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| Military Outlines Cases of Abuse at Gitmo |
| 2005-07-13 |
| EFL.Somewhere, Dick Durbin weeps... WASHINGTON - Interrogators subjected a suspected terrorist to abusive and degrading treatment, forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog, military investigators reported Wednesday, saying that justified their call for disciplinary action. I'll bet he loved it. Except maybe the dog part. FILTHY INFIDEL BEAST! Investigators described their findings before the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday. They were looking into allegations by FBI agents who say they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects.The chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, described the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It was learned later that he had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 but was turned away by an immigration agent at the Orlando, Fla., airport. Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was in the airport at the same time, officials have said. Schmidt said that to get him to talk, interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra, forced him to wear a thong on his head, told him he was homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator, Schmidt added, and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women and forced him onto a leash, to act like a dog. Still, he said, "No torture occurred." Sounds good to me. Next... Al-Qahtani was provided food, water and medical care, he said. Together these techniques are degrading and abusive, he said. FBI agents raised their concerns about the techniques to Miller, and he should have monitored them, but he apparently took no action, Schmidt said."It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue miltiary police in a night shift," said Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee. Bush administration officials have sought to portray the excesses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as just that. Carl thinks Rove's behind it all. When he's not outing CIA agents. But Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said investigators found only three instances, out of thousands of interrogations, where military personnel violated Army policy. He did not immediately describe those incidents. Investigators determined that interrogators violated the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations three times. It was unclear from the aide's description what those instances were. Yeah, that might be good to know. The military investigation was conducted by Schmidt and Army Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow after the FBI agents' reports of abuse at Guantanamo surfaced last year. Craddock and the two investigators testifiedabout their findings at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday. Previous investigations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo have hurt U.S. standing worldwide. I'll bet the British are a lot less pissed off about it then they were about two weeks ago. No officer of Miller's rank or higher has been officially admonished in connection with any of the abuse scandals. Former Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, is the highest-ranking officer to face punishment, despite calls from human rights groups to hold more senior leaders accountable. Bushitler in chains doing the perp walk! The ultimate lefty wet dream!!! According to investigators: _A Female interrogator in one case smeared what she described as menstrual blood — it was fake — on a prisoner, but they recommended no further action on the allegation because it happened some time ago. The woman was disciplined, investigators said. Heard it! _A Navy officer threatened one high-value prisoner by saying he would go after his family. This was in violation of U.S. military law, the investigation found. I guess there's no violation of Al Qaeda military law when these mooks pull that shit? _Military interrogators impersonated FBI and State Department agents. This practice was stopped after the FBI complained. Nah. You can tell when they're State Department agents. The ice cream they bring for the "detainee" hasn't melted yet. _Interrogators improperly used duct tape on a detainee. An FBI agent said a prisoner was bound on the head with duct tape, his mouth covered, because he was chanting verses from the Quran. Duct tape. Now a million and TWO uses. _Interrogators used cold, heat, loud music and sleep deprivation on prisoners to break their will to resist interrogation. These techniques were approved at certain times at Guantanamo. Heard it! _Chaining a detainee to the floor in a fetal position was not authorized; however, the investigation could not confirm an FBI agent's allegation that detainees were left in this position for long periods. Heard it! The report said the military should review how it determines the legal status of prisoners at Guantanamo, and decide what forms of treatment and interrogation techniques will be allowed. Cut them up for chum and feed them to the sharks? Guantanamo holds 520 prisoners, while more than 230 others have been released or transferred to the custody of their home governments. Most were captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; only a few have been charged with any crime. There have also been repeated accusations that American personnel at Guantanamo mishandled the Quran, the Muslim holy book. A separate Pentagon investigation found five such instances. I wonder how many Korans we've blown up down there? |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #4 Mrs. Davis, I just finished a book by an interrogator in the Army reserves who worked at Kandahar and Bagram during the first year of the War in Afghanistan (called The Interrogators.) These people did some good work and are well trained. The techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani don't seem to me to be consistent with what is taught at Huachuca. The methods described also don't seem very likely to achieve any intelligence bonanza. Until I read this book I was unaware that there were professional interrogators in the army even to the extent of having a separate school to train them. I speculate that the thong on the head other acts aimed at belittling him or exploiting his homophobia weren't perpetrated by real interrogators. I would expect that the MP's ran amok yet again. Fred or Old Spook could speak more authoritively on the subject. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2005-07-13 20:30 |
| #3 I suspect that in future operations all prisoners will be interrogated on the battlefield and taken into custody by the ally with whom we fight. There appears to be insufficient intelligence value to offset the cost of keeping prisoners and the LLL carping about their treatment. Turn Abu Ghraib over to the Iraqis and be done with it all. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-07-13 15:36 |
| #2 forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog No wonder Andrew Sullivan is obsessed with Gitmo |
| Posted by: Steve 2005-07-13 15:04 |
| #1 "Bush administration officials have sought to portray the excesses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as just that." "That" being the excesses of a few rogue elements on a night shift. Which was proven to be exactly the case at Abu Ghraib, you fuckwit "journalists". You see, they held courts martial. It was in all the papers, honest. Just because comical, preposterous distortion and falsehood are now everday practices of "mainstream" media outlets and agencies doesn't mean we still shouldn't react to it. And pathetic old Levin, desperate to find a pattern where the data didn't show one. What drives these nitwits? Another gem, in two senses: "Previous investigations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo have hurt U.S. standing worldwide." What the idiot journalist meant to write was that allegations or "perceptions" of abuses have hurt US standing -- they can't even keep their own unfounded moronic "analysis" straight. And that's just what it is -- unfounded ... unless someone can document that sort of sweeping statement for me. We DO know that false reports of abuses of Korans have hurt US standing, and that the blackout on the many many real positives in much of Iraq has hurt US standing, and that the adoption of an incomprehensible moral neutrality towards sickening and bizarre barbarism (beheading kidnap victims, blowing up groups of children) by US enemies while hyping every dubious negative from the battlefield have all hurt US standing. But anyone with a clue about the real world knows that the inexplicable tales of US generosity and restraint in the treatment of its captives are, more than anything else, baffling to the bulk of Third World and Muslim observers, who are accustomed to medieval behavior by their own governments. But you'd have to have an IQ above 75 to stumble on that, I suppose. |
| Posted by: Verlaine in Iraq 2005-07-13 13:56 |