Pre and post Abu Ghraib top secret torture center active in Iraq NYT

[Lone_Star_Dem]

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
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A placard from Camp Nama in Iraq, where some detainees were used as paintball targets.
Task Force 6-26
Inside Camp Nama


In June 2004, Stephen A. Cambone, a top Pentagon official, ordered his deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, to look into allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Nama.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.
More at link...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html?_r=5&ei=5094&en=9efb5b3a1aa3d685&hp=&ex=1142744400&adxnnl=1&oref=login&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1142754188-wNnZggZ0RV8eG6j8PnORhg

Right now I'm torn between being insanely angry or painfully ashamed.

edit: clarity

[Drum]

1. Just read it. A story that's both stunning

and, sadly, not so surprising. The refusal to disclose will be this Administration's hallmark and its undoing.

Let's hope we live through it.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. I don't see how can survive much more of this as a nation

We've lost so much in the eyes of the world, I don't know anymore what will be left of us when all this is over.

[Why Syzygy]

2. to start with .. this is NOT

counterterroism. It is create hatred aka terroism.

Secondly there is NO WAY they extracted any "information". Unless you count confessing to whatever you say, sure. JEEZIZ.

Is this the best we can do? THIS is "intelligence"? I call it torture and immature.

God/Goddess help us all. Any time now.

And I don't call those "military". Last I checked military serves with honor.

[mdmc]

4. they have a hard job over there