The
ACLU today released their analysis on detainee treatment in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and OGA (Other Governmental Agency) -- a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA.
According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by ìstrangulation,asphyxiation and ìblunt force injuries. An overwhelming majority of the so-called ìnatural deaths were attributed to Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.
Murder.
If anyone hasn't seen Frontline's latest program,
The Torture Question, I highly recommend it.
NARRATOR: Now they could legally use isolation facilities, deprivation of light, 20-hour interrogations. They could remove religious items and clothing, exploit detainees' individual phobias, such as the fear of dogs, stress positions, like standing for a maximum of four hours.
ERIC LEWIS, Detainee Lawyer: One of the things he authorizes is shackling in stress positions for up to four hours a day.
NARRATOR: Rumsfeld works at a standing desk.
ERIC LEWIS: And Secretary Rumsfeld writes in his own hand, "I stand eight to 10 hours a day. Why only four?"
MARK DANNER, Author, Torture and Truth: When you read the documents, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was involved very personally in approving procedures that went beyond the line of what is allowed in military law, and for that matter, in civilian law, when it comes to what can be done to prisoners.
Spc. ANTHONY LAGOURANIS: When the units would go out into people's homes and do these raids, they would just stay in the house and torture them.
Sgt. ROGER BROKAW: I saw black eyes and fat lips, and some of them had to be treated for bad abrasions on legs and arms.
NARRATOR: The initial interrogation questions were, at best, basic.
Sgt. ROGER BROKAW: The questions were, "Where's Saddam?" "Do you know where there's any weapons of mass destruction?" "Do you know where there's any weapons caches?" "Do you know any people who want to harm coalition forces?"
Spc. ANTHONY LAGOURANIS: We rarely got good intel from the prisoners, and I blame that on that we were getting prisoners who were innocent and didn't have intel to give us.
Sgt. ROGER BROKAW: And 98 percent of the people I talked to had no reason being in there. They would just take them at face value and go in and raid this house and pull these people out and throw them in the detention camps.
NARRATOR: To get rougher, military interrogators both at the prison and throughout Iraq had plenty of help. Civilians arrived, working for agencies like the CIA or even private contractors.
ARMY INTERROGATOR: There was just all sorts of these spooky people, you know, that would just come and go. Some of them would stay, and some of them would come and go. And you never knew who they really were.
NARRATOR: They employed their own techniques, and some followed their own rules.
Gen. JANIS KARPINSKI: Now you have some contractors, some civilians, who are not under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, who have been sent there specifically to do interrogation work with great liberties, to get more actionable intelligence. And all the gloves come off. "Do whatever we need to do."
The ACLU has reported 21 of the 44 deaths that they studied were the result of homicide. It is clear Rumsfeld signed off on certain procedures and it was a direct result of his insistence that questioning was roughened up. It also appears some of the questions detainees were asked were ridiculous and impossible to answer.
What doesn't make any sense to me is the bizarrely insistent pursuit of the right to torture. The infamous
Bybee Memo obviously shows the administration
wanted to interrogate and had to make sure they could legally do it. And yet, according to some, 98% of the people coming through didn't know jack. Other reports claim 70%, but even half that would be a ridiculous amount of people to subject to this treatment.
Its one thing to torture a spy you find crawling out the window of your nuclear-weapons facility, but it is an entirely different animal to institute those procedures onto a civilian population. Sounds more like the
Phoenix Program, or intimidation represented in
Central America for decades... get combatants and their sympathizers in the same net.
"Sympathizer"s is way too general. This government has issued a vast sweeping policy to treat large numbers of the Iraqi and Aghanistani population as guilty and complicit in actions against the US. All they need is the confession.
I can not, for the life of my, figure out what the Defense Department logically seeks to gain from this policy. I am at a loss. It appears to me the policy is to beat them into submission. Scare the hell out of them until the population as a whole becomes compliant?
Rumsfeld is ultimately responsible for the homicides reported so far. And the more that comes out, the pictures that should be
released soon, further deaths and acts of torture should not only show that this was not the behaviour of a few "on the night shift", but an
instituted policy condoned, encouraged and insisted upon by Rumsfeld himself.
We haven't seent the worst yet. Remember, when you do, think Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld.