[dauterman]

Hi, There has been a great deal in the news the last few days about the U.S. Prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (known as "Gitmo" for short). I searched for posts here at peakoil.com and was surprised that there are no prior posts that deal specifically with Gitmo.

Ironically, less than 2 days after Defense Secretary Rumsfeld refuted accusations from Amnesty International an independant military inquiry confirmed instances of Quran abuse.

It will be hard to put all the allegations of Gitmo physical abuse, torture, quoran abuse etc. into one post. If you are easily disturbed by graphic details you may want to skip this post.

Link

U.S. military officials say no guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects flushed a detainee's Quran down the toilet, but they disclosed that a Muslim holy book was splashed with urine. In other newly disclosed incidents, a detainee's Quran was deliberately kicked and another's was stepped on.

In the March incident, as described in the report, the guard had left his observation post to go outside to urinate. The wind blew his urine through an air vent into the cell block. The guard's supervisor reprimanded him and assigned him to gate guard duty, where he had no contact with detainees, for the rest of his assignment at Guantanamo Bay.

In another of the confirmed cases, a contract interrogator stepped on a detainee's Quran in July 2003 and then apologized. "The interrogator was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership," the Hood report said.

Link WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday assailed as "reprehensible" Amnesty International's description of the Guantanamo prison as a gulag but the group said he should be held accountable for torture.

The spat between the Pentagon chief and the human rights group came a week after Amnesty compared the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the vast, brutal Soviet system of forced labor camps in which millions of prisoners died.

The United States holds about 520 men at Guantanamo, where they are denied rights accorded under international law to prisoners of war. Many have been held without charge for more than three years.

Link LONDON (AP) — One Guantanamo prisoner told a military panel that American troops beat him so badly he wets his pants now. Another detainee claimed U.S. troops stripped prisoners in Afghanistan and intimidated them with dogs so they would admit to militant activity.

Tales of alleged abuse and forced confessions are among some 1,000 pages of tribunal transcripts the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — the second batch of documents the AP has received in 10 days.

One detainee, whose name and nationality were blacked out like most others in the transcripts, said his medical problems from alleged abuse have not been taken seriously. "Americans hit me and beat me up so badly I believe I'm sexually dysfunctional. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep with my wife or not," he said. "I can't control my urination, and sometimes I put toilet paper down there so I won't wet my pants."
"I point to where the pain is. ... I think they take it as a joke and they laugh."

Link A 24-year-old detainee said that he confessed to giving a militant group the names and serial numbers of security personnel assigned to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai but that "I said this under torture." He described how an American interrogator "threatened me with a gun to my mouth, to try to make me say something."

Link TOKYO (Reuters) - Human rights group Amnesty defended its description of Guantanamo prison as a "gulag" Thursday and urged the United States to allow independent investigations of allegations of torture at its detention centers for terrorism suspects.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Human rights group Amnesty defended its description of Guantanamo prison as a "gulag" Thursday and urged the United States to allow independent investigations of allegations of torture at its detention centers for terrorism suspects.

Link

A civil liberties group has released information suggesting US President George Bush approved abusive interrogation methods by military officials at Guantanamo Bay.

Releasing email messages obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Monday that one detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and some were shackled hand and foot in foetal positions for 18 to 24 hours, forcing them to soil themselves.

The ACLU said emails suggested inhumane interrogation methods were approved by Bush - a charge the White House vigorously denied. The military operation at Guantanamo Bay has come under increased scrutiny as former prisoners have alleged they were tortured.

[katkinkate]

I find it so disappointing. I thought we'd figured it out ages ago that you can make someone say anything you want them to with torture. Eventually they'll say anything to make it stop. You can't trust evidence from torture. You can never be sure how much is true and how much is an attempt to please the inquisitor. Its all just a waste of energy and resources and unnecessary brutality. I think it does as much, if not more damage to the torturer's humanity and the international reputation of the country involved as the poor wretches being brutalised.

[Specop_007]

Its not a Gulag yet, but heres to hoping.

