U.S. Guards Videotaped Guantanamo Abuse -- Briton

[PfcHammer]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040515/ts_nm/iraq_britain_guantanamo_dc_1

U.S. Guards Videotaped Guantanamo Abuse -- Briton

1 hour, 40 minutes ago Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!

LONDON (Reuters) - A third Briton detained at Guantanamo Bay told a newspaper he was mistreated by his U.S. captors and said guards at the camp in Cuba filmed his beatings.

<snip>

"They pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting," he was quoted as saying. "They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet and flushed.

"They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching.

"Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains...and shaved my beard, my hair and my eyebrows," he said.

<snip>

[indepat]

1. If such reports are true, just think what kind of citizens these folks

be when their military days are over. Some people kill/maim/torture because they like it.

[LittleApple81]

2. How could the ranking be so low for this story? Do you think they

have a whole bunch of freepers in charge or rating stories everywhere?

Well, can those English prisoners ask for their movies? Because they know they were filmed, can they demand to have them?

Who will be the courageous congresscritter that resquests them?

[truthisfreedom]

3. freepers are so totally demoralized. they are empty shells now.

[mom cat]

4. If they are capable of this, they are capable of killing Berg.

[Mike Niendorff]

5. "always", "filming everything"

critical quote:

> "There was always this guy behind the squad,
> filming everything that happened," he added.


obvious next question: where are those tapes now?


MDN

[leftchick]

6. exactly Mike...

where the hell are the tapes?!?

[Just Me]

7. More "scrubbing", yes. Meyers needed a couple weeks,...

,...to complete the new "Scrubbing Freedom" Mission. Hence, he asked the media to shut their trap for a couple of weeks or so.

Good Gawd. The horrors this administration has engaged in. It will take decades to clean this mess up, maybe longer.

[TroglodyteScholar]

9. My guess is...

...shredded to pieces and disposed of in numerous different trash receptacles.

[SquireJons]

12. You would think so...

But I doubt it. This kind of arrogance has a way of staying alive. This whole episode reminds me of the Nazi's more than anything else. Not so much because of the abuse - the Nazi's were better at it. What really comes to mind is the documenting of atrocities. The Nazi's were so overconfident that they filmed everything, which ended up being used against them in Nuremberg.

The Pentagon is so cock sure of itself under Rummy, that it doesn't occur to them that keeping this stuff around might get them charged with war crimes. This administration really believes that it is above the law and all international treaties and norms. They can not conceive of a situation where the US or any officials would suffer serious repercussions.

So they film away...

[TacticalPeek]

8. "obvious next question: where are those tapes now?"

And obvious next question: where is JAG?

:grr:

[mulethree]

11. here's JAG

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=557424
The Gray Zone (Hersh exposes Rumsfeld)


In 2003, Rumsfeld’s apparent disregard for the requirements of the Geneva Conventions while carrying out the war on terror had led a group of senior military legal officers from the Judge Advocate General’s (jag) Corps to pay two surprise visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights. “They wanted us to challenge the Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation,” Horton told me. “They were urging us to get involved and speak in a very loud voice. It came pretty much out of the blue. The message was that conditions are ripe for abuse, and it’s going to occur.” The military officials were most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in the interrogation process, Horton recalled. “They said there was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity being created as a result of a policy decision at the highest levels in the Pentagon. The jag officers were being cut out of the policy formulation process.” They told him that, with the war on terror, a fifty-year history of exemplary application of the Geneva Conventions had come to an end.

[darkstar]

10. obvious next question after that:

Why?

Hard to maintain yer deniability when you roll tape on this shit and then house it on hard drives.

Why?

I mean, what possible purpose could it serve? Wouldn't they realize it would eventually be leaked, then likely inflame the more militant leaning in the Muslim world to a boiling-over point, and then escalate the violence to the point where we'd, uh, really have to bring the, um, hammer down real hard. And all b/c of those 6 bad apples....

[Just Me]

13. Whoah!! Very good point there, darkstar.

Heh, heh. I am reminded of my confidence in REAL American patriots who have all this "housed" on hard drives and copied on discs.

I must say,...I am having an especially optimistic day. I have regained my confidence that there are people taking care of the REAL business concerning the best interests of the American people and our nation's integrity in this world.

[funnymanpants]

14. picts used for blackmail

The interrogators at Abu Ghraib used pictures to blackmail the prisoners, threatening to show them to their families and tribes if the prisoners didn't cooperate. The military envisionaged using this blackmail to build an espionage ring and weaken the insurgency.

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040524fa_fact

I suppose something similiar was going in in Guantanomo.

Yes, I do think that the Nazi/Rumsfield comparision is appropriate. My understanding is that the Nazis were so brain-washed into thinking they were doing a good thing for mankind, that they took picutures, the way you or I would when building a habitat-for-humanity house. I think Rummy and crew really think they are carrying a moral torch.

[Just Me]

15. Fear-controlled informants,...

,...to inject back into the community and overcome an insurgency. That was their wacko thinking (in spite of so many studies which have proven this approach DOES NOT WORK). "They" obviously have no appreciation or respect of the complexity of human beings. Of course, why would "they"? "They" are driven by a shallow ideology and one-dimensional PNAC plan that fails to account for the human spirit.

"They" are not only a failure,..."they" are a freakin' disease to the health of a species that has the greatest of potential.

UGH!!!

[newyawker99]

17. Hi funnymanpants!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[dArKeR]

16. US 'filmed beatings' at terror camp - MG

Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by British newspaper The Observer has revealed.

The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now, prompted demands on Saturday night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately.

They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul claims, they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become an institutionalised feature of the United States's war on terror.

In the wake of the furore over the abuses photographed at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has continued to insist they were the work of a few rogue soldiers, and not a systemic problem.

http://196.2.63.80/Content/l3.asp?ao=66366&t=1

EVERY interrgation is recorded. EVERY! Anyone with a brain could have figured this out. And so many DUers did more than a week ago. Bush is having the databases purged.

[dArKeR]

18. US guards `filmed beatings' at Guantanamo Bay - TT

THE OBSERVER , LONDON
Monday, May 17, 2004,Page 1

Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.

The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatized to speak until now, prompted demands on Saturday night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to make the videos available immediately.

They say that if the contents are as shocking as Dergoul claims, they will provide final proof that brutality against detainees has become an institutionalized feature of America's war on terror.

In the wake of the furore over the abuses photographed at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has continued to insist they were the work of a few rogue soldiers, and not a systemic problem.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/05/17/2003155816