Now That The Very People Accused of Abuse Have Cleared Their Own Name, We Can All Rest Easy
A very noble and responsible act - this is surely how the corporate press will treat this story. The Pentagon has publicly detailed the mishandling of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay.
Of course it would be bad enough if the investigation that led to this report was done by anyone in the Pentagon, as opposed to an independent 3rd party. But the Pentagon didn't even attempt to have a seperate investigative unit take this on, it was conducted by Brig. General Jay Hood - "the commander of the detention center in Cuba."
How will Americans and the media respond? It should seem both ridiculous and suspicious to anyone with a basic sense of due process - one that I think exists even in this country. We don't let accused criminals act as their own judge and jury.
But then again, accused criminals are usually poor people of color. This is the Pentagon. Americans - at least the ones with the most influence in Washington (or Austin or Sacramento) - trust the Pentagon a lot more than petty criminals. I think. But I hope I'm wrong. Or at least I hope the rest of us can start to have more of an impact.
An accurate reading of this report should be: If this is what the accused criminals running Guantanamo are willing to reveal, what they are covering up must be much worse. Remember, it isn't just Quran abuse that is suspected at Guantanamo. It is also torture. We know that at Abu Ghraib people merely accused of something (terrorism?) have been tortured to death.
So why would anyone, particularly a responsible media, trust a single finding, a single word of this latest Pentagon admission?
1 comment:
From TIME magazine: "Have detainees been abused? In its recently issued annual report on human rights, Amnesty International said Guantanamo had become the "gulag of our times." While disputing many of the detainees' allegations of beatings, sexual taunts and other mistreatment, the U.S. is nonetheless investigating them. One of those inquiries, the findings of which are expected to be issued soon by Air Force Lieut. General Randall Schmidt, was spurred by eyewitness accounts from FBI agents at Gitmo from mid-2002 to mid-2004. According to just-released memos, agents reported seeing captives shackled in a fetal position for 24 hours without food or water and left in their own excrement, another gagged with duct tape that covered much of his head and another who had torn out his hair after being chained all night in a hot room. Former Army Sergeant Erik Saar, who served at Gitmo and wrote Inside the Wire with TIME correspondent Viveca Novak, has described an instance in which a female interrogator smeared fake menstrual blood on a captive's face. It may have been a measure of how detainees are treated that when Army Specialist Sean Baker played the role of an inmate in a 2003 training exercise, he says he was beaten so badly by MPs, who did not know he was one of them, he now has seizures. The Army is investigating the incident, and Baker has filed suit against the government, seeking damages for his injuries."
Post a Comment