As for torture, modern day torture techniques can be *extremely* effective. Almost frightfully so.
In fact, I'd bet at least a handful of our members on this very board have underwent the proper techniques for information extraction, and have never even known it.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'I')ts not a Gulag yet, but heres to hoping.

As for torture, modern day torture techniques can be *extremely* effective. Almost frightfully so.

[MicroHydro]

Gitmo is the nicest place in the new US Gulag. Bagram, Afghanistan is much worse, and the people being held in Iraq, Yemen and Diego Garcia would say or do anything to get transferred to the relatively humane conditions at Gitmo. In all, about 60,000 people have vanished into the new Gulag.

AI commented on Gitmo because it is the only part of the Gulag that has been examined by outsiders.

[Geology_Guy]

Gitmo and other facilities might have deep problems and abuses, but they are not comparable to the GULAG. Lets say on the outside that maybe 100 or so inmates have died in the US facilities like Gitmo. How many died in the Soviet GULAG -some say around 20 million. Another 20 million or so died in the Soviet Union from fighting in WWII and the Ukranian starvation for a grand total of around 40 million over 70 years of the Soviet Union.

Taking the 20 million inmates who died in the GULAG over 70 years that works out to a little over 285 thousand people killed per year. These numbers are from the book by Anne Appelbaum -GULAG: A History. So Gitmo is not another GULAG!

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobcousins', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Specop_007', 'I')ts not a Gulag yet, but heres to hoping.

As for torture, modern day torture techniques can be *extremely* effective. Almost frightfully so.

[Chocky]

Yeah, anyone who reckons gitmo is like the gulags of old either has no idea what goes on in gitmo or no idea what went on in the gulags. I guess if you hate America enough you could convince yourself that gitmo was a gulag.

[Rickenbacker]

sigh. this reminds me of the 'is rwanda a holocaust?' 'is bosnia a holocaust?' 'is sudan a holocaust?' arguments

as if it matters whether it can be classed as a gulag.

imagine american citizens being arrested by, lets say, Mongolian soldiers, without being told what for, then transported to a mongolian base in korea. In three years you barely received any outside communication and could not freely communicate with anyone other than prisoners and soldiers. Then you get mentally and probably physically abused to some extent until you're completely broken and the soldiers have gotten everything they want out of you. You are locked in that cell for an indefinate time period, possibly forever, with the possibility of an execution permanently hanging over your head (which I imagine the soldiers enjoy reminding you of). Oh yeah and you're in solitary.

Yeah I'm sure US media would be saying 'Don't you love those mongolians and their sensible anti-terrorism policies? I feel much safer in the world these days'

Oh but of course, the reality of the situation is just like on 24, where torture is necessary to prevent imminent destruction of your society. Whatever gets you to sleep.

In a more just world the guys who bombed guys armed with AK's (or sleeping families, collateral damage innit) from 30,000 feet would be the unlawful combatants.

[smallpoxgirl]

Where's the button for "I'm afraid to talk about it in public"?

[EnemyCombatant]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')May we never forget the day!
I still remember the day like it was yesterday. Planes, filled with innocent people, brutally hijacked and exploded into buildings. Countless people (some holding hands) decided to jump hundreds of feet to their death, rather than being burned alive by the scorching flames. And when they landed, they unfortunately killed other people who were on the ground trying to help.

On that day 2,819 people died. The vast majority of them were Americans, but the death toll included citizens from 115 other nations. Of all those brutally and senselessly murdered, only 289 of them had their bodies recovered intact. Those who had the grisly task of digging through the carnage, found a total of 19,858 body parts. It was indeed, a dark day for this country. As you might guess, I’m talking about the tragedy that struck America on September 11, 2001.

America did not deserve 9-11: There are those that have since said we “deserved” this attack. They’ve said we “had it coming”. I could not disagree more. To me, saying that we “had it coming” is the same as saying that someone deserved to be raped – i.e., that they were “asking for it”. No individual, of course, ever deserved to be raped, and our country did not deserve to be attacked on 9-11.

