From today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on The Origins of Aggressive Interrogation Techniques:
Culled from the "minutes" of a discussion on the use of "harsh interrogation techniques," held at GITMO in October, 2002 --
Chief counsel to the CIA’s CounterTerrorism Center, Johnathan Fredman, "presented the following disturbing perspective of our legal obligations under anti-torture laws, saying,"
"It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong.”
Down a Dark Road, by Richard Leiby
In 2002, a young Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who'd never spent a night away from his dusty little village, got lost in the fog of war and took a wrong turn into an abyss from which he would never return. It was a detention center at Bagram Air Base, where he was grilled on suspicion of being a Taliban fighter. Military interrogators hung him from a cage in chains, kept him up all night and kicked him senseless, turning his legs into pulp.
He lasted only five days. The Army initially attributed his death to natural causes, even though coroners had ruled it a homicide. Low-level soldiers were punished. It turned out that Dilawar (who, like many Afghans, used only one name) was not an enemy fighter, had no terrorist connections and had committed no crime at all.
[snip]
"Murder's torture," Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former Colin Powell aide, says in the film. "Murder's the ultimate torture."
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DOD autopsy reports documenting homicides of detainees in US custody.
Here are just 3 entries --
DOD death certificate for unnamed detainee who "died" while in US custody at Bagram Collection Point:
Detainee was found unresponsive restrained in his cell. Death was due to blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease.Contusions and abrasions on forehead, nose, head, behind ear, neck, abdomen, buttock, elbow, thigh, knee, foot, toe, hemorrhage on rib area and leg. Detainee died of blunt force injuries to lower extremities, complicating underlying coronary artery disease. The blunt force injuries to the legs resulted in extensive muscle damage, muscle necrosis and rhabomyolysis. Electrolyte disturbances primarily hyperkalemia (elevated blood potassium level) and metabolic acidosis can occur within hours of muscle damage. Massive sodium and water shifts occur, resulting in hypovolemic shock and casodilatation and later, acute renal failure. The decedent's underlying coronary artery disease would compromise his ability to tolerate the electrolyte and fluid abnormalities, and his underlying malnutrition and likely dehydration would further exacerbate the effects of the muscle damage. The manner of death is homicide.
DOD death certificate for unnamed detainee who "died" while in US custody at Whitehorse Detainment Facility:
Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy reveleaved bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and buttocks extending to the left flank, abrasions, lateral buttocks. Contusions, back of legs and knees; abrasions on knees, left fingers and encircling to left wrist. Lacerations and superficial cuts, right 4th and 5th fingers. Also, blunt force injuries, predominatnly recent contusions (bruises) on the torso and lower extremities. Abrasions on left wrist are consistent with use of restraints. No evidence of defense injuries or natural disease. Manner of death is homicide. DOD 003329 refers to this case as "strangulation, found outside isolation unit."
DOD death certificate for unnamed detainee (perhaps the above-mentioned, Dilawar -- this was his manner of death) who died in US custody at Helmand Province:
Death caused by the multiple blunt force injuries of the lower torso and legs complicated by rhabdommyolisis (release of toxic byproducs into the system due to destruction of muscle). Manner of death is homicide. Decedent was not under the pharmacologic effect of drugs or alcohol at the time of death.
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Homicide Unpunished, a WP editorial
ONE OF THE most shocking photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows a grinning guard giving a thumbs-up sign over the bruised corpse of an Iraqi detainee. Subsequent investigation showed that the deceased prisoner, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi, died of asphyxiation on Nov. 4, 2003: He was tortured to death by Navy SEAL and CIA interrogators who took turns punching and kicking him, then handcuffed his arms behind his back and shackled them to a window five feet above the floor.
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Command's Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in US Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, by Human Rights First
Human Rights First's new report provides the first comprehensive accounting of the U.S. government's handling of the nearly 100 cases of detainees who have died in U.S. custody since 2002.
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Bush, Cheney, and their myriad of advisors (Addington, Yoo, Bybee, Haynes, et al) got it horribly, monstrously wrong.