Torture of military prisoners

Blatham, where I place my loyalties is not something that occurs without careful consideration.

You by your own admission hold a negative opinion of all those people you listed. Have you ever agreed with any of them on any issue? If you have, I have not seen a post indicating that. You do seem to rarely miss an opportunity to express your contempt for their point of view. Fixed positions can go both ways and both can involve prejudice.

But mostly my observations on this thread are of the inevitable response to the smell of blood in the water. The sharks close in for the kill and will be satisfied with nothing less. I think that's wrong, destructive, and unappealing.

It certainly gives me no incentive to change my mind.

first lesson on swimming with sharks.
Don't bleed

blatham, I find it interesting that people such as fox who continually support this administration after knowing all the mistakes made and the carnage exposed, they continue on their blind support. I just wonder what democracy really means to these people? What I find most interesting is their rationalization of the recent exposure of those pictures that show how our military is treating Iraqi prisoners, and how Rummie and the top brass are blaming everybody but themselves. That's leadership?

Well, c.i., such happens when a power - even democratic - openly considers itself as being above the law.

"The only people who have been pushed aside in this
administration are the truth tellers . . ."
World of Hurt

May 9, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Good golly, you knew Rummy wasn't going to pretend to stay
contrite for long. Not with lawmakers bugging him about the
Pearl Harbor of PR, as Republican Tom Cole called it.

The flinty 71-year-old kept it together as John McCain
pounced and Hillary prodded. But soon he was once more
giving snippy one-word answers to his inquisitors, foisting
them on his brass menagerie or biting their heads off
himself.

By Friday evening, when the delegate from Guam, Madeleine
Bordallo, pressed him on whether "quality of life" was an
issue in the Abu Ghraib torture cases, you could see
Donald-Duck steam coming out of his ears.

"Whether they have a PX or a good restaurant is not the
issue," he said with a veiled sneer.

Rummy was having a dickens of a time figuring out how a
control-freak administration could operate in this
newfangled age when G.I.'s have dadburn digital cameras.

In the information age, he complained to senators, "people
are running around with digital cameras and taking these
unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against
the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not
even arrived in the Pentagon."

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, mourned that America
was in a "world of hurt." If Gen. Richard Myers knew enough
to try to suppress the CBS show, Mr. Graham asked, why
didn't he know enough to warn the president and Congress?

Donald Rumsfeld, a black belt at Washington infighting,
knew the aggrieved lawmakers were most interested in an
apology for not keeping them in the loop. He no doubt was
sorry - sorry the pictures got out.

The man who promised last July that "I don't do quagmires"
didn't seem to be in trouble on Friday, despite the
government's blowing off repeated Red Cross warnings.

But who knows what the effect will be of the additional
"blatantly sadistic and inhuman" photos that Mr. Rumsfeld
warned of? Or the videos he said he still had not screened?


Dick Cheney will not cut loose his old mentor from the
Nixon and Ford years unless things get more dire.

After all, George Tenet is still running the C.I.A. after
the biggest intelligence failures since some Trojan ignored
Cassandra's chatter and said, "Roll the horse in." Colin
Powell is still around after trash-talking to Bob Woodward
about his catfights with the Bushworld "Mean Girls" -
Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie and Doug Feith. The vice president
still rules after promoting a smashmouth foreign policy
that is more Jack Palance than Shane. And the president
still edges out John Kerry in polls, even though Mr. Bush
observed with no irony to Al Arabiya TV: "Iraqis are sick
of foreign people coming in their country and trying to
destabilize their country, and we will help them rid Iraq
of these killers."

The only people who have been pushed aside in this
administration are the truth tellers who warned about
policies on taxes (Paul O'Neill); war costs (Larry
Lindsey); occupation troop levels (Gen. Eric Shinseki); and
how Iraq would divert from catching the ubiquitous Osama
(Richard Clarke).

Even if the secretary survives, the Rummy Doctrine - using
underwhelming force to achieve overwhelming goals - is
discredited. Jack Murtha, a Democratic hawk and Vietnam
vet, says "the direction's got to be changed or it's
unwinnable," and Lt. Gen. William Odom, retired, told Ted
Koppel that Iraq was headed toward becoming an Al Qaeda
haven and Iranian ally.

By the end, Rummy was channeling Jack Nicholson's Col.
Jessup, who lashed out at the snotty weenies questioning
him while they sleep "under the blanket of the very freedom
I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it."

Asked how we can get back credibility, Rummy bridled.
"America is not what's wrong with the world," he said,
adding: "I read all this stuff - people hate us, people
don't like us. The fact of the matter is, people line up to
come into this country every year because it's better here
than other places, and because they respect the fact that
we respect human beings. And we'll get by this."

Maybe. But for now, the hawks who wanted to employ American
might to scatter American values like flower petals all
across the world are reduced to keeping them from being
trampled by Americans. As Rummy would say, not a pretty
picture.

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/opinion/09DOWD.html?ex=1085103155&ei=1&en=0835036cefc68755

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Top Stories - Reuters


Pentagon OK'd Harsh Prison Techniques at Guantanamo

Sat May 8, 8:47 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Defense Department last year approved interrogation techniques for use at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba that include forcing inmates to strip naked and subjecting them to loud music, bright lights and sleep deprivation, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.



The techniques were approved in April 2003 and require approval from senior Pentagon (news - web sites) officials and in some cases Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the paper reported on its Web site, citing unnamed defense officials.


It cited a document outlining 20 procedures that require interrogators to justify the harshest questioning techniques as a "military necessity," quoting an official said to possess the document. Some techniques require "appropriate medical monitoring," the report said.


Similar methods have been approved for use on detainees in Iraq (news - web sites) with links to terror or insurgent groups, though it was not clear whether they were approved for use at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the Post said.


A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, referring questions to U.S. Southern Command in Miami.


Army Col. David McWilliams, a spokesman for Southern Command, confirmed that the U.S. military approved a sliding scale of interrogation techniques in the spring 2003, but denied that the list includes forcing detainees to strip.


"Not only is there no protocol that calls for disrobing a detainee, it was never considered," McWilliams told Reuters. "We do not do it."


He said approved standards are for "making sure that we could work with more difficult detainees, but do it in accordance with the standards of accepted international law and international techniques for interrogation."


McWilliams declined to comment on other interrogation techniques.


The Post story said prisoners could be made to stand for hours and questioning a prisoner without clothes was permitted if he was alone in his cell.


Pictures of grinning American soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib -- the largest prison in Iraq and notorious for torture under President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) -- have caused an international outcry.


The United States holds about 600 foreign nationals at the Guantanamo Bay prison, captured in what President Bush (news - web sites) calls the global war on terrorism.


This week the U.S. military punished two Army Reserve soldiers who assaulted prisoners while working as guards at Guantanamo, defense officials said.


The United States began detaining terrorism suspects -- most caught in Afghanistan (news - web sites) -- at the remote Guantanamo base in January 2002. About 150 prisoners have been transferred to their home countries either for outright release or for continued detention by those governments, the Pentagon has said.

Has it been determined yet if the people the US holds in prisons across the globe are POWs or Detainees and what is the difference?

And are the soldiers and contractors kidnapped by our enimies hostages or POWs.

Is this a war or an invasion or a missionary.

JD, What this administration is saying is that the US is above international laws by confusing the difference between POWs and detainees at Gitmo. You wanna buy a bridge cheap?

c.i. I think they lost their chance to pick if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck - it must be a duck.

But can you believe half of the American People still can't see that duck?

c.i. more than half of the American people don't even read the news or watch the news. They simply do not care as long as they have their stuff.

Yesterday I heard a gentleman from Ohio that is losing his business say he was still voting for Bush. So there you go.