State Dept. Defends Prison Abuse Response

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government moved quickly to investigate allegations of detainee abuse by U.S. forces abroad, substantiating 190 incidents of mistreatment and meting out a wide variety of penalties, a State Department report said Friday.

The report, submitted to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, said the actions have been consistent with international torture agreements.
...
The Bush administration has denied that the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan and Cuba constituted torture.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601179.html

U.S. says it upholds U.N. torture rules

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said in a report on Friday it was abiding by global anti-torture rules and any abuses of detainees in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were not systemic but critics charged the report was a whitewash.
...
Jumana Musa, an advocacy director for the human rights group Amnesty International, said the report "denied or minimalized allegations against the United States."

"We've seen examples of short punishments or administrative punishment for what amount to serious war crimes," she said.

"This is an exculpatory document that hardly represents coming clean," said John Sifton, a military affairs and counter-intelligence researcher at Human Rights Watch.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601203.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. OP; please post jokes in the DU Lounge.

Thank you.

Mod

not.

[NVMojo]

2. yeah, really, this is a joke only it is also heartbreaking in many ways ..

[Rose Siding]

3. Some details of the rpt-

11 soldiers reported punished over abuses at Guantánamo

WASHINGTON — The State Department said yesterday that 11 soldiers at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have been punished for abusing inmates by throwing water and cleaning fluid on them and inappropriately touching one and sitting on his lap.

Most of the soldiers received reprimands or other minor punishments, and only one, a military policeman, was court-martialed. The guard, accused of improperly using pepper spray on a detainee, was acquitted of all charges.
...
At Guantánamo Bay, a female interrogator on April 17, 2003 "inappropriately touched a detainee by running her fingers through the detainee's hair, and made sexually suggestive comments and body movements, including sitting on the detainee's lap during an interrogation," the report said.

The interrogator received a written admonishment and additional training.

A second female interrogator, at an unknown time and date, assaulted a prisoner after he spit on her. She wiped red dye from a red magic marker on his shirt and told him the stain was blood. She was verbally reprimanded. Another interrogator was reprimanded for duct-taping a prisoner's mouth shut after he became, according to the report, "extremely disruptive during an interrogation" in October 2002.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002266665_torture07.html

[undeterred]

4. another link

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A09

UNITED NATIONS, May 6 -- The Bush administration reaffirmed its commitment to prohibiting torture in a report Friday to the U.N. Committee on Torture, citing the prosecution and punishment of U.S. troops accused of abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

But the 95-page report, which focused primarily on police abuses within the United States, avoided any discussion of the CIA's role in transferring secret "ghost detainees" to foreign countries for interrogation. It also sidestepped the question of whether U.S. authorities are obligated to bar the mistreatment of detainees held outside the United States.

A lengthy annex cited 190 cases of abuses of detainees by U.S. personnel in Iraq, and other abuses in penal facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. But it did not fault senior U.S. officials for implementing detention policies that critics allege have led to abuses, insisting there is no evidence that "any government policy directed, encouraged or condoned these abuses."

"The U.S. government has acted swiftly to investigate and take action to address these abuses," the report said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/06/AR2005050601358.html?