| I'm
copying the following post of Hullabaloo
by digby in it's entirety.
Wednesday,
August 04, 2004
The
Horrors of Gitmo
This
(pdf) report
from the Center for Constitutional Rights regarding the
treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo will make your hair stand
on end. The Abu Ghraib torture photos are terrible and shocking,
but this is so systematic, so methodical so Kafkaesque that
it makes you wonder if this country can redeem itself. It
is only a matter of scale that differentiates this camp from
the gulags and the concentration camps of the twentieth century.
It is
a long detailed account by three of the British prisoners
who were held for more than two years and have since been
released and are back home, free and presumably not considered
dangerous since they were released by the authorities within
24 hours of landing. The story of their treatment, most particularly
the cold and calculating, relentless mental torture combined
with harsh conditions and regular bouts of physical abuse
is difficult to read.
| During
the whole time that we were in Guantanamo, we were at
a high level of fear. When we first got there the level
was sky-high. At the beginning we were terrified that
we might be killed at any minute. The guards would say
to us "we could kill you at any time." They would say
"the world doesn't know you're here, nobody knows you're
here, all they know is that you're missing and we could
kill you and no one would know". After time passed, that
level of fear came down somewhat but never vanished. It
was always there. We were in a situation where there was
no one we could complain to and not only could they do
anything to any of us but we could see them doing it to
other detainees. All the time we thought that we would
never get out. Most especially if we were in isolation
there would be a constant fear of what was happening and
what was going to happen. If it hadn't been for the Arabs
knowing by the position of the sun when to pray, we wouldn't
have known even that. We didn't know the time. We know
the dates we do know because we counted for ourselves
and some soldiers would tell us enough to let us slightly
keep track, otherwise there was no way and there was never
meant to be any way. |
These
men had already been through that horrible shipping
container massacre in Afghanistan. Then they were held
at Bagram and Kandahar, where their treatment was unspeakably
harsh and cruel. (This, of course, is where certain "contractors"
are alleged to have beaten prisoners to death.) By the time
they got to Gitmo, they had already been brutalized.
Now, if
one were to have some sort of sympathy for the soldiers in
Afghanistan who were gathering up "Taliban" and "al Qaeda"
with virtually no knowledge of the country, the terrain or
the various tribal and political feuds that went on there,
you could say that they,at least,expected that Guantanamo
would sort out the real bad guys from the innocent guys. That
never happened. Apparently, it was assumed that if they put
you on a plane for Gitmo you were a terrorist, period.
That's
why, as an American, it is also difficult to face the fact
that nobody down there had the first clue about what they
were doing in terms of interrogations and intelligence. It
sounds as if every third rate intel guy from the FBI to MI5
to the CIA to Navy intelligence got a crack at these guys,
basically asking them stupid useless questions over and over
again, all the while torturing them until they falsely implicated
themselves. Then the cycle would begin again. Millions of
dollars and man hours have been wasted on useless intelligence
gathering turning the entire project into a self perpetuating
cycle of sadism and insane ass covering. It is a disgrace.
I am not
surprised to learn that much of the truly
malignant psychological torture was brought to the camp
by artillery officer in charge of sadism, General Geoffrey
D. Ripper who is, as we speak, streamlining the torture operations
in Iraq so as not to be so sloppy and obvious. He did a fine
job of that in Guantanamo. The ERF
goon squad was a particularly nice touch.
| "We
had the impression that at the beginning things were not
carefully planned but a point came at which you could
notice things changing. That appeared to be after General
Miller around the end of 2002. That is when short-shackling
started, loud music playing in interrogation, shaving
beards and hair, putting people in cells naked, taking
away people's "comfort" items, the introduction of levels,
moving some people every two hours depriving them of sleep,
the use of A/C air. Isolation was always there. "Intel"
blocks came in with General Miller. Before when people
were put into isolation they would seem to stay for not
more than a month. After he came, people would be kept
there for months and months and months. We didn't hear
anybody talking about being sexually humiliated or subjected
to sexual provocation before General Miller came. After
that we did. Although sexual provocation, molestation
did not happen to us, we are sure that it happened to
others. It did not come about at first that people came
back and told about it. They didn't. What happened was
that one detainee came back from interrogation crying
and confided in another what had happened. That detainee
in turn thought that it was so shocking he told others
and then other detainees revealed that it had happened
to them but they had been too ashamed to admit to it.
It therefore came to the knowledge of everyone in the
camp that this was happening to some people. It was clear
to us that this was happening to the people who'd been
brought up most strictly as Muslims. It seemed to happen
most to people in Camps 2 and 3, the "intel" people, ie
the people of most interest to the interrogators. In addition,
military police also told us about some of the things
that were going on. They would tell us just rather like
news or something to talk about. This was something that
was happening in the camp. It seemed to us that a lot
of the MPs couldn't themselves believe it was happening. |
One of
the things that becomes clear in this is that they carefully
used each prisoner's weak points to get them to confess. Sexual
humiliation was not considered useful with these British guys,
they used isolation and mind games on them. Others, it seemed,
responded to pain. The torture was very individualized. (At
Abu Ghraib, after Miller passed on the techniques, they let
things get out of hand and Lynndie and the gang started
to have "fun" with the sexual sadism. But, there is little
doubt that the whole system came from Miller.)
These
three guys were very lucky that they came from a country that
was closely allied with the US and had some favors to call
in. They'd been forced to confess to being in a video with
bin Laden even though two of them were in British police custody
at the time the video was filmed and the other was working
in an electronics store in his home town of Tipton. (They
were fingered as being the ones in the video by one of the
many mentally ill prisoners in the camp who have been driven
around the bend by the conditions there.) British Intelligence
found the proof that they were nowhere near bin Laden at the
time which explains why these allegedly vicious terrorists
who had been held in appalling conditions for years were allowed
to just get off the plane from Gitmo and walk right back into
Britain as free citizens. The poor damned Afghans, Pakistanis,Africans
and Chinese(?) who've been sold to the Americans by various
members of the northern Alliance and others for CIA money
aren't so lucky.
I urge
you to read the whole thing even though it's quite long. It
details stories, some of which we've heard from other sources,
of prisoners being forcibly
injected with unknown substances, denial of urgent medical
treatment, brutal beatings, sexual humiliation and psychological
torture that is beyond outrageous.
These
men were never charged with a crime. Indeed, they never even
fought against the United States. Even in the worst cases
of prison abuses in America before the reform movement of
the 1930's, prisoners had at least had a chance to appear
before a hanging judge before they were locked up in "the
hole."
I am
sick that this happened under the name of my country. And,
the men who signed the orders allowing this, Don Rumsfeld
and George W. Bush, are war criminals.
digby
|
