Guantanamo Detainees Tell of Abuses

[Snazzy]

Source: AP

Guantanamo Detainees Tell of Abuses
By ANDREW O. SELSKY | Associated Press Writer
11:17 PM EDT, September 11, 2007

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Detainees flinging body waste at guards. Guards interrupting detainees at prayer. Interrogators withholding medicine. Hostility and tension between inmates and their keepers at the Guantanamo Bay prison are evident in transcripts obtained by The Associated Press.

These rare detainee accounts of life inside the razor wire at the remote U.S. military base in Cuba emerged during Administrative Review Board hearings aimed at deciding whether prisoners suspected of links with the Taliban or al-Qaida should continue to be held or be sent away from Guantanamo.

The Pentagon gave the AP transcripts of hearings held last year in a trailer at Guantanamo after the news agency sought the material under the Freedom of Information Act.

...

A letter signed by physicians and published Friday in the British medical journal Lancet compared the role of doctors at Guantanamo to the South African doctors involved in the case of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who was beaten and tortured to death in 1977 in police custody.

....

Read more: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-inside-guantanamo,0,4886983.story

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. How long before justice is done?

And we release those people back to their families?

And we tear down that shameful place and all the secret prisons where we torture innocents?

I am sickened by what is being done in our name...

[ThomCat]

6. So many people pretend that our country is morally

superior to other countries. I wonder what country they see. I am sickened by what our country does in our name too. It's not to keep us safe. It's not to promote our best interests. It's all for the benefit of fanatics and war profiteers.

[bhikkhu]

2. The first time I read of Guantanamo

It may have been still 2001...I recall telling my wife "they are building a prison in Cuba for terrorists". A black silent hole filled the room. What can anyone do? And reinterpretations of torture, and new levels of secrecy soon followed...the country which represented the freedom of humanity from such things faded into history.

[LuckyLib]

3. In the mid 80's a group of my neighbors regularly got together to write letters,

as members of Amnesty International, to despots and dictators around the world who were torturing and holding political prisoners -- Turkey, South Africa, Chile, and on and on. Now I'm writing members of my own government because we are doing the same.

[Snazzy]

4. No doubt AI gets ya on some lists

How dare ya?

I did the same and learned about Amnesty also in the early 80's under the tutelage of an exceptional HS history teacher, Bernard Markwell. (I'll resist ascribing further labels, but I will proudly name the man--so significant was his passion in showing us youngsters how terrible our government and, often by US proxy, world powers were THEN in accepting human rights abuses in pursuit of whatever bullshit, money, & resources. He had that moral compass.) He amazingly flew under the radar too. Although an usual school, he pushed the envelope in waking his students up, and succeeded significantly.

I'm glad he didn't have to witness what is now being done in the name of the American people though he'd have a clearer word on our wrongs than I.

Bernie possessed a thick FBI file for giving a shit, or at least so is my take on it. And we loved the guy. His early use of FOIA was the first I heard of it. After at least some five plus years or so of fillings and persistence, the government produced his FBI file which was mostly redacted. He proudly brandished it, emphasizing that his own PUBLIC activities and associations, dating into the 60's I suppose, were now somehow state secrets.

The first of his classes I ever attended he had George Santayana's famous line written on the board. Actually I think it was on there before I arrived.

Now: the United States of America, itself, directly performing torture is somehow an acceptable debate and apparently the quintessential campaign issue for Republicans. One man trying to out torture, by policy, the next man. The politics, in this point I'm making, don't really matter except in that the electorate needs to know, if by us on the other side if none other, that's what they are voting for Republican-side. Do they? Are 25% or better, are the red states, saying that our country has gone 'round the bend and now endorse torture?

One sure gets the impression that a lot of the vocal minority of the ultra-right are pretty happy to torture whomever as long as it's not them. The sheep will follow. And as those-who-are-not-them hold dear and near; of course we only torture suspected terrorists! Therefore the ultra right has nothing to fear! The mantra is that you have done nothing wrong, what's to fear?

I won't explore the fucked-up logic there. You know it.

A fascinating new twist in our downfall was DOJ, Pentagon and WH lawyers coming up with ways to legally indemnify the whole thing. The program has been incredibly extensive, starting from the declaration of of anyone captured as 'detainees' to avoid Geneva Convention protections. Add in a host of other events, mostly secret and now leaked: extraordinary renditions, secret prisons (mostly in Russian breakoffs), intentionally staying at Guantanamo and other sites to avoid US jurisdiction, what publicly happened at Abu Ghraib (and is privately much worse), Woo/Addington legal position on what constitutes torture (waterboarding, no organ damage being our highest principle, etc), Rumsfeld personally taking part in some high level waterboarding etc., and on and on.

To sum: we have some sick fascists who work for the American people.

Intelligence officers all say torture is worthless. There is no "the bomb is about to go off, we must torture" exemption. Intel fucked up already if the bomb is about to go off.

Torture produces bad info, violates our principles, encourages retaliatory torture against our service-members, and is morally wrong to boot. Our laws deal with it just fine (or did); you are a criminal if you torture. If somehow you must act in some really unusual threatening way to the man setting off that bomb, a jury will hear your side. You will have violated the law and the morality we (used to) stand for--it better be worth it.

Meanwhile they poison what America is supposed to be and the example it was. Essentially we have joined philosophical forces with the worst of third world disappearance squads. By court order! Our government is loaded with war criminals. Premeditated too, that's why we didn't sign so many treaties. For no reason. No results, except an endorsement of cruelty and my dick is bigger. Should probably capitalize 'Dick'.

Why? I don't get how these people who mostly never served their country in any other way besides to rip it off have decided that it's ok to violate everything that we stand for (or used to, hell of a parenthetical comment huh?). Nor do I 'get' why we let them and any redress is off the table. Do we have Democratic position statements on torture? Fucked up that we need them, but apparently we do. Really. Lets ask our front runners: Torture, yea or nae? I'm going to and will follow up on DU. Hey you! Please ask too.

Anyway, I'm glad to invoke my HS teacher and exceedingly moral man Mr. Markwell here on DU. There are incredibly important changes happening to what the US is. We can drown them out with trivia, or see it for what it is. Choose. I hope and pray that the 1000's of students this man ran across, and others like him, will get some mass of people to act, in any way possible, to stop evil. As frequently pointed out here (but never enough apparently) the quote does not end on "American right or wrong."

[Mnemosyne]

5. Needs a good

:kick: nr