week to see what my fate would be. I tried to sleep but it felt impossible. Every hour, a flashlight would shine through a window slit on the door as the officer made his rounds, made his count, made sure that all of us criminals were tucked safely in bed. I counted five flashlights before I finally passed out.

At six in the morning, the daytime fluorescent lights in the ceiling came on, blinding me awake. My bunkie talked me through what was expected of me. As he cleaned the sink and the toilet, I mopped the floor. We made our beds, and then it was time for breakfast. Down the stairs to collect our trays at the pod door, then to the metal tables that seated four. Not knowing what to do, I sat next to my bunkie and looked at my plate: corn flakes, a boiled egg, a pint of milk like you would see at an elementary school, and something that had once been toast but given the time from the kitchen to the pod was now a damp piece of limp bread.

The other men at the table asked me what I was in there for. I told them I was pulled over for not having lights on my bicycle and they found a pot pipe in my backpack. "They took you to jail for that?" They all laughed. "You're going to be out as soon as you go to court next Thursday," one of them said. "No big deal."

On Monday morning after breakfast, the intercom inside our room called my name and told me to come downstairs to the front doors of the pod. I was escorted by a correction officer to medical. The doctor asked me some brief questions and then told me that they had to give me a tuberculosis test. I said, "What's that?" He pulled out a hypodermic needle with a fluid inside of it and told me he was going to inject this into my arm underneath the skin to see if I had tuberculosis.

On February 12, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave a press conference. When asked about the lack of evidence linking Iraq to weapons of mass destruction, he responded: "As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones."

"The hell you are," I said. "I'm not doing that." He looked at me gravely and said, "You have to." The officer who had escorted me down to medical told me, "You have to."

"No, I don't," I said. "You can't just stab me with a needle, I have rights! I don't have tuberculosis, and I am not going to let you inject me with a needle." I looked at the doctor and said, "This is insane. I don't know who you are. You are not my doctor. I don't know where that needle came from. I don't know what's in that needle, and you're trying to inject me with an unknown fluid from an unknown needle by an unknown doctor. It's completely unreasonable, and if the situation were reversed, you wouldn't allow that to happen to you. I don't see how you can expect me to allow you to do such a thing."

They both looked at me. "You have to," they said together. I glanced from one to the other. "I'm not going to let you do that."

It sounded like bureaucratic double-speak. But it was something even more sinister, more dangerous. The administration was willing to act on absence of evidence, treating the unknown as proof rather than uncertainty. In Rumsfeld's formulation, not knowing became a justification for war.

The officer who had brought me down got aggravated. "If you don't do it, you can't go back to general population. We'll have to take you to C Block. Solitary confinement, medical quarantine, with the worst of the worst: rapists, murderers, people on their way to prison to serve out long term sentences. That what you want? It's your choice."

I put my hands in my face. All of this for a pot pipe. They were both losing patience with me. "I'm not letting you inject me with that needle. Do what you have to do."

Rumsfeld was certain about Iraq's weapons programs. He told the nation that Saddam Hussein had "an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons." When pressed for locations of the weapons, he said, "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." They could be everywhere.

"Okay, C Block it is." The officer got on his radio, talked to his supervisor, and they escorted me to a different part of the jail.

I could tell immediately this wasn't the same type of pod. No metal chairs, no metal tables, no games, no TVs. Just rows of doors with little window slits and metal slots. They led me to a door and we waited for the click. When it opened, the officer gestured me inside.

Rumsfeld and his team created their own intelligence to support the war. Douglas Feith, his top policy aide, created the Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon to find connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda that the CIA couldn't prove. A Pentagon Inspector General report later found that Feith "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments" that contradicted the intelligence community's conclusions.

In the doorway, he looked at me. "You will be in this room for the duration of your incarceration. You will eat your meals here. You do not get free time. You get to come out twice a week for a 10-minute shower unless you want to take the tuberculosis test or you are released."

I said to him, "I'm not taking that test. I'm not letting you inject me with that unknown fluid. I don't trust you. I don't trust any of you." He closed the door and walked away.

When the real intelligence didn't support the case for war, the administration manufactured its own. They chose information that fit their narrative and presented possibilities as certainties. The "unknown unknowns" became whatever they needed them to be.

Because I was on medical quarantine, I was in the cell by myself. Almost immediately, two inmates came to my door. Fresh meat, they said. Look how he's sitting, must be effeminate. This one's definitely a faggot, just look at him wanting our dicks. You thinking about our dicks aren't you. Faggot. For 10 minutes, they told me exactly what they'd do. I was their bitch now. Their good little bitch. I wanted to be a good bitch, didn't I. They were going to fuck my ass, fuck my little boy pussy. I was going to learn to choke on their dicks like a good little bitch, learn what happens to fuck boys in here.

I didn't say anything. Right before they left, one of them promised he was going to get the door open. When he did, he was going to teach me a thing or two about prison.

