From Body & Soul, Jeanne keeps us up to date with the current rash of torture scandals.
The Beast in US does a great job of laying out all of the torture information that’s currently bubbling over.
Look at some of the things that have come out recently:
- Italian, German, and Swedish investigations into American violation of their laws when CIA agents kidnapped and detained people on their soil and deported them to countries where they faced torture.
- Details of prison abuse in Afghanistan that caused two deaths military officials originally attributed to "natural causes." Among those causes: "kicks to the groin and leg, shoving or slamming him into walls/table, forcing the detainee to maintain painful, contorted body positions during interview and forcing water into his mouth until he could not breathe." The prisoners were chained to the ceiling while being beaten. According to a researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, abuse was "the rule more than the exception." I guess by some people’s definition, that makes it natural. Jeralyn Merritt points out that we’ve known about abuse at Bagram for a long time, even about the deaths. Only the details are new.
- A formal agreement between the Army and the CIA to hide "ghost detainees" at Abu Ghraib. The Pentagon has previously admitted that prisoners were kept off the records in Iraq, but claimed they "slipped through the cracks." They lied.
- The ACLU’s latest document dump — previously classified annexes to the Fay Report — expose the use of dogs to frighten child detainees, the refusal to release even obviously innocent prisoners, and a statement by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez that is shocking even after all the previous shocks. According to an unnamed soldier, he said of the prisoners, "Why are we detaining these people, we should be killing them."
- There’s a great old gospel song called "Nobody’s Fault But Mine." Classic Americana. One more time, Donald Rumsfeld is not asked to sing it. The New York Times is surprisingly scathing about the failure.
- Evidence of prisoners as young as eleven-years-old at Abu Ghraib. Actually, this isn’t news. The New York Times mentioned that eleven-year-old (as well as a 75-year-old prisoner) in an article on Abu Ghraib that preceded CBS’s revelation of the photographs by more than a month. But as long as the press is returning to under-reported old stories, there’s a lot more about imprisoned children to look into.
- The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial about the "barbarism" of extraordinary rendition. The Pentagon is planning Extraordinary Rendition II — cutting the population of the Guantánamo detention facility in half by transferring hundreds of the detainees to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
There’s some hope– some of this round of commentary was sparked by people’s panic over getting stuck with the blame. In Time bombs and torture bills, she underlines some important discussions about torture and extrordianary rendition that are currently going on.
Obsidian Wings is among the most persistant and rational on the topic. Here’s a link to their torture specific articles.