Gitmo inmate: My treatment shames American flag
By Samir Naji, Special to CNN
updated 9:39 AM EST, Thu December 11, 2014

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (CNN) -- I've heard that the Senate report on CIA torture is 6,000 pages long. My story, though, takes place elsewhere: in Guantanamo, away from the CIA program that the report covers. The 6,000 pages of the Senate report are just the start of what Americans have to accept happened in their name.

It starts and ends in the silence of a tiny, freezing cold cell, alone.

That's when you hold yourself in a ball, and fight to ignore the confusion of what has just happened to you, and the fear of what might be coming next. Or the fear that comes when you realize that no one is coming to help; that the life, family and friends you knew are all far, far away.

The cell door opens. The next session, seemingly the 100th in a row. I think my first period of interrogation lasted three full months. Two teams of interrogators running shifts, day and night.

Each session begins with shouting, to wake me up. Then they hit me on the face and the back. I am so desperate for sleep, my head is swimming. There are photographs of faces stuck all around the walls of this room. They demand that I identify the individuals, but I can barely focus to see if I might know them. The shouting and the insults get louder, and then they nod to a man in the corner. He injects me twice in the arm with some unknown substance. It's the last thing I know.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. This time the guards enter, making awful honking noises, like wild animals.

I tried to refuse to eat the little food they bring me, in protest at all this. The interrogator laughs at me, but then turns angry; he swears loudly, and pours an army meal pack over my head. They tell the man in the corner to start feeding me intravenously. He inserts the tube in two different places on my arm and makes it bleed.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. This time the guards push me on the floor and take turns trampling over my back.

I tell the interrogators that I can't face not eating any more. They throw food on the floor of the room and tell me to eat like a pig. They won't let me go to the restroom. They watch as it gets more painful, and laugh as they get the translator to describe how they will rape me if I pee in my pants.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. They make me stand and salute the American flag.

I'm in a sort of cinema room, where I have to watch videos of other prisoners being abused. Then they tell me that I have to dance for them, and run in circles whilst they pull on my chains. Every time I try and refuse, they touch me in my most private areas.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. It has rained, and there are muddy puddles everywhere. I'm shackled, so I can't really walk; they deliberately drag me through the muddy puddles.

Now it's the pornography room. Awful pictures everywhere. There is one with a man and a donkey. I'm stripped naked and have my beard shaved, in a gratuitous insult to my religion. I'm shown pornographic pictures of women. I'm told to make the noises of different animals, and when I refuse, they just hit me. It ends with them pouring cold water all over me.

Hours later in my cell, I am discovered, nearly frozen. The doctor tells them to bring me urgently to the clinic, where I am given a blanket and treatment. Over the next hours, they observe me as I warm up. They are just waiting for the moment that they can sign off on my return to interrogation.

Four years ago, six U.S. government security agencies sat together and reviewed my case. Their conclusion? That I was innocent of any crime and should be released. The dirty and sadistic methods I endured -- which were then taken directly to Abu Ghraib -- achieved nothing, except to shame that American flag hanging in the prison corridor, which I was made to salute.

One hundred and thirty-six prisoners are still being held at Guantanamo, whilst the politicians squabble over how to black out the Senate report. America cannot keep hiding from its past, and its present, like this. Our stories, and our continued detention, cannot be made to disappear.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/11/opinion/g ... index.html?

Instead of prosecuting torturers, Obama prosecuted the guy who revealed the program
Updated by Timothy B. Lee on December 9, 2014, 4:00 p.m. ET

The details in the Senate report on Central Intelligence Agency torture, released today, are shocking. But don't expect anyone to be held responsible. The only person the Obama administration has prosecuted in connection with the torture program is a man who revealed its existence to the media.

Much of the information in the report is new to the public, but a lot of it would have been uncovered during a detailed torture investigation Attorney General Eric Holder conducted during President Obama's first term. After carefully examining the evidence, Holder decided not to prosecute anyone for the CIA's torture. "The department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt," Holder said when he dropped investigations into two torture-related deaths in 2012.

That seems consistent with Obama's own views on the subject. Asked about investigating CIA torture in 2009, Obama replied that "it’s important to look forward and not backwards." Obama admitted that "we tortured some folks" earlier this year, but he didn't call for those responsible to be punished.

But the Obama administration has had a different attitude when it comes to those who revealed the existence of the CIA torture program. In 2012, the Obama administration charged former CIA official John Kiriakou for leaking classified information related to the torture program to reporters. Threatened with decades in prison, Kiriakou was forced to plead guilty and accepted a 30-month prison sentence. He's in prison right now.

Obama has vowed to "use my authority as president to make sure we never resort to those methods again." But prosecuting people who revealed the program, instead of the people responsible, makes it more likely that abuses like this will happen again.

http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/12/9/736 ... t-kiriakou

I find all of this and other things very disturbing. I don't believe in sovereign immunity for criminal actions but obviously Obama can't/won't hand over the preceding President and his officials to a trial for war çrimes and so I wonder how is all of this going to end?

It's already ended. A heavily redacted report is all you get.

Somehow I always thought the cover up of a crime was in itself a crime. Sigh--shows what I know!