Since 9-11, we have been fortunate in that there’s not been another terrorist attack on United States soil. I think there are a number of reasons for this. They are:
1. We’ve taken the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places.
2. The terrorists, as a result of our country’s outrage and overwhelming military response to the 9/11 attacks, are disorganized and off balance.
3. Our military and intelligence services are now proactive in hunting down terrorist cells wherever they are and are destroying them.

To me United States' soil is sacred: I believe that there is nothing more sacred than United States soil and that it deserves to be protected at all costs. If there is another country or a group who would do us harm, then we must be both smart and tough enough to first destroy them.

Gitmo serves an important purpose in our fight against terror.
One of the most important assets we are using to protect Americans both at home and abroad is our military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- “Gitmo.”

The prisoners at Gitmo are America's sworn enemies: Presently there are over 500 prisoners there; once there were a few hundred more, but over 200 of them have been returned to their country of origin. Most of the prisoners there are “terrorists” and are, beyond any shadow of a doubt, enemies of the United States.

One of the Gitmo detainees is the so called "20th hijacker." One of the detainees is Mohammed al-Qahtani, who is widely reputed to be the 20th hijacker. However, because of an alert INS official, Mohammed al-Qahtani was not allowed to enter our country. He did not participate in the 9-11 massacre only because he was turned away by immigration. Mohammed al-Qahtani was supposed to provide "muscle" for the team that hijacked United flight number 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania. Because of his absence, that plane was hijacked by a team of four -- not five -- terrorists. This lack of muscle may be why the hijackers on flight 93 were able to be overwhelmed by the passengers and prevented from completing their deadly mission. The other three planes on 9-11 were hijacked by cells of five terrorists, and each five man cell accomplished what it set out to do. Mohammed al-Qahtani was captured by our military in Afghanistan where he was fighting with the Taliban against our forces.

Time Magazine recently ran a large article where it talks in detail about the interrogation techniques our military is using to get Mohammed al-Qahtani to talk. Some who read the article, like Dick Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, were horrified that our military would use such interrogation techniques.

Senator Durbin likened the actions of our military at Gitmo to those of Nazis, Soviet gulags and the “mad regime” of dictator Pol Pot. I find this to be a ridiculous exaggeration and an inappropriate comparison, as many millions perished under the cruelty of each of the regimes Senator Durbin compares us with. Fortunately, many others also do not agree with Senator Durbin and resent his comments.

The interrogation techniques at Gitmo are very mild: It’s important to note that to date, there have been no fatalities among the prisoners at Gitmo. Some of the “terrible” techniques we are being decried for using in Gitmo are sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, exposure to cold and heat (as in a cold room), mental games, constant questioning, etc. All of it, when compared to what has been done in the Middle East to extract information from prisoners is mild, indeed.

Interrogation techniques in the Middle East are incredibly brutal.
In the Middle East, it’s not uncommon to use murder, rape, extreme physical torture (like running a drill through a prisoner’s head), electrical shocks to the genitalia, pulling out fingernails, dripping acid on victims, or burning victims with a hot iron or blow torch. Yes, it’s a brutal crowd that we’re at war with over there.

Among the most infamous torture devices in the Middle East is a Syrian invention—they call it Al-Abd Al-Aswad--The Black Slave. The victim is strapped to a chair with a hole in the center. A red hot poker then rises from the hole and goes into the victim’s rectum. It goes in and out and can go as deep as the intestines. I suspect that Syrian interrogators find out rather quickly whatever it is they want to learn.

Senator Durbin strikes again!: In response to a hailstorm of criticism, Senator Durbin returned to the Senate floor and re-read his earlier "Nazi" and "Soviet gulag" comments verbatim. He then described what he felt were the alarming interrogation techniques being used on the detainees at Gitmo. He mentioned holding a detainee in such cold temperatures that he actually shivered, another was held in heat passing 100 degrees, some were left in isolation so long they "fouled theirselves" -- and if this wasn't enough, he told about a prisoner that was actually forced to listen to rap music. I can't help but wonder how rappers like Snoop Dog would respond to the accusation that being forced to listen to their recordings, is an unacceptable form of torture.

