Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
November 30, 2004
The Torture Never Stops

Who are’ll those people
That is shut away down there
Are they crazy
Are they sainted
Are they heroes someone painted
Someone painted
Are they -isms
Later ornated
Once they come they have been tainted
Lyrics

NYT: Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the report said. It said that in addition to the exposure to loud and persistent noise and music and to prolonged cold, detainees were subjected to "some beatings." The report did not say how many of the detainees were subjected to such treatment.


Last month, military guards, intelligence agents and others described in interviews with The Times a range of procedures that they said were highly abusive occurring over a long period, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators. The people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility, said that one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.

Comments

I heard my friend cry, and he sank to his knees,
Coughing blood as he screamed for his mother,
And I fell by his side, and that’s how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud and the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother and she never came,
Though it wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t to blame,
The day not half over and ten thousand slain,
And now there’s nobody remembers our names,
And that’s how it is for a soldier.
-Motorhead WAR OF 1916
We as humanity have learned nothing…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 30 2004 7:50 utc | 1

The “tantamount to torture” activity at Guantánamo is sanctioned and encouraged by the highest levels of the American government. I would like to see so many
War Crimes Tribunals and legal actions that the entire Bush administration be forced to remain on American soil
for risk of being incarcerated when setting foot outside the U.S.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Nov 30 2004 8:06 utc | 2

Richard Cranium, my cohort at the All Spin Zone, has a new thread on a direct action people can participate in regarding the Center for Constitutional Rights’ (CCR) filing of a criminal complaint in Germany against the US architects of war crimes in Iraq. Here: From Small Seeds

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Nov 30 2004 11:25 utc | 3