Posted on 01/09/2005 8:19:37 AM PST by Brian Mosely
Jan. 17 issue - Ibraham Al Qosi's stories seemed fairly outlandish when they first surfaced last fall. In a lawsuit, Al Qosi, a Sudanese accountant apprehended after 9/11 on suspicions of ties to Al Qaeda, charged that he and other detainees at Guantanamo Bay had been subjected to bizarre forms of humiliation and abuse by U.S. military inquisitors. Al Qosi claimed they were strapped to the floor in an interrogations center known as the Hell Room, wrapped in Israeli flags, taunted by female interrogators who rubbed their bodies against them in sexually suggestive ways, and left alone in refrigerated cells for hours with deafening music blaring in their ears. Back then, Pentagon officials dismissed Al Qosi's allegations as the fictional rantings of a hard-core terrorist.
But in recent weeks a stack of declassified government documents has given new credence to many of the claims of abuse at Guantanamo. The documents are also raising fresh questions about the Bush administration's handling of detainees at a time when a prime architect of that policy, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, is facing a Senate confirmation vote as the president's nominee to be attorney general.
Many of the documents come from an unexpected source: the FBI. As part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the bureau has released internal e-mails and correspondence recording what their own agents witnessed at Gitmo. Coupled with accounts from other agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency—also released as part of the FOIA lawsuit—the FBI reports amount to a powerful case that many of the scenes alleged by Al Qosi and other Gitmo detainees may actually have happened.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Is it really a "widening scandal?"
Liberals should just get it over with and join Al Qaeda.
MR. CROSBY NOYES:
Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?
SEN. KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions
Patrick J. Leahy
Edward M. Kennedy
Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Herbert Kohl
Dianne Feinstein
Russell D. Feingold
Charles E. Schumer
Richard J. Durbin
John Edwards
Having already backed and supported an admitted war criminal for President and Commander in Chief, what choice do these Dems have but to confirm Gonzales?
bttt
The rest of us are wondering why they treated the prisoners so kindly.
"Take No Prisoners"
It's too much trouble.
NO PRISONERS.
Copycat! ;-p
I hope its true how we are humiliating the detainees by wrapping them in Israeli flags and sexual degradation at the hands of women. Since they think we're doing it anyway, we might as well rub pork chops on them as well.
Yeah?
But I got the tagline!
There is no widening scandal. There is merely the continuation of the leftist to destroy the government.
At what point is it treason and crying fire in a theater. Surely we are near thst point.
Only to the democrat hacks and their shills in the media. Makes me wonder whose side they are on.
Makes me wonder whose side they are on.
Perhaps a clarification in in order over this prepared and rehearsed statement of so many years ago. Back in the days of "Jenjhis" (there is good reason to believe the speaker was in fact referring to GENGHIS) Khan, soldiers did this sort of thing as a matter of course to further impress upon the conquered territories that they would brook no nonsense about insurrections or revolts. This particular strategy was carried down through the centuries of warfare, until some thoroughly shocked schoolboy-turned-warrior thought to object to the practice, and had prohibitions written in the Geneva Accords, which is the Gentleman's Guide to Warfare.
However, the vast majority of warriors are not and never have been gentlemen, and privately they scorn these rules - except when they get caught and ratted out by another scholarly warrior. Then the whisper of caution runs up and down the men in the trenches to cool it, no atrocities allowed. Inasmuch as there were never that many scholarly warriors among the North Vietnamese, or Viet Cong, of course they did not feel all that compelled to obey the injunctions of the Geneva Accords, and "thousands of other soldiers" committed the atrocities. What LT(JG) Kerry failed to relate was that the "thousands of other soldiers" were the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, and NOT the US military forces.
The same situation prevails today in Iraq, where the "insurgents" are under no obligation to follow the Geneva Accord, because they do not believe in it, and they are not an authorized army representing any nation, but a guerrilla fighting force with an ideology but no country. The war atrocities are being committed on a daily basis by the "insurgents" and NOT by the coalition forces.
Thanks for your well considered and reality based response. You are correct.
Whether it's ignorance, an effort to score political points, or idealism, too many people don't see reality and war is the height of reality of what men do....kill or be killed, survival of the fittest.
Love this part of the um, news:
"And the reports suggest that the interrogation scandal is not going away any time soon, even if Gonzales is confirmed, as expected."
It is as if Gonzales is personally overseeing or conducting the interrogations. Gasp, we may continue doing the same things!
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