There's no way, no way that could happen. I told myself this over and over. I ate the three meals that were served to me through the slot. When the intercom came on and asked if I wanted to take a shower, I said no. I wasn't going to leave the safety of the cell for any reason. I prayed that Thursday would come as fast as possible.

On Wednesday after dinner, when some of the others had their hour out, I heard the door lock click. The door pushed open. There he stood. The voice from the other side of the door. Twice my weight, arms thick with muscle. Skin the color of midnight, cold eyes like two wells of nothingness.

He smiled, showing me his teeth. "I told you I would get this door open. All I had to do was tell the officer that you wanted to come out and take a shower. And here we are." He stepped into the room, hands raised. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to teach you how to defend yourself against people like me."

He asked me if I knew how to fight. I didn't know how to fight. How do you fight something like that? I told him no, but I told him I was going to. He said, "No, no. No need for anything like that. Show me how you make a fist." I showed him.

He was from upstate prison, he said, waiting for trial on another charge. He'd seen people just like me die. Made into pussy boys, used up like bars of soap. He wanted to teach me how to defend myself.

He stepped closer and I backed to the far wall. I wanted to scream, but the fear had my throat closed up and all that came out was a choked huff. I tried again and he rushed me, put his hands over my mouth, pushed me to the ground, and got on top of me. I fought him as he tried to hold my mouth with one hand and pull my pants down with the other. I bit his hand and he hit me in the side of the head, then again, hard, and my thoughts went fuzzy. His hands worked at his own pants, trying to get them down, and I felt his erection warm against my bare thigh.

I squirmed as if I was on fire, trying to wiggle out from underneath him, away from him, trying to scream. His hand kept slipping as he tried to cover my mouth and I managed to scream, screamed as loud as I was able. That must have scared him because he jumped up and left the cell. My pants were halfway down, and I ran to the door and closed it, shaking, crying.  

Later that evening, he called across the pod from his cell, apologizing, saying he was just trying to get me to understand what it was like, to put the fear in me so I didn't ever come back here. He said that he was sorry and to please, please don't tell anyone. He didn't want to get another charge. I listened to him through the metal door. I knew if I said anything it could be worse.

In the morning, I got on the intercom and told whoever was on the other side that I was ready to take the tuberculosis test. Shortly after breakfast, an officer came and we went down to medical. The doctor didn't say anything. He just looked at me, brought out the needle with the fluid, and jabbed it underneath the skin on my forearm.

We went back to C Block so I could collect my things, and I was escorted back to A Block, back to the same cell. My bunkie looked at me over his book. "You're back," he said. It was the morning of March 20th.

The bombing began on March 20, 2003, at 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time. The initial strikes were "decapitation strikes," bunker busters intended to kill Saddam Hussein. Forty Tomahawk cruise missiles slammed into the location where intelligence said he was, but Saddam wasn't there. By afternoon, he appeared on Iraqi television. In the first 48 hours, U.S. and coalition forces launched 1,700 air sorties, 504 of them using cruise missiles.

It was free time, the TV was on, and the news was playing. Breaking coverage showed Iraq, bombs dropping wildly over the city of Baghdad, explosions lighting up the early morning darkness. The inmates huddled underneath the TV, cheering, clapping with pleasure and pride at the destruction. America: fuck yeah! Bold letters at the bottom read: "Operation Shock and Awe."

Television networks broadcast the bombardment live. Baghdad's sky awash with explosions, tracer fire, and the glow of burning buildings. Embedded reporters narrated the assault with the enthusiasm of sportscasters calling a championship game.

I sat at one of the metal tables in the back. I could still feel his hand over my mouth, his erection poking into my thigh. I was angry at these idiots who were celebrating the death of people they didn't know.

The technical language didn't change what happened on the ground, didn't make the attack any less of a violation. Conservative estimates put civilian deaths during the initial invasion phase at 7,300 to 7,500 people. Many more deaths went unreported or unrecorded.

I was angry at these people who were cheering and clapping as if they themselves had done something to be proud of. Angry at those who took such pleasure in the victimization of others.

Before the invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney had told NBC's Meet the Press: "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."

"This is America," I thought. "America the Beautiful where prisoners delight in the shock and awe of innocent people."

And through it all, the administration never acknowledged what they'd gotten wrong. No weapons of mass destruction were found. No operational Al Qaeda connection materialized. No evidence. No proof. In the end none of it was needed.  

No tuberculosis.

After lunch, the intercom in my cell called my name and told me that I had court. They placed me in shackles and handcuffs, and in a van we rode down to the courthouse. They brought us into the courtroom one by one. We went before the judge and met our fate. I pled guilty and took the prosecution's deal of time served, a fine of $350, and a year of unsupervised bench probation.

My wife and my best friend were in the courtroom. She blew me a kiss, and he gave me a thumbs up. I tried not to cry. When I was released, I never spoke about what almost happened to me in C Block.