"Newly declassified DOD documents says detainees were tortured" by Jason Leopold (2-17-09 Online

[bobthedrummer]

Journal)
"Newly declassified Defense Department documents describe a pattern of 'abusive' behavior by U.S. military interrogators that directly led to the deaths of several suspected terrorists imprisoned at a detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4372.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

1. Thanks for this post. I can only wonder how any of the people involved in these atrocities

can get to sleep, can ever live with themselves.

One look at that list of the items they DO admit is a look into a shrieking hell. I hope their victims were somehow unconscious enough they didn't have the ability to suffer as much as these filthy monsters wanted them to suffer. It would be bearable if we were able to think somehow these victims were spared total consciousness of what was happening to them. I would love to be able to believe, but don't.

Sure hope someone will step up and do something HONORABLE about dealing with what has happened after the Neo-cons opened the gates of hell within our world. We don't need a hero, we simply need a decent President, Congress to admit this is so very, very evil, and will never happen again.

[acmavm]

2. This is why Obama prosecutes. Or else he's another one-termer.

<snip>Both deaths, the documents say, “share some similarities.”

“In both cases, for example, were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake,” the documents say. “Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of ‘compliance blows’ which involved striking the legs with the knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma.”

“In both instances, the deaths followed interrogation sessions in which unauthorized techniques were allegedly employed, but in both cases, these sessions were followed by further alleged abusive behavior outside of the interrogation booth,” the declassified documents say.

“None of these techniques have ever been approved in Afghanistan,” according to two pages of the declassified Church report. “Of these, three (marked with X) are alleged to have been employed during interrogations. These techniques -- sleep deprivation, the use of scenarios designed to convince the detainee that death or severely painful consequences are imminent for him and/or his family, and beating -- are alleged to have been used in the incidents leading to the two deaths at Bagram in December 2002, which are described at greater length later in this report.”

[Judi Lynn]

3. Heart breaking trying to imagine how profoundly alone, these men were during their suffering.

They must have died of heart break, first. No one could be prepared to cope with that treatment.

It's simply overwhelming.

[bobthedrummer]

4. Women and children were also suffering, raped and violated in many ways by people in and out of

uniform in George W. Bush's unilateral Global War on Terror.

[Judi Lynn]

5. No one could have imagined how much damage he and his confederates could accomplish

after their desecration of our election process not once, but twice.

The very idea of trying to grasp how MUCH suffering he and they inflicted is impossible. So many lives destroyed, so many hearts broken, so many people lost because of these reckless, indifferent, brutal, amoral scums.

It's all so easy to destroy the world when an unqualified man can steal office, surround himself by security and then start sending strangers he'll never see to slaughter people he never knew for reasons we all knew at the time were not reasoned, and were from inception unholy, and unpardonable.

He lied, he enjoyed lying and he enjoyed playing the little emperor, and getting his own taste of blood, and suffering from people across the world, and having it all played out by living human beings without ever personally risking any part of his own life. A truly bored, empty little boy who never knew, or respected other people in the first place.

The system shouldn't be so easily open to abuse.

[acmavm]

6. Very very true. With the added 'irony' that when it was his turn to serve,

he ran like the whiney chickenhawk coward that he is. And he surrounded himself with people who did the same thing.