Key prisoners at Gitmo still have not talked -- because our interrogation methods are so weak. Given the type of individuals we have incarcerated at Gitmo (all of them would love to gouge out your eyes --- and most certainly my eyes), the interrogation techniques we are using there are incredibly mild. All of the prisoners receive regular medical attention. In contrast, Americans who are captured in the Middle East have their heads hacked off. The point here is that there’s just no comparison.

Nevertheless, vital information has been obtained from some of the Gitmo detainees: even though our interrogation techniques are weak, and even laughable by Middle Eastern standards, our military has nevertheless been able to obtain vital information from the detainees at Gitmo. This information has been used to save American lives both at home and abroad.

Now there's a call to close Gitmo: it has come to light that our military has been unkind, and on occasion, even mean to our sworn enemies being held at Gitmo. And of course, as a result, there’s now a call to shut the prison down. Of course, those who would have us close the prison, as usual, have no alternative suggestions. They just think it’s terrible that our military would deprive a prisoner of sleep, or allow him to get cold enough to shiver, in order to protect our country -- so we should close the prison.

Put cameras in their cells?: was watching The Beltway Boys (a political talk show on Fox) this evening. One commentator on the show even suggested that we install a camera in each cell at Gitmo to make sure there are no abuses. Once again, this man needs to remember that the people in those cells are our sworn enemies. Instead of transferring them to Gitmo, had we handed these detainees over to our Middle Eastern allies, and allowed them to do the interrogation, we would have found out whatever we wanted to know overnight. Then, of course, the terrorists would now be a shadow of their former selves -- assuming they didn't die in the process. In fact, fearing this very thing (i.e., being turned over to a Middle Eastern ally for interrogation) Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the terrorist who master minded the 9-11 attacks, upon capture immediately confessed everything he knew.

Our military did not turn these prisoners over to our allies in the Middle East, for interrogation, because we as Americans do not support the use of torture to get information. I also personally do not think we should ever resort to torture. That said, I do not consider the interrogation techniques that are being used at Gitmo (ie sleep deprivation, etc.) to be torture.

Let's put the detainees at Gitmo on trial: nator McCain recently came out and requested that we put the detainees at Gitmo on trial. That way those that are not a threat to this country, or who may be there in error, can be returned home. I agree with Senator McCain's recommendation.

Closing Gitmo would be a mistake: think that it would be a mistake if we closed Gitmo – most certainly if we did it just to be politically correct with our sworn enemies. I, for one, support what our military has done and is doing there. We can’t lose sight of the fact that we are indeed at war with very vicious people.

We need to decide as Americans what is right and what is wrong.
But maybe even the mild methods of interrogation being used at Gitmo are more than this country wants to have employed on its behalf. We have to decide as Americans what's more important. Should we do whatever it takes to protect our borders, even if it means using mild but unpleasant methods of interrogation? Or should we, unlike our enemies, simply refuse to resort to this sort of thing. Based on the comments I've seen on this Blog, and the completion of the survey, American's seem split 50-50 over which direction they want our country to take.

Why the invasion of Iraq happened: everyone now knows, we invaded Iraq because the intelligence community was flat out wrong about there being weapons of mass destruction there. One of the reasons we had such bad information goes back to the shackles put on the CIA by the Committee head by Senator Frank Church back in 1975. It's true that the CIA was literally out of control and needed to be reigned in, but the Committee went overboard in imposing restraints on the CIA's ability to gather intelligence. My friends in the intelligence community tell me that as a result of those restraints (and others subsequently imposed) the CIA has largely become ineffective as an intelligenge gathering service. The point to be made here is that once we soften our intelligence gathering methods (ie like the methods currently being used at Gitmo) there is no way back. Then our defense capabilities (because we don't have good information on which to base our decisions) become weaker, and we become more vulnerable to attacks both at home and abroad. So we need to be very careful in making this decision.

If I get enough requests, I'll post the video. After writing this article, I once again watched a video showing people jumping to their deaths, one after another, from the World Trade Center. I’ve thought about making this video available for those reading this blog to see. The video can be found by searching on line, but finding it takes a little effort. If I get enough requests, I’ll make it available. I find that watching it helps me keep things in perspective. Compared to those Americans and others who were forced to jump to their death on 9-11, the detainees at Gitmo really don't have it so bad.

