Inside Guantanamo

[MikeWM]

Interesting article from one of the lawyers ‘on the inside’ in Gitmo

newstatesman.com/200511210007

One key part, given our recent debates about the guilt or innocence of these people:

Sami al-Laithi knows all about this. An Egyptian, he was minding his own business in Pakistan when the Americans seized him, and he was then badly abused in Guantanamo. He’ll certainly never play football again, as he is confined to a wheelchair with two fractured vertebrae after being ERF’d (that’s a recent addition to the Guantanamo lexicon, describing the habits of the Emergency Reaction Force guards, who dress up in Darth Vader outfits and rough up recalcitrant prisoners).

Because Sami complained repeatedly they held him in solitary confinement at Camp V. Three years into this ordeal, Sami’s tribunal found him “innocent” - as he had said all along, he never was an enemy combatant. So what did he get for it? The guards came into his cell and offered him a white uniform instead of an orange one. Sami got angry. It took them another five months to set him free.

I recommend reading the whole article though.

Mike

 

[gilliam]

Gee, a defense lawyer trying to get clients out how unbiased?

 

[SamCA]

gilliam:

Gee, a defense lawyer trying to get clients out how unbiased?

So, since nobody has responded to it yet despite how many times I’ve posted it, what do you think of the two different prosecution lawyers in Gitmo who’ve also said the trials are rigged?

abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1426797.htm

 

[MikeWM]

gilliam:

Gee, a defense lawyer trying to get clients out how unbiased?

As opposed to a blog written by a serving soldier?

Everyone has some quantity of bias. Do you dispute any of the facts in the article?

Mike

 

[gnjsdad]

It strikes me as a cruel travesty that many of these people have been held for 4 years and yet haven’t been foramlly charged with anything.

This place makes a mockery of all we as Americans profess to believe in.

If they are terrorists, produce the evidence and try them accordingly. If not, why are they still being held?

 

[aimee]

gnjsdad:

It strikes me as a cruel travesty that many of these people have been held for 4 years and yet haven’t been foramlly charged with anything.

This place makes a mockery of all we as Americans profess to believe in.

If they are terrorists, produce the evidence and try them accordingly. If not, why are they still being held?

Some prisons in your own state are much worse…

 

[MommaKat]

gnjsdad:

It strikes me as a cruel travesty that many of these people have been held for 4 years and yet haven’t been foramlly charged with anything.

This place makes a mockery of all we as Americans profess to believe in.

If they are terrorists, produce the evidence and try them accordingly. If not, why are they still being held?

Enemy combatant are entitled to US rights. If you want them to have trials send them to their home countries. I am sure that the rights that they would get there would be a lot worse than what they get in Gitmo.
Hey if your really concerned why not put them in the other jail cell over there in Cuba. There are people in those jails who have been there for more than 4 years and they are not there for trying to kill anyone. They may have said that Castro was ugly.

If you people want to see goologs look at Cuba. Oh but I know you all love Castro.

 

[Al_Masetti]

MommaKat:

Enemy combatant are entitled to US rights. If you want them to have trials send them to their home countries. I am sure that the rights that they would get there would be a lot worse than what they get in Gitmo.
Hey if your really concerned why not put them in the other jail cell over there in Cuba. There are people in those jails who have been there for more than 4 years and they are not there for trying to kill anyone. They may have said that Castro was ugly.

If you people want to see goologs look at Cuba. Oh but I know you all love Castro.

Hear Hear!!!

Well stated in good summary.

 

[gnjsdad]

MommaKat:

Hey if your really concerned why not put them in the other jail cell over there in Cuba. There are people in those jails who have been there for more than 4 years and they are not there for trying to kill anyone. They may have said that Castro was ugly.

Huh?? Because Cuba is worse, that makes extended detention at Guantanamo without charge OK? Even for those who are innocent?

MommaKat:

If you people want to see goologs look at Cuba. Oh but I know you all love Castro.

Who’s you all? And please point to where I ever said I love Castro. I’m a practicing Catholic and I consider your statement a vile, vicious, uncalled-for slander and I’d like an apology.

 

[Philip_P]

MommaKat:

Enemy combatant are entitled to US rights. If you want them to have trials send them to their home countries. I am sure that the rights that they would get there would be a lot worse than what they get in Gitmo.
Hey if your really concerned why not put them in the other jail cell over there in Cuba. There are people in those jails who have been there for more than 4 years and they are not there for trying to kill anyone. They may have said that Castro was ugly.

If you people want to see goologs look at Cuba. Oh but I know you all love Castro.

It should bother you that we have to compare ourselves to Castro to look good.

 

[gilliam]

Philip P:

It should bother you that we have to compare ourselves to Castro to look good.

