In which US soldiers committed anal rape on Guantanomo prison inmates

 

“Americans are asking, 'Why do they hate us?' They hate what we see right here in this chamber: a democratically-elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms – our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

President George W. Bush, during an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people, United States Capitol, Washington, DC, September 20, 2001.

Really, Mr. Ex-Pres.?

Not too long ago, there was this headline: Iraqi woman had 80 women raped then recruited as suicide bombers Naturally, much screaming about Muslim barbarians and such-like epithets ensued. Of course, such things are the province of backward, religious savages, and Westerners would NEVER do such a thing...


The Torture Administration Continued: Former Gitmo Guard Speaks Out

An Army private who served at Guantanamo Bay --- previously deterred by fear of retaliation -- is speaking out about his experiences there. (Harper's) Scott Horton quotes the AP interview:

“The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong,” he told the Associated Press. Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed. (Harper's; emphasis added) Non-liberal Andrew Sullivan points out the reason why it's so important to consider the source.

We were long told that the grueling accounts of torture, sexual abuse, and mental terror inflicted under orders from president Bush in Guantanamo Bay (and many other sites in the war on Jihadist terrorism) were lies. The testimony came from Jihadists, after all.... But then came the testimony from FBI agents who saw the barbarism authorized in the camp; and increasingly, more and more US service members have come forward to testify to rigged trials, orchestrated sadism, instrumental rape as policy and abuse of medical ethics.

Neely's gone into quite a lot of detail.

Neely’s comprehensive account runs to roughly 15,000 words. It was compiled by law students at the University of California at Davis and can be accessed here.

But just looking at that list I quoted from Horton's article? That's a lot of wrong things right there.
Let's go through the list of things he saw and did that were wrong a little more systematically.

1. the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb
2. sexual abuse by medical personnel
3. torture by other medical personnel
4. brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution
5. torturous shackling, positional torture
6. interference with religious practices and beliefs
7. verbal abuse
8. restriction of recreation
9. an isolation regime...put in place for child-detainees.

Yes, yes, I know. The United States under George W. Bush has not and would never, ever engage in "torture." George W. Bush would never, ever countenance torture unless it was absolutely necessary. It's all in how you define "torture."MORE


A couple of observations for a later posting...: My tax dollars paid for that. So did yours. Our former President Bush, a devoted Christian, pushed for and sanctioned that. And our new spanking President, Mr,. Obama, another devout Christian; seems quite intent on letting the perpetrators all get away with it. Funny that.
Do we still pretend that we abide by treaties?

On Friday in Salon, Joe Conason argued that there should be no criminal investigations of any kind for Bush officials "who authorized torture or other outrages in the 'war on terror'." Instead, Conason suggests that there be a presidential commission created that is "purely investigative," and Obama should "promis[e] a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly." So, under this proposal, not only would we adopt an absolute bar against prosecuting war criminals and other Bush administration felons, we would go in the other direction and pardon them from any criminal liability of any kind.

....I want to focus on an issue that pro-immunity advocates such as Conason simply never address.The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)). By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.
There is reasonable dispute about the scope of prosecutorial discretion permitted by the Convention, and there is also some lack of clarity about how many of these provisions were incorporated into domestic law when the Senate ratified the Convention with reservations. But what is absolutely clear beyond any doubt is that -- just as is true for any advance promises by the Obama DOJ not to investigate or prosecute -- issuing preemptive pardons to government torturers would be an unambiguous and blatant violation of our obligations under the Convention. There can't be any doubt about that. It just goes without saying that if the U.S. issued pardons or other forms of immunity to accused torturers (as the Military Commissions Act purported to do), that would be a clear violation of our obligation to "submit the [torture] case to [our] competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution." Those two acts -- the granting of immunity and submission for prosecution -- are opposites.MORE

And there I was thinking that the West was supposed to be civilized.