A special note to the reader: nce this blog article was posted I have been accused repeatedly of supporting the use of torture to get information from prisoners. This is simply not true. I do not, under any circumstance, support the use of torture. I do not consider the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation or the playing of rap music to be torture.

[Dvanharn]

It takes a minimal amount of intelligence [sic] and insight to know that Bush & Co. knew that the intelligence was weak, but were determined to use it to justify their plans for regime change in Iraq and the establishment of a permanent military presence in the heart of the middle east. Much of the bogus intelligence came from informants such as Ahmed Chalabi and his fellow exiles, who wanted to use the power of the U.S. to help them get rid of Iraq and become the new rulers of Iraq.

Rather than the intelligence system being weakened by previous administrations, a bigger problem is the inability of Americans, from the average citizen to the rulers of our nation, to recognize the differences in people and cultures, and use that knowledge. Many Arab-speaking interpreters were fired because they were gay (and obviously, straight macho-men do not want to learn Arabic), so our intelligence network was weakened for reasons of right-wing prejudice. One of the biggest problems we have in dealing with Arab/Persian/Muslim nations and issues is that they speak our language and understand our culture, but the reverse is not true. And this relates closely to intelligence gathering - without a good network on the ground, infiltrating the enemy, the U.S. is are put in a weakened intelligence position. Hell, our own White House, apparently with the President's implied consent, destroyed the cover of an important operative in the global nuclear weapons intelligence network, reducing the safety of our nation to settle a score in a political vendetta.

Any information the prisoners at Gitmo still hold would be of little strategic of tactical value after this amount of time, but most of them would probably go right back to Afghanistan or Iraq and other places to kill Americans if they could. However, there is strong evidence that some of the prisoners at Gitmo and other American terrorist prisons were just in the wrong place at the wrong time (they may hate America, but not be active terrorists) and if so, their capture and incarceration may be helping to breed real terrorists as their families take revenge against America. The unfortunate top-down (starting with GW Bush) ingorance of, and distatse for, subtlety and nuance puts us at a big advantage in understanding our enemy. And understanding one's enemy is as important as much of the strategic and tactical intelligence factoids. As a matter of fact, failure to understand our enemy is the single biggest flaw of the promoters of the Iraq war.

Philosophically, we (Americans) have to decide, as a nation, whether we uphold the principles on which our nation was founded, or slowly drift downward towards the inhumanity of our enemies, and become more like them. We are already losing the high ground on which America and Americans have always tried to stand. We preach freedom for others, as long as they are enemies and not allies, or have resources or strategic locations that we covet. At the same time, the U.S. is taking freedoms away from our citizens, manipulating them with fear the same way tyrants have done in the past, and fighting wars with the children of the poor while the children of the business and government classes are not encouraged by their parents to defend their nation, and few serve in the military, especially on the ground with the Army.

It's easy to see that you do not like the old America, the land of the brave and the home of the free. While you and Bob Parsons, the blogger in your post, promote the lessening of American ideals, and figthing endless wars without sacrifice, others wonder what happened to human intelligence and common sense and a love of freedom and community that is lacking on our modern, polarized world.

Dave

[Spideykid]

<<A special note to the reader.
Since this blog article was posted I have been accused repeatedly of supporting the use of torture to get information from prisoners. This is simply not true. I do not, under any circumstance, support the use of torture. I do not consider the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation or the playing of rap music to be torture. >>

Funny thing is the US does consider sleep deprivation a form of torch when the Viet cong and North Korea used it on are pilots, ironic how things change.

And yes sleep deprivation does cause problem for the person.

[MicroHydro]

We need to put Dick Cheney and the neocons in Gitmo and in-terror-gate them until they reveal all of their co-conspirators in the 9/11 plot.

Bush could go there too, but I doubt he has any intelligence to yield.

[I_Like_Plants]

We can't take a pattern that's been established over the last 100 or so years, Empire, oil-dependence, wars for oil, and cure it in a week by letting prisoners out of Gitmo.

