More tortured logic (more political comment) 


Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. 

Abu Ghraib and Gitmo appear to have dropped off the radar in this new Era of Good Feeling. Republican triumphalism holds it bad taste to suggest that we few, we happy few, we band of brothers could possibly have been beastly to the wogs, and if anyone is impolitic enough to suggest the contrary, then these were just a few isolated instances of "coercive interrogation." Certainly we weren't actually torturing anyone. Only Nazis do that sort of thing. Or so I was brought up to believe. The FBI is not pleased.

A civil liberties group is charging that military interrogators at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, some posing as FBI agents, humiliated and abused detainees, including inserting lit cigarettes in their ears.

Releasing e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union said Monday one detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and some were shackled hand and foot in fetal positions for 18 to 24 hours, forcing them to soil themselves.

The ACLU said e-mails suggested "inhumane interrogation methods'' approved by President Bush -- a charge the White House vigorously denied.

The military operation at Guantanamo Bay has come under increased scrutiny as former prisoners have alleged they were tortured. The Pentagon maintains it runs a humane operation there and investigates all allegations of abuse.

The e-mails released by the ACLU include a report by an FBI agent who witnessed ``numerous physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees'' including choking, beatings and placing lighted cigarettes inside ears. One detainee, according to an e-mail report, had been left in a room at near 100 degrees and had pulled out his hair during the night.

One detainee was interrogated while wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music and strobe lights, according to an FBI agent's account contained in an e-mail posted on the ACLU Web site.

According to the e-mails, FBI officials disapproved of the practice of military interrogators posing as federal agents.

Take a puff: It's springtime.

Have a lit cigarette in your ear. Only—please to remember that this isn't torture. We are Americans, after all. Somehow we have gone since I attained my full growth from a country that would have screamed bloody murder at learning that its operatives were conducting themselves this way to one that prefers not to think about it because, after all—9/11 changed everything.

Fuck. Me. 

Posted: Tue - December 21, 2004 at 07:55 PM          

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