The New York Times is
reporting (registration required) today:
In a study released yesterday, two of those lawyers said Pentagon documents indicated that the military had determined that only 45 percent of the detainees had committed some hostile act against the United States or its allies and that only 8 percent were fighters for Al Qaeda.
On its own this would be a horrendous stain on America's honor, had she any left, but it gets worse. Much worse:
Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted
Remember when Congress caved (again) to the White House and exempted Gitmo from judicial review? Well this is what happened:
Detainees' lawyers said they believed that the tougher approach to the hunger strikes was related to the passage in Congress of measure intended to curtail the detainees' access to United States courts.
snip
"Because of the actions in Congress, the military feels emboldened to take more extreme measures vis-à-vis the hunger strikers," said one lawyer, Sarah Havens of Allen & Overy. "The courts are going to stay out of it now."
It is difficult to articulate the shame I feel reading that Americans are doing this:
"He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves," Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added. "Jum'ah understands that officers told the hunger strikers that if they challenged the United States, the United States would challenge them back using these tactics."
to people who probably never intended us any harm:
The lawyers, who represent two Guantanamo detainees, noted that only seven percent of the 500 detainees had been captured by US and coalition forces.
Of the rest, 47 percent were turned over to the United States by Pakistan and Afghan Northern Coalition forces, and the captors of another 44 percent held were unknown.
The study suggests that at least some of these detainees were turned over to US forces by bounty hunters and reward-seekers without verification of the detainee's status.
via AFP
The symbolism of force feeding hunger strikers is so far beneath what the US is meant to stand for that it is hard to believe. In five short years we have gone from being the slightly tarnished shining city on the hill to a dishonorable and dangerous pariah.