Thursday, July 14, 2005

Trans-Oceanic Bad Apples

I, for one, am completely shocked and amazed...
Interrogators at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains, according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

(snip)

The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers. The report shows that they were used on Qahtani several months before the United States invaded Iraq.

The investigation also supports the idea that soldiers believed that placing hoods on detainees, forcing them to appear nude in front of women and sexually humiliating them were approved interrogation techniques for use on detainees.

(snip)

[Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commanded the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay] traveled to Iraq in September 2003 to assist in Abu Ghraib's startup, and he later sent in "Tiger Teams" of Guantanamo Bay interrogators and analysts as advisers and trainers. Within weeks of his departure from Abu Ghraib, military working dogs were being used in interrogations, and naked detainees were humiliated and abused by military police soldiers working the night shift.
Who could have seen this coming? Of course, Abu Ghraib is all water under the board, and hardly anyone remembers it, must less is angered or ashamed by it, and as long as there are no pictures out of Gitmo, and assuming the second wave of Abu Ghraib photos stays under wraps, this isn't going to make a ripple, especially in the heavy surf of Rovegate and the upcoming Supreme Court nomination battle(s). Actually, this might be another good reason not to nominate Gonzales - the White House probably doesn't want torture coming up as a discussion topic if they can possibly help it.

2 comments:

Static Compost said...

I read that the US is using Guantanamo just to piss the Cuban's off. Why else would they pay thousands to bring their prisoners to the otherside of the world when there are prisons in South Korea, Japan, Turkey. As for the Prisoner abuse it needs to stop,its not like it is just randomly a hppening Rumsfeld knew about it long before the press got a hold of it. The punsihments need to be harsher.

Eli said...

Me, I'm waiting for them to start including Gitmo tortures in a compendium of "Cuba's" human rights abuses...