Wonderful news!!!
Posted on 12/25/2002 10:39:28 PM PST by Cinnamon Girl
WASHINGTON - CIA interrogators have been using "stress and duress" techniques on captured enemies in Afghanistan that blur the line between legal and inhumane, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The Post described a cluster of metal shipping containers it said constituted a secret CIA interrogation center at Bagram Air Base, headquarters of U.S. forces hunting al Qaeda operatives and commanders of the ousted Taliban militia.
Captives who refused to cooperate were sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, the Post said, citing intelligence specialists said to be familiar with CIA interrogation methods.
At times they were held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights - subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques, the report said.
Those who cooperated were rewarded with "creature comforts" as well as feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, money, from their interrogators, it said.
On the other hand, some who did not cooperate were turned over - "rendered," in official parlance - to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations, the Post said.
"In the multifaceted global war on terrorism waged by the Bush administration, one of the most opaque - yet vital - fronts is the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects," the paper said.
U.S. officials have said little publicly about the captives' names, numbers or whereabouts, and virtually nothing about interrogation methods.
But the Post said it had gained insights thanks to interviews with several former intelligence officials and 10 current U.S. national security officials - including several people who said they had witnessed the handling of prisoners.
"The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred," the Post reported.
The U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture. But each of the current national security officials interviewed for the article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary, the Post said.
"They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view," it added. The CIA had no comment on the article, Mark Mansfield, a spokesman, said late on Wednesday night.
The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram was described by the Post as one of a number of secret detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Another was reported to be Diego Garcia, a British-owned island in the Indian Ocean.
According to U.S. officials, nearly 3,000 suspected al Qaeda members and their supporters have been detained worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001. About 625 are at the U.S. military's confinement facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Some officials estimated that fewer than 100 captives had been rendered to third countries. Thousands had been arrested and held with U.S. assistance in countries known for brutal treatment of prisoners, the officials were quoted as saying.
We are at war. These methods have already pre-empted a number of major terrorist attacks on the US and American facilities with live Americans in them, overseas, again, and saved many people from terrible fates such as those suffered b the 3000 in the New York City holocaust.
The only "abuse" categorically assigned to U.S. personnel is excerpted in the quotes below, and includes the following horrors: "beat them up"; "tiny rooms"; blindfolded; bound; "loud noises"; "deprived of sleep"; hoods; gags; "binding them to stretchers".
For the murderous and psychotic animals such as the ones being dealt with, this so-called "abuse" seems like nothing more than the sort of forcible restraint commonly applied in all Western countries. It is most certainly not "abuse."
The remainder of the article - and it is a long one - is a patchwork of reportorial speculation bolstered by random extracts from State Department reports.
The ComPost apparently is obsessed with "sleep deprivation" as a form of torture.
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U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations
'Stress and Duress' Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities
By Dana Priest and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 26, 2002; Page A01
"According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. The tone of intimidation and fear is the beginning, they said, of a process of piercing a prisoner's resistance."
"The take-down teams often "package" prisoners for transport, fitting them with hoods and gags, and binding them to stretchers with duct tape."
"Bush administration appointees and career national security officials acknowledged that, as one of them put it, "our guys may kick them around a little bit in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath."
"One official who has had direct involvement in renditions said he knew they were likely to be tortured."
Certainly there are people on FR who'd like to see some revenge being extracted, and you'll have to consider such comments in that light.
But back to the main issue, there is not a single sentence in the ComPost article that alleges any torture whatsoever has occurred, aside from the academic questions as to "sleep deprivation" being a form of torture (and even then, there is no allegation in any case that "sleep deprivation" is actually being employed in a manner that would technically constitute torture).
In any event, the several quotes in the article specifically say that torture is not being employed.
In its entirety, the article is a hodegpodge of speculation and artfully-woven innuendo. Nothing more.
Frankly, it looks to me as if the reporters said to their editor "Look boss, there's no story here, just innuendo", to which the editor reminded them of line counts and quotas, and urged them to find some filler and bulk up the story.
This story has the fragrance of a sensationalist hack job.
DEEP THROAT 2002
There is no such assertion in the article. It is only speculated (by the reporters) that sleep deprivation might be used. Nothing more.
What the article actually says - despite its mendacious and contrary spin - is that no torture is being employed by U.S. personnel, and that other countries might possibly use torture against these captives, but it is entirely unknown.
Only one of more than a dozen "official" sources even bothers to speculate that other countries might employ torture against these captives (and you can bet the reporters asked each and every source that specific question).
Yet in the story, there is not a single assertion of fact that such is the case. A great deal of spin and speculation, but not one iota of fact.
Paragraph #3 clearly states prisoners are forced to stand or sit for hours. Let me make it clear - I don't care. I wish they'd pull out their fingernails and move on from there.
Our "moral altitude" in this war was assured when we refused to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan on 9/12/2001. Instead, we fought an extremely gentle war there after losing thousands in our own country.
Please tell me which war we, the USA, fought in the past that meets your definition of "moral altitude". Was it World War II? Back then we firebombed and nuked relatively defenseless enemy cities at will, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians (old men, women, children, etc.).
It is an atrocious hack job.
It's so bad, I think the reporters were sternly reminded of their line counts and quotas and forced to complete the story despite telling their editors "there's nothing here, no one saw anything, and there's only a single speculative comment from our dozen-plus sources."
To which the editors suggested filling in the blanks and null-spots with State Department reports and semi-relevant Congressional testimony.
This story stinks, not merely for its annoying anti-Americanism, but because it is a contrived story and just plain awful journalism.
But I'll let the reporters off the hook, because it smells of a story that was constructed to please an inept and demanding editor.
Wonderful news!!!
"At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights -- subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques."
I don't know what "awkward, painful positions" means, that's anyone's guess.
The hideous "24-hour bombardment of lights" sounds like there's a light on in the cell.
This does not sound like torture to me.
It does, however, sound like the ComPost is doing its best to gin-up a horrorshow where the most pedestrian of detention and restraint methods are being employed.
In fact, the entire article has that stink, from top to bottom.
I think we're all missing the larger picture with this story:
There is not a single fact in this story that even remotely asserts that anything beyond conventional detention and restraint methods are being used.
There is, however, a huge amount of innuendo and guessing that such is the case.
This story is 5 percent fact, 20 percent guessing and speculation, and 75 percent filler.
Awwwwwwwwwwww!
I'll wring my hands later OK?
First I got to check whether I logged onto DU by mistake...
At times they were held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights - subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques, the report said.
Sounds like the special I was watching on Navy Seals training last night on the Discovery channel. These guys probably think they are going easy on the captives.
Yep. I expect the WashPost to have a front page article decrying the health risks of the 24-hour bombardment of regular meals the detainees have been forced to eat. Can you imagine how high their "bad cholesterol" are getting? The horror...
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