Taxi to the Dark Side
Taxi to the Dark Side is this years Oscar winner for best documentary. Through images more graphic and disturbing than those shown on TV of Abu Graib the story focuses on those soldiers who faced justice for taking horrifying shots of prisoner degradation and mock torture. Through their on camera testimony particularly with regard to the brutal treatment of an innocent taxi driver accused of being a terrorist and who never came out alive we get the story that most people suspected – the soldiers convicted took the fall for the upper chain of command. Here that chain goes all the way to secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld and perhaps beyond. As the guy calling the shots he passed on tacit approval for the use of torture just as he was denying that it was being applied - and cynically went on to say the same about Guantanamo Bay. The most infuriating eye opener is that to the embarrassment of you and me, research into sensory deprivation at Canada’s McGill University proves to be the most effective method of torture. The saddest fact emphasized in Sadly Taxi to the Dark Side is that information gleaned from many of the methods used is completely unreliable.