And, it's a very good point about fighting 'em there as opposed to fighting 'em here, although we are catching the occasional cell operating here in the US, ice-cream truck driver jokes aside, those cells are a serious matter.

We're in a real war now we can't just back out of, and as long as war protestors drive to the rallys in their SUVs, war IS the answer.

[gg3]

9-11 and Gitmo, hmm.

My mother saw plane #2, and my sister in law drove past the Pentagon within a few minutes of plane #3. The first I knew of the attack was a frantic wake-up call on my emergency phone from a co-worker, and the next thing I heard was my mom's and my brother's frightened messages on my voicemail system.

My first reaction was "Oh my God, we're at war!" and my second was "We've got to find out who those bastards are and *pulverise them* so they can't do this to us *ever again*!"

A friend of mine is a commissioned officer in the Army and has done a tour in Iraq, soon to head out for his second; and another has just signed up with the Marines.

So yeah, I take this one personally, and nothing less than complete victory will suffice. Not by way of revenge -revenge is what *they* do, the barbarians who attacked us- but by way of self-defense against a vicious enemy who can't be deterred and therefore has to be destroyed. Deterrence works when you have a rational foe such as the USSR, whose atheist leaders preferred to avoid death; it doesn't work with enemies who embrace their own violent deaths as tickets to paradise. Self-defense against a martyrdom-seeking enemy means giving them the deaths they seek while denying them our own.

I agreed with President Bush's doctrine about "harboring," and I still can't think of any other doctrine that could work against an enemy without clearly-defined home turf. I cheered at the liberation of Afghanistan from the vicious Taliban regime that was every bit as evil as the North Korean regime. I believed what was said about Iraqi WMDs and cheered again to see Saddam's statue topple and President Bush land on that aircraft carrier to declare victory.

I cheered, I supported, and I believed. And I still believe in the rightness of our overall cause.

I made excuses for all manner of military incompetence on the Administration's part: "they're human beings, humans make mistakes," and "this is a new kind of warfare," and so on. I even tried to rationalize the lack of any WMDs being discovered in Iraq. But piece by piece the litany of stupidity built up over time, to where the conclusion became undeniable: "These people have no clue, no grasp of reality." My friend in the Army says his buddies have another word for that: they call Rumsfeld et. al. "The Theoreticians." That's pretty scathing stuff from the boots on the ground.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me, was an obscure piece of news that was reported and then forgotten or ignored by most. It was the news that someone from the Administration had confided in one of Chalabi's men -Iranian spies in case you've forgotten that part- while out for a night of drinking together (going drinking with spies, really smart, not!) that the US had successfully broken Iran's military and diplomatic ciphers.

By comparison, that would have been like announcing to Mussolini that we had broken Hitler's ciphers. The enormity of that, in terms of damage to our intelligence capabilities, cannot be overstated. It was huge. Cryptological secrets are of the same importance as nuclear weapons secrets, for good reasons that would be a three-paragraph digression to explain. Take my word for it or ask me.

The reason it stuck in my craw was that I have a decent knowledge of signals intelligence (SIGINT), going back to ten years before PGP was invented. This is a field that's sufficiently technical that most Americans have no clue about it, but success at SIGINT wins wars, and failure loses wars. For example, the downing of Admiral Yamamoto during WW2 was a SIGINT success on our part and a failure on Japan's part, and it was a pivotal event in the war. For example, the "Ultra secret," successful cryptanalysis of Axis battlefield ciphers: finally declassified in the late 1970s, over 30 years after the fact. Thirty years is a long time; you don't wait that long unless the secret is that important.

The Administration had frequently announced to the world, "we've picked up terrorist chatter about (blah blah blah)...." which translates to "we've intercepted terrorist communications..." *and everybody knows it*! It was no wonder that over time, Al Qaeda gave up all use of electronic communications and switched to hand couriers! This had stuck in my craw before the Chalabi disclosure, and taken together, the two datapoints added up to an Administration that doesn't even know how to manage some of its most vital military secrets.

Then we discover that there was really no plan for the post-maneuver phase of war in Iraq. Not enough troops, not enough materiel, not enough planning, and on and on goes the list, with contributions from every MOS depending on what each person knows well enough to describe in the kind of detail that leaves no doubt whatsoever. And the picture adds up to abject incompetence.