No, you can actually look at what goologs were in the USSR to begin with and stop there.

 

[MommaKat]

I am not comparing the United States with Cuba. Cuba is a dark and dangerous place to live. I hope that as many people as possible can get out of Cuba.
I don’t know about you but I still believe that we live in the greatest nation on God’s green Earth. Our soldiers as rule are not torturer. But that depends on your definition of torture. I don’t think that feeding people religously appropriate meals, giving them prayer rugs, Korans, Harry Potter books,and allowing them to play soccer is torture. They are enemy combantants and are not entitled to US constitutional rights. The Geneva convetion states that a country can hold enemy combantants until the conflict is over. If you want them tried then send them to their home countries. They are all sitting around getting fat and reading books. The a large number of the ones who have been released have been killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

 

[Philip_P]

MommaKat:

II don’t know about you but I still believe that we live in the greatest nation on God’s green Earth.

Let’s keep it that way. Tell VP Cheney that torture is not an American value.

If you want them tried then send them to their home countries.

If we can’t even tell them what they’re being held for after four years, maybe you’re right, we should let them go. Then again, if we think they’ve done something deserving imprisonment, maybe we should tell them so, and give them a trial. I’d like to think that America is up to the challenge of giving trials to people we’ve imprisoned. That’s the sort of thing the greatest nation on God’s green Earth is supposed to do.

As Langston Hughs once wrote, let America be America again.

 

[SamCA]

MommaKat:

I don’t think that feeding people religously appropriate meals, giving them prayer rugs, Korans, Harry Potter books,and allowing them to play soccer is torture.

What about water boarding, beating with blunt objects like gun butts, burning with hot metal, and breaking bones? Are those torture? Because our own soldiers have states that such is rife throughout our military prisons.

 

[Al_Masetti]

I am getting very confused.

Someone on TV said that some Americans PAY to have panties pulled over their heads and get pulled around on a leash. Oh, wait… that was Jay Leno.

And someone else complained about waterboarding. Oh, wait, that was Ted Kennedy. [Can you believe it?!]

Well, people who played “hard to get” in Iraq ended up in mass graves or being run through a shredding machine alive. About 400,000 of them by actual count so far.

Somehow waterboarding or a little “unnecessary roughness” seems pretty tame by comparison.

 

[MikeWM]

Al Masetti:

Somehow waterboarding or a little “unnecessary roughness” seems pretty tame by comparison.

Ah, relativism again! As long as we’re not quite as bad as the bad guys, I guess anything goes. An interesting position for a Catholic though. I thought we believed in absolute morality.

Mike

 

[Al_Masetti]

MikeWM:

Ah, relativism again! As long as we’re not quite as bad as the bad guys, I guess anything goes. An interesting position for a Catholic though. I thought we believed in absolute morality.

Mike

First of all, an apology. My sarcasm was showing.

The point however is this: Mssrs. Kennedy, Leno and others have demonstrated that some things which are basically not very life-threatening can be re-characterized or “spun” or grossly exaggerating them into appearing as if they really are life-threatening.

Somewhere on line, there was a reference to some kind of “agony apple” or some such name or other. I’m doing this from memory. I looked it up and it was a metal device, which when heated would be inserted into a victim’s mouth, and a screw turned which caused the “apple” to open into three segments. As the screw turns, it causes the mouth, teeth and face of the victim to be distorted and burned and then destroyed. Very slowly. The Web site had tons of these devices described. And apparently Saddam’s dungeons were the sites of where these midieval devices were employed. This information was not included in the mainstream media as representative of the kinds of behavior practiced by the regime the United States removed. Nor is it acknowledged by those who were arguing for immediate withdrawl from Iraq. Nor has this type of “torture” been brought forth as examples of what we are doing at Guantanomo or elsewhere.

Humiliation is not the moral equivalent of amputation.

Somehow, I have a problem with equating Saddam’s torture devices and comparing them with terrorists under interrogation receiving some rough handling or psychological persuasion.

And then having some politician in Washington say that we are no better than Saddam and that psychological persuasion is torture.

On that basis, for some people, the “ordinary act” of entering a confessional booth might be construed as “torture”.

Oops, there goes my sarcasm.

Sorry about that.

 

[Philip_P]

Al Masetti:

First of all, an apology. My sarcasm was showing.

The point however is this: Mssrs. Kennedy, Leno and others have demonstrated that some things which are basically not very life-threatening can be re-characterized or “spun” or grossly exaggerating them into appearing as if they really are life-threatening.

