We got a guy at Gitmo to admit he was with Osama in a video. He was working in UK at the same time

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2007/January/opinion_January58.xml§ion=opinion&col=

Guantanamo is a US torture camp
BY VIKRAM DODD

18 January 2007

<snip>Camp Delta, which still houses 470 men never convicted of any crime, is a torture camp. That should be the starting point of any debate about what is acceptable in the west's fight with Islamist extremists. More than 750 men have passed through the camp, with nearly half being released. Many prisoners, past and present, have given consistent and repeated testimony of serious abuses and ill treatment. There is also significant evidence from US officials and government documents of widespread abuse at the camp.

The British detainees known as the Tipton Three (after their home town of Tipton in the north of England) allege they were repeatedly beaten, shackled in painful positions for long periods and subjected to sleep deprivation. They were also subjected to strobe lighting, loud music and extremes of hot and cold -- all meant to break them psychologically. Other detainees have suffered beatings, sexual assaults and death threats. At least one man has been ‘water boarded’ -- tied to a board and placed under water so that he had the sensation of drowning.

According to the Red Cross, the regime at Guantanamo causes psychological suffering that has driven inmates mad, with scores of suicide attempts and three inmates killing themselves last year.

Even US officials are shocked. Last week FBI documents revealed that an inmate's head had been wrapped in tape for quoting from the Qur'an. Another was humiliated for his religious beliefs and ‘baptised’ by a soldier posing as a Catholic priest. The documents show FBI agents saw 26 instances of abuse in their time at Guantanamo. The FBI is highly sceptical about alleged confessions gained by its military colleagues. A May 2004 FBI memo branded intelligence gained from ‘special techniques’ as ‘suspect at best’. Indeed, one of the Tipton Three confessed to being in a video shot at an Afghan terror camp alongside Osama bin Laden -- in fact, at the time he was working in an electronics store in the UK. snip

Adorned on the walls of the Guantanamo camp is its mission statement: ‘Honour-bound to defend freedom’.

After five years of Guantanamo, do you feel any safer?

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. This is a national disgrace

There is no good reason in the world to torture anyone on a daily basis and then deny them all of their basic human rights in the process.

Yet, despite all this, there has not been one major conviction of a terrorist in a US Court since Bush took the WH.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. what you said.

Quite the record.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

3. I met a young Marine who is an MP working at Guantanemo. It was a social

event at a friend's home. This kid looked as shell shocked as anyone I've ever seen. He was trying to engage in the conversations around him, however, you could see what a monumental effort it was for him to just be there.

Eventually, he found a chair off to the side of the room, and just sat there with a million mile gaze. My husband and I, both vets, made our way over to him and engaged him in some generic "in the military" kind of chatter, but never asked him about his current assignment. I don't think he would have said much, even if we had.

This "war" is mentally and emotionally degrading everyone that is participating, in one way or the other. MKJ

[demnan]

4. I feel ashamed to be an American

n/t

[NNN0LHI]

5. I try to imagine what someone would have to do to me to get me to say I was with Osama in a video

Feck.

Don