Now who among us would say that the United States and allies were wimps when it came to dealing with Tojo's forces and Hitler's forces...?

Who among us would deny the value of the intel gained from prisoner interrogations during WW2...?

Anyone here care to stand up and claim that our interrogation practices during WW2 were wimpy and inadequate to the task, particularly when dealing with the barbarian regimes we fought in those days...?

The fact is, we treated those prisoners -who also came from regimes that practiced unspeakable horrors- we treated them with respect, we did not torture them, we did not violate the Geneva conventions. And the proof of the pudding was in the reports, time and again, from postwar Germany and Japan, of citizens of those countries saying that one of the main reasons they came to love Americans is that we treated them with decency when they were prisoners of war.

We did it for three reasons. One is that people under torture tell you whatever you want to hear in order to make the pain stop. The intel they produce is unreliable, and (as we've lately rediscovered!), bad intel loses wars. Two is that if we treat enemy prisoners humanely, we have a moral and legal claim for our enemies to treat our own captured soldiers humanely: and it works. Three is that civilized people *don't do that.* Civilized people do not torture prisoners, rape civilians, or skewer babies on their swords. If our cherished values mean anything at all, they mean that.

And now we have the pictures from Iraq and the reports from Gitmo. Apparently we did do that, and more, and worse.

Yes, someone did die at Gitmo. The guy was beaten so badly -while in shackles!- that the medical examiner's report said he looked as if he'd been run over by a bus.

Yes, there's at least one Al Qaeda at Gitmo who was/is/will-still-be a threat. One. And what of the four-hundred-odd others...? Where's the evidence...? The Administration says it's secret. More or less secret than the fact that we were intercepting Al Qaeda cellphones?! The Administration withholds documents from Senators on Bolton's use of NSA intercepts for political purposes, claims that information is too secret for Senators to see (but not too secret for Bolton's junior staff, who saw all of it); but this is the same Administration that just dealt NSA an enormous defeat by leaking the details about decrypting Iranian ciphers, to an Iranian spy!

It's just come out that American contractors were paying bounty to Afghanis and Arabs etc. who turned over "any suspected terrorists." First of all, this is a violation of policy: bounties are reseved for named individuals, people who are on the longer version of the "deck of cards." NOT just randoms who might or might not be involved. Do you know what $25,000 US Dollars looks like to an Afghani tribesman...?

So these bounty-cases get rounded up and sent off to Gitmo. If they weren't our enemies before, they sure as hell are now. And *we made them.* Made them from whole cloth. Just like the stories about Iraqi WMDs.

How many of those 500 are there at Gitmo because some unscrupulous tribal with a grudge got a nice big chunk of change from a US contractor...? Do we even know...?

And by the way, those contractors are immune from prosecution. Bush signed an executive order exempting all of the private contractor firms from any criminal or civil liability from anything they or their employees did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do you wonder why 370 American troops have been convicted in courts martial, of mistreatment and torture of prisoners...? In many cases they did it because they were told to -by contractors- contractors who pretended to be Special Forces, CIA Clandestine Service officers, etc. etc. Contractors who are immune from prosecution, even for falsely claiming command authority over US soldiers.

But those soldiers are still under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so they take the heat for doing what they were told to do by people they thought had lawful authority but didn't.

And the phrase "It happened on my watch, sir..." apparently does not apply to Rumsfeld himself.

The blogger who was quoted above, says that CIA had its hands tied by the Church committee. I'm sorry but that does not wash; it is precisely analogous to liberals trying to excuse violent felons by saying they had bad childhoods. The proximate cause -the immediate, verifyable causal factor- was revealed in the minutes provided by the head of MI-6 to the UK government in the run-up to the Iraq war: "...the intelligence is being fixed around the policy."

The intelligenece is being FIXED around the policy.

We all know what that word FIXED means. It doesn't mean "repaired," that's for sure. It means that official lies are being ginned up and then trotted out for the world to believe.

So yeah, I believed, I supported, and I cheered.

