CNN's American Morning has a potentially explosive interview with the de facto public defender for a former detainee. She claims that waterboarding was just the tip of the iceberg of what happened to some of them--in fact, the tactics she describes go way beyond what we know from the torture memos.
Watch the short version here (sorry, for some reason CNN video doesn't want to embed properly)
Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, the attorney for Binyam Mohamed, claims that when Mohamed was captured in Pakistan and flown to Morocco, he was drugged, beaten and had his genitals mutilated. He was then flown to Afghanistan and confessed to helping plan to build a dirty bomb. However, Bradley believes the confession isn't legitimate because it came after he was tortured. Mohamed's charges were eventually dropped, and he was one of the first freed when Obama took office.
The full interview is potentially even more explosive.
Bradley says she initially believed that we're trying the worst of the worst--but when she first met Muhammad at Gitmo in 2005, it was the most shocking experience she'd had in her 20 years as a lawyer. He actually believed she was going to hurt him.
She says that Muhammad was the only one telling the truth in this case--she'd been stonewalled at every turn. For instance, she couldn't get the CIA to admit he'd been rendered from Pakistan to Morocco, even though she had flight reports from the CIA and the dates Muhammad gave her tracked with the dates on those reports.
Bradley says Mohamed's abusive treatment began in Pakistan, when he was picked up in April 2002. He was held up above his head with his feet barely touching the floor without food or use of a bathroom. This continued in Morocco, and he was also drugged. The genital mutilation happened for over a month--they cut him, let it heal, then cut him again. They deliberately used scalpels so there wouldn't be any evidence left.
Bradley believes the commission system --at least the Bush incarnation--is a "farce" intended to rubber-stamp convictions. Besides using evidence that might have been obtained through torture, there's heavy use of hearsay, refusal to turn over exculpatory evidence, etc. Muhammad's entire case, she says, is based on evidence obtained through torture.
I apologize if I missed anything--there's no transcript out yet, and I'm shaking with anger even as I type. I listen to this, and the first question I have to ask is, "What the hell happened to my country?" The tactics described here are something you'd expect from North Korea or China.
It's things like this that make me think that even in the face of polls that appear to show the American people oppose torture investigations, it's going to get to a point where Reid and Pelosi will be able to say, "Sorry, we have to investigate this"--and there won't be any blowback.
Update: Roberttacker13 managed to find the video for the short version of the interview here:
After seeing this, I'm starting to wonder--will even Obama's revised plan be at all legitimate?
Update #2: After watching only a little bit of the Russia Today video, I have to confess--there needs to be another moratorium on new proceedings against these detainees. If Bradley is telling the truth (and I have little reason to doubt that she isn't), then most cases against them will have to be thrown out since a good portion of the evidence was illegally obtained.
Update #3: After being alerted in the comments, I looked more into Russia Today--turns out it's an arm of the less-than-free Russian state media. They may be right on about this, but I'm not willing to give them credibility.
Update #4: Just discovered the #2 result when you search for Yvonne Bradley on YouTube is from Press TV, which is owned by Iran state media. You've got Russia and Iran effectively lecturing us about torture. What does that say about what's happened to our country?