Somewhere on line, there was a reference to some kind of “agony apple” or some such name or other. I’m doing this from memory. I looked it up and it was a metal device, which when heated would be inserted into a victim’s mouth, and a screw turned which caused the “apple” to open into three segments. As the screw turns, it causes the mouth, teeth and face of the victim to be distorted and burned and then destroyed. Very slowly. The Web site had tons of these devices described. And apparently Saddam’s dungeons were the sites of where these midieval devices were employed. This information was not included in the mainstream media as representative of the kinds of behavior practiced by the regime the United States removed. Nor is it acknowledged by those who were arguing for immediate withdrawl from Iraq. Nor has this type of “torture” been brought forth as examples of what we are doing at Guantanomo or elsewhere.

Humiliation is not the moral equivalent of amputation.

Somehow, I have a problem with equating Saddam’s torture devices and comparing them with terrorists under interrogation receiving some rough handling or psychological persuasion.

And then having some politician in Washington say that we are no better than Saddam and that psychological persuasion is torture.

On that basis, for some people, the “ordinary act” of entering a confessional booth might be construed as “torture”.

Oops, there goes my sarcasm.

Sorry about that.

Clearly we’re not as bad as Hussein, and anyone who claims that we are is guilty of overblown rhetoric.

However, this does not excuse our treatment of detainees. While we are not, as a general rule, systematically torturing all prisoners in our custody, the fact remains that prisoners *have *been tortured by US forces, and at US-run detention facilities. People have been crippled for life. People have been murdered. This is inexcusable.

Now the question arises, is this a result of deliberate policy, or is it the case of “a few bad apples.” In the best case scenario, it is the result of isolated individuals. These individuals should be quickly brought to justice - as we see is happening in at least a few cases. Nonetheless, the administration bears some blame even in this “best-case” scenario. By placing detainees beyond the realm of legal oversight, they have arguably fostered a permissive environment where the “bad apples” are more likely to engage in acts of brutality. Clear, unambiguous legal prohibitions against cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment (as per the McCain amendment) would go far toward curtailing this permissive legal environment.

However, there is another, disturbing possibility, and that is that it is actually US policy to torture or mistreat at least some prisoners. The existence of secret prison camps in Eastern Europe, and the insistence by VP Cheney that the CIA be exempt from any regulation such as the McCain amendment, is very unsettling.

Also disturbing is the impulse to defend or water down the gravity of torture, both by administration officials and their supporters in government and the general public. If we really are not engaged in torture, such apologetics should be unnecessary. If we are torturing prisoners, such apologetics is a betrayal of American values and inexcusable.

Remember, unlike many other controversial social issues, these are actions undertaken by the government in my name and yours. This is not a question of tolerating evil, but of evil being done in our name.

 

[koda]

Philip P:

Clearly we’re not as bad as Hussein, and anyone who claims that we are is guilty of overblown rhetoric.

However, this does not excuse our treatment of detainees. While we are not, as a general rule, systematically torturing all prisoners in our custody, the fact remains that prisoners *have *been tortured by US forces, and at US-run detention facilities. People have been crippled for life. People have been murdered. This is inexcusable.

Now the question arises, is this a result of deliberate policy, or is it the case of “a few bad apples.” In the best case scenario, it is the result of isolated individuals. These individuals should be quickly brought to justice - as we see is happening in at least a few cases. Nonetheless, the administration bears some blame even in this “best-case” scenario. By placing detainees beyond the realm of legal oversight, they have arguably fostered a permissive environment where the “bad apples” are more likely to engage in acts of brutality. Clear, unambiguous legal prohibitions against cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment (as per the McCain amendment) would go far toward curtailing this permissive legal environment.

However, there is another, disturbing possibility, and that is that it is actually US policy to torture or mistreat at least some prisoners. The existence of secret prison camps in Eastern Europe, and the insistence by VP Cheney that the CIA be exempt from any regulation such as the McCain amendment, is very unsettling.

**Also disturbing is the impulse to defend or water down the gravity of torture, both by administration officials and their supporters in government and the general public. If we really are not engaged in torture, such apologetics should be unnecessary. If we are torturing prisoners, such apologetics is a betrayal of American values and inexcusable.

Remember, unlike many other controversial social issues, these are actions undertaken by the government in my name and yours. This is not a question of tolerating evil, but of evil being done in our name**./QUOTE]

Very well put, especially the last two paragraphs. This is what people need to consider.

 

[Al_Masetti]

I suppose we do need the option of telling a detainee that if he doesn’t talk, he will be shipped off to a “facility” in Chechnya.

I read somewhere that during the Cold War, if someone said he was American and had never been to Moscow before, they would drive him to Lubyanka Prison (a former insurance company office building), the headquarters of the KGB. If when the person saw the building and his bowels turned to water, then he was lying.

If he didn’t react at all, then he was telling the truth.

We’re not playing bean ball here. People who throw around the word “torture” without defining their terms or coming up with some techniques for extracting information that actually work, are not helping this discussion.