That's how corrupt governments operate. I hope you aren't surprised.

the report doesn't even show the worst of it. over one HUNDRED men died as a result of torture.

this bullshit of not even using the term torture is just that. the CIA itself used that term to describe the program.

The title "... Obama prosecuted ..." in oskar's above post is a bit misleading ~ I'm thinking Holder likely told Obama why he was passing on charges, but the DoJ made the call ~ also, the article omits the fact that leaking classified information is a crime in the US ~

Sooz

Of course, classifying just about everything is certainly a convenient way to hide government wrongdoing.
That practice is quickly spreading here in Canada.

I don't understand your post, oskar ~ leaking classified information to anyone is a crime here ~ and it doesn't say "Obama" ... it says "Obama administration", which implies it was the DoJ ~

I agree that "... classifying just about everything is certainly a convenient way to hide government wrongdoing" ~ but the law is still on the books ~ I'm sure that prosecution was intended as much a warning to others as it was a punishment ~

Sooz

Ok, I see your point. Another poorly written headline.
I missed that one.

You'd be surprised what doesn't surprise me!

I think the real horror will come to light when somebody explores what happened in those "safe" houses around the world where people were held in foreign countries and very likely tortured and killed.

I think it's safe to say that none of the investigative journalists from FOX will be tackling that issue.
Not sure about any others.

Scalia is an excellent example for favoring term limits ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Justice Scalia’s unfortunate entry into the torture debate
12/12/14 03:15 PM—Updated 12/12/14 03:43 PM
By Steve Benen

When it comes to the issue of torture, it’s been a discouraging week. Not only was the Senate Intelligence Committee report a heartbreaking indictment of an American scandal, but the argument surrounding the revelations started breaking far too much along partisan and ideological lines.

Antonin Scalia isn’t helping. The Associated Press reported today that the far-right Supreme Court justice joined the debate, such as it is, “by saying it is difficult to rule out the use of extreme measures to extract information if millions of lives were threatened.”


I think some caution is probably in order. The AP ran a five-paragraph article, and it seems entirely plausible, but there’s exactly one, six-word quote in that piece. Everything else is a paraphrase, and to offer a detailed response to Scalia’s take, we’d need to know exactly what the justice argued.

That said, if the AP report is accurate, Scalia’s perspective is deeply ridiculous.

For one thing, opposition to torture need not be the result of self-righteousness. Brutally abusing prisoners is about humanity, basic decency, and the existence of a moral compass. For another, the “ticking bomb” argument is childish and unserious.

As for the Constitution, it’s true that the document is silent on the issue of treating suspected terrorists, but it’s not silent on “cruel and unusual punishment.” And according to the CIA’s records, rectal feeding and hydration were forced on detainees without medical need – and the leap from that point to “cruel and unusual” seems quite small.

I’d still like to see a more detailed transcript of Scalia’s comments, but let’s just make this plain as part of the larger conversation: torture is wrong, it’s immoral, it undermines our security interests, and it’s illegal.

If Scalia is prepared to publicly argue otherwise, he’s in the wrong line of work.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/justice-scalias-unfortunate-entry-the-torture-debate

that's not the point. the point is being embarrassed about using them, knowing they are illegal, and trying to hide it, VERSUS seeking legal justification for it, and doing it right out in the open. the latter is reserved for regimes like Rwanda, not the US.

NOTE: i am not saying it is EVER right. i am addressing Scalia's "naiive" accusation. we are not, any of us, ignorant of what goes on, Antonin.

And speaking of John Yoo ... ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Even John Yoo has his limits
12/15/14 04:13 PM—Updated 12/15/14 07:12 PM
By Steve Benen

John Yoo’s reputation is well deserved. The conservative law professor at UC Berkeley is perhaps best known as the principal author of the Bush/Cheney “torture memos” – defending the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” – during Yoo’s tenure at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

And when it came to torture and national security, the conservative lawyer was largely in the “anything goes” category. But apparently, even Yoo has his limits.


In an interview on C-SPAN, Yoo added, “Looking at it now, I think of course you can do these things cumulatively or too much that it would cross the line of the anti-torture statute.”

Just to be clear, this is not to suggest Yoo endorses or agrees with the torture report released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. On the contrary, it’s quite clear that he does not.

But as a political matter, his willingness to draw legal lines now, in light of the new revelations, creates an interesting dynamic.

We know, for example, that according to the CIA’s records, rectal feeding and hydration were forced on detainees without medical need.

According to former CIA director Michael Hayden, that wasn’t illegal and it wasn’t torture.

According to former Vice President Dick Cheney, that wasn’t illegal and it wasn’t torture.

According to Karl Rove, that wasn’t illegal and it wasn’t torture.

But according to John Yoo, this crossed the line. In other words, a variety of leading Republican voices haven’t just embraced torture as a legitimate tool, they’ve positioned themselves to the right of the torture-memo author who helped give the Bush/Cheney White House the green light in the first place.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/even-john-yoo-has-his-limits#break

I would be curious to what enhanced interrogation techniques Yoo would consider not to be torture.

yes, that would be interesting.

The stuff he agreed with. All the other stuff is torture.

I'd propose a simple test by rectal feeding him Sushi and a side of Peking duck.

Wit Ex-Lax gravy?