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.
Are you suggesting that given atrocities from past wars we have no moral altitude, or that it scarcely matters what we do now? And I thought I was a cynic . . .
Actually Bob Woodward and Susan Schmidt - both star reporters at the Post - are listed as contributors.
And thinking about the internal politics of editorial bullpens, it looks to me as if they took their names off the story because "there's no there there."
Then again, the story does carry Woodward's signature prose style, which I like to call "fictional reporting."
This assertion is specifically contradicted by the article, which gives no evidence of physical harm being inflicted by the U.S.
So they were uncomfortable for awhile? That is not the same as "brass knuckles." Nor is it anywhere near Saddam's vats of acid.
That's paragraph 3 and the comments I was referring to. Doesn't sound like torture to me (darn it!). Most Americans reading this will either laugh at the Posts's feeble attempts to discredit our "inhumane" methods or, like me, feel disappointment we aren't being more aggressive.
And we still do. There is not a single assertion of fact in the article that torture is being employed.
“How many people in this country are really going to be worried about a bunch of suspected and likely terrorists being forced to stand in uncomfortable positions for hours and sleep deprived for 24 hours at a time”
WHAT! No comfy couch? No afternoon nap? Painted goggles so they can’t watch “friends”?
I am shocked, shocked I tell you! This is truly inhumane!
It might be better to turn them over to Army interrogators rather than the CIA wimps.
This is what I'm trying to point out as well.
The article clearly states that there is no evidence of torture being used, yet consumes many column-inches insinuating that this must be the case.
The article is a meretricious hack job.
Sounds like these guys got it right-The Post missed the point.
The Ha'aretz article does say that, but the Post article - which Ha'aretz cites as its source - says nothing of the kind.
The ComPost's full discussion of this issue reads "At times they are held in awkward, painful positions..."
Of course its entirely up to the imagination what "awkward, painful positions" might be, and apparently Ha'aretz has taken that to mean "Captives who refused to cooperate were sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles," which the ComPost does not say.
But that is the entire point of this ambiguous hack job, to deceive and mislead its readers.
These liberal journalists need to get some real experience and get into the compound with these "poor guys" for a few days. If they make it out, and they wouldn't, let's see how their story reads. We are being way too nice to these "combatants".
In Vietnam they used "tiger cages", bamboo cages that were too short to stand fully upright and too narrow to sit, so the prisoner had to stay standing in a half-crouch as long as they were confined that way.
Try standing in a forced half-crouch some time for 24 hours - not a pleasant experience at all. Not that I have any sympathy for these maggots, the gloves are off this time... our proscriptions against duress are intended to protect common POWs, not monsters who target defenseless civilians.
BTTT
What comes through from this article is exactly that: we are treating these beasts more-or-less like felony suspects on American soil, which is exactly what the ComPost would like to see (an expression of their preference that the war against these subhuman Islamists be conducted on CourtTV).
What's perversely amusing about this article is that they can find nothing but legal and humane treatment, so they bolster their suspicions with innuendo and fabrication (e.g., weaving their suspicions of torture with random quotes from dated and public State Department reports on the topic of torture).
Personally, I believe the Islamists should be introduced to the quality and effectiveness of Craftsman tool kits.
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