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Jim__ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-11-10 04:14 PM
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America's Secret Afghan Prisons
This story covers a number of years, but thisis ongoing. From The Nation:

November 19, 2009, 3:15 am. A loud blast woke the villagers of a leafy neighborhood outside Ghazni, a city of ancient provenance in the country's south. A team of US soldiers burst through the front gate of the home of Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for Afghanistan's agriculture minister. Qarar was in Kabul at the time, but his relatives were home, four of them sleeping in the family's one-room guesthouse. One of them, Hamidullah, who sold carrots at the local bazaar, ran toward the door of the guesthouse. He was immediately shot but managed to crawl back inside, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Then Azim, a baker, darted toward his injured cousin. He, too, was shot and crumpled to the floor. The fallen men cried out to the two relatives--both of them children--remaining in the room. But they refused to move, glued to their beds in silent horror.

The foreign soldiers, most of them tattooed and bearded, then went on to the main compound. They threw clothes on the floor, smashed dinner plates and forced open closets. Finally they found the man they were looking for: Habib-ur-Rahman, a computer programmer and government employee. Rahman was responsible for converting Microsoft Windows from English to the local Pashto language so that government offices could use the software. The Afghan translator accompanying the soldiers said they were acting on a tip that Rahman was a member of Al Qaeda.

They took the barefoot Rahman and a cousin to a helicopter some distance away and transported them to a small American base in a neighboring province for interrogation. After two days, US forces released Rahman's cousin. But Rahman has not been seen or heard from since.

...

The interrogators blindfolded him, taped his mouth shut and chained him to the ceiling, he alleges. Occasionally they unleashed a dog, which repeatedly bit him. At one point they removed the blindfold and forced him to kneel on a long wooden bar. "They tied my hands to a pulley and pushed me back and forth as the bar rolled across my shins. I screamed and screamed." They then pushed him to the ground and forced him to swallow twelve bottles of water. "Two people held my mouth open, and they poured water down my throat until my stomach was full and I became unconscious," he said. "It was as if someone had inflated me." After he was roused, he vomited uncontrollably.


We will not "win" this war. These people are being tortured and murdered for nothing.
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CrispyQ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-11-10 04:23 PM
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1. I do believe in monsters. --nt
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bvar22 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-11-10 06:04 PM
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2. Somebody remind me again...
What values are we fighting for?
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Goldstein1984 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-11-10 06:14 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Stock values
Real estate values
Currency values
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Goldstein1984 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Feb-11-10 06:19 PM
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4. We are everything we accuse the "enemy" of being
I no longer believe they are the enemy.
Our enemy resides in Washington, D.C.

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