{"id":1814,"date":"2007-02-12T12:04:14","date_gmt":"2007-02-12T16:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1814"},"modified":"2007-02-12T12:04:14","modified_gmt":"2007-02-12T16:04:14","slug":"gothard-directs-script-by-iowan-who-was-abu-ghraib-interrogator-feb-15-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1814","title":{"rendered":"Gothard Directs Script By Iowan Who Was Abu Ghraib Interrogator, Feb. 15-18"},"content":{"rendered":"

University of Iowa News Release, 2 February 2007<\/strong><\/p>\n

The University Theatres Gallery series will present Joshua Casteel’s “Returns,” based on his own experiences as an Abu Ghraib interrogator, at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 15-17, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18, in Theatre B of the University of Iowa Theatre Building. The production is directed by David Gothard, associate director of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theater.<\/p>\n

A student in the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Casteel is a 27-year old from Cedar Rapids with a Christian background who, as a young boy, had always dreamed of becoming a soldier. At the age of 17 he signed a contract to go into the Army Reserves and after 9\/11 was called up for full active duty. Within a few months after his training as an Arabic linguist and interrogator, he was deployed to Baghdad and the Abu Ghraib prison.<\/p>\n

The Aug. 26, 2006, issue of the British newspaper The Guardian<\/em> told his story: “His turning point came when a 22-year-old Saudi who came to Iraq for jihad was brought before him for questioning.”<\/p>\n

Casteel has written of the incident, “The man was a self-professed jihadist, come from Saudi Arabia for the sole purpose of killing people like me. Yet the entire time we spoke, he talked to me with a gentle calmness and evangelical tone, whereby I genuinely believed he desired my good — as I grappled with trying to desire his. He tried to convert me to Islam from start to finish, and coming from an Evangelical Christian background, I felt in familiar territory, as if I were speaking simply to my Muslim counterpart. Then, we began to discuss war and violence. I asked him why he came to kill, he asked me why did I. At that point I knew I could go no further, unless I wanted to get into a debate about which one of us had the ‘more just’ cause.”<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> article continues, “Two days later Casteel went to Qatar on leave. When he came back he told his commander that he would be applying for conscientious objector status. ‘I said I wouldn’t turn in my weapon while I was there or talk to the media but would carry on doing my job and when I got back home I would ask to leave the military.’ He filed his application on Feb. 16 and was granted an honorable discharge on May 31.”<\/p>\n

[Read the release<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Iowa News Release, 2 February 2007 The University Theatres Gallery series will present Joshua Casteel’s “Returns,” based on his own experiences as an Abu Ghraib interrogator, at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 15-17, and at 2 p.m. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-tg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}