From the Washington Post, January 23, 2002, page A9:
In the face of continued criticism of U.S. treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday mounted a vigorous, hour-long defense of security procedures used at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"The treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper, it's humane, it's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. "No detainee has been harmed. The numerous articles, statements, questions, allegations and breathless reports on television are undoubtedly by people who are either uninformed, misinformed or poorly informed." [For the non LexisNexis'd]
From yesterday's Washington Post:
Also yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union released new documents showing that 26 FBI agents reported witnessing mistreatment of Guantanamo Bay detainees, indicating a far broader pattern of alleged abuse there than reported previously.
The records, obtained in an ongoing ACLU lawsuit, also show that the FBI's senior lawyer determined that 17 of the incidents were "DOD-approved interrogation techniques" and did not require further investigation. The FBI did not participate in any of the interviews directly, according to the documents.
The new ACLU documents detail abuses seen by FBI personnel serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, including incidents in which military interrogators grabbed prisoners' genitals, bent back their fingers and, in one case, placed duct tape over a prisoner's mouth for reciting the Koran.
From the December 26th Post:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," an unidentified agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004, for example. "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."
To be fair to the Secretary of Defense, he may have meant, "No detainee has been harmed yet, but we're working on it."
If you read the rest of the first article, you'll see that we're sending our prisoners to allies like Egypt, who take care of the really nasty stuff. After all, they're better at it. But we're learning.
Does anyone still care about what's happening to our country?
One of my relatives can't understand why I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, as they sometimes "go too far." I am a member because my government, acting in my name, sometimes goes too far, and it takes organizations like the ACLU to bring such disgraceful abuse to light.
Posted by cradle at January 7, 2005 8:22 PMso whats your point?
Posted by: kan at January 7, 2005 9:55 PMGrabbing someone's genitals isn't always a crime!
Posted by: Brooke at January 8, 2005 12:49 AMhey, I read your eggy weggs post first and didn't really care about double yolks, I mean, really, don't americans care about anything else besides consuming? I mean isn't Gonzales about to replace Ashcroft and your talking about eggs????!!!!
Then I read this post and feel better about knowing you, David.
Sitting in another country, reading the news via teh interwebs and drinking strong coffee often leaves me feeling somewhat fatalistic and always angry at my dear country. Sometimes we must be angry at what we love. Therefore, carry on David, I'm right behind you. Of couse, I'm a lousy, snail-eating francophile now. Hope you don't mind.
And what's this I hear about Bush not wanting to send much aid to SE Asia at first? I guess his handlers didn't go with him to the golf course again. Any press besides the "reactionary French" or "Harpers?"
About the Aid: I think the administration wants to pace it out, but that's consistent with what aid organizations want. I get the impression that in terms of cash, they're fine for the time being. It's logistics now, and long term reconstruction in the future, that may be problematic. That's my impression.
As far as torture, I think we could be chopping off fingers, and it would make it onto the front page of the Post, but most people, if told, would respond, "oh, abu ghraib, they were bad people!" and that's that! Or, they might respond, "If they're terrorists, they deserve to have their fingers cut off, if not more."
But then, I'm a sushi-eating elitest.
Posted by: David at January 10, 2005 5:19 PMOr, while facing a court martial for your role in alleged abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, one might say...
"You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he (Graner) said.
"In Texas we'd lasso them and drag them out of there."
He said the soldiers took pictures of each other "because no one did anything they thought was wrong".
The soldier's defence says the abuse was sanctioned by his superiors.
"He was doing his job. Following orders and being praised for it," Mr Womack (the defense) told the court.
Spc Graner, in his dark green dress uniform, chatted and joked with his defence team before the hearing began, but showed no reaction during the proceedings.
His trial is expected to last at least a week.
"Whatever happens is going to happen, but I still feel it's going to be on the positive side and I'm going to have a smile on my face," Spc Graner said last week.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4155375.stm
Posted by: shannon at January 11, 2005 9:32 AM