And I was lied to.

And so were over 1,700 Americans who have come back in flag-draped coffins, and all of those who have come back with lifelong disabilities, and all those Iraqi civilians who were killed in the unavoidable crossfire.

Bill Clinton lied about a blow job. A blow job! And for that he got impeached.

George Bush LIED US INTO A WAR.

And, just as every parable about the slippery slope of sin goes, once you start, once you cross the threshold, it just gets bigger and bigger.

So now we have torture on our hands. And disappearances. And an entire bureaucratic machine engaged in full-scale denial. And a compliant media engaged in downplaying it all. "They were forced to listen to rap music!" say the media and the rightwing blogs, as if it's no worse than the casual obnoxiousness of hearing Snoop Dogg blaring from car speakers while stuck in traffic. Sleep deprivation is pooh-poohed as if it's nothing worse than what parents endure with a new infant; but as practiced at Gitmo it is a known, predictable, and certain cause of psychosis, i.e. permanent though subtle damage to the brain.

From which it can be inferred that not only holding people without charges or due process or any other semblance of legality, but also causing them to become permanently insane as an exercise in global fishing expeditions, are acceptable parts of this Administration's policy. And after all, a damaged brain leaves no visible external scars. No puddle of blood on the cell floor. Not even a puddle of urine on a Koran. Though it turns out that both of those puddles were commonplace. And more, and worse.

It would have been one thing if Bush and Rumsfeld et. al. had leveled with us from the day one. It would have been one thing if they had the military competence to go in there with sufficient capability to prevent the post-maneuver phase degenerating into a cesspool of insurgent terror. But they didn't, and it did, and they have failed to take responsibility for their actions.

It's hyperbole when the liberals compare Gitmo to the Gulags, or the US to Nazi Germany. But the real question isn't *how similar* our actions are to those regimes. The real question, and the question each and every one of us has to answer, is whether our actions are *different enough* from those regimes.

And it's equally obnoxious hyperbole when the right-wingers compare Gitmo to the rape rooms and torture chambers of Saddam's Iraq, in order to make excuses that we shouldn't hesitate to -and let's use lots of euphemisms here!- "take off the gloves", "get a bit rough", and so on, because after all, *they* do it.

Yeah, THEY do it. They sure do. And they are barbarians.

But the fact that our enemies are barbarians, does not give us the excuse to act as if we have become barbarians ourselves.

By its fruit, the tree is known.

[rogerhb]

US says Guantánamo inmates have Geneva rights

Humble Pie, George?

[ChicknLittle]

White House Response to Supreme Court Ruling..

"It's not really a reversal of policy," (White House Press Secretary) Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision "complex.":"

"The administration intends to work with Congress," Snow said.

So, the White House admits no wrong or defeat then works with republican controlled congress to make its actions legal... (sigh)... Still, this is encouraging as the Supreme Court rejection of the Guantanamo policy based on claimed "war powers" suggests that it might also reject "war powers" as a reason for illegal/unsupervised NSA spying.

What is lacking here is a Senate or Congress willing to investigate illegal activity and call it what it is.

[UIUCstudent01]

I can't help but notice the Chicago Tribune and the Guardian revealed a memo... I'm sure other outlets have it too..

[quote=Chicago Tribune]A memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England to all branches of the armed forces, released Tuesday, instructed them to ensure that all Defense Department policies, practices and directives comply with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions governing the humane treatment of prisoners.

The practical effect on interrogation techniques, detention conditions and trial procedures was unclear. [/url]

This is all good, but I couldn't help but notice the timing seeing as how this was released. It's a report on the torture... from year-long isolation to rape... It also shows that many question even if many who are there even have any links to terrorism at all...

So, in effect, this memo almost was a smokescreen for this report to come out. The memo is supposed to say to people that everything is being rectified. End of story. I can see this torture issue never being mentioned by politicians (like John Kerry) again. Hell, they probably got a memo never to mention it again.... (That is, unless it is about how much progress we've had..)

[sch_peakoiler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '[')url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1818027,00.html]US says Guantánamo inmates have Geneva rights[/url]

Humble Pie, George?