Why Won't The UN Stop This Country Using Torture?

Oh, please. That lawyer is full of ◊◊◊◊. here's a description from prisoners who have been released fron Gitmo, from an anti-war site, so you don't think it's biased.

The three men, the first prisoners to speak about their arrest and imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, also described a daily routine of football games with the guards and prayer sessions.

But he was then asked if he was angry at the American soldiers who had arrested him. “I don’t mind,” he smiled. “They took my old clothes and gave me new clothes. They treated us well. We had enough food to eat. We could pray and wash with water five times a day. We had the Koran and read it all the time.”
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Oh, the horror. Torture indeed. :rolleyes:
 
If we find out ten years from now that the reports were correct after all, remember... you heard it here first!
 
WildCat said:
Oh, please. That lawyer is full of ◊◊◊◊. here's a description from prisoners who have been released fron Gitmo, from an anti-war site, so you don't think it's biased.


Oh, the horror. Torture indeed. :rolleyes:
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The site you've linked to describes the release of several elderly people who the US obviously weren't interested in. Any reports from those the US still have in custody? What? What's that? You don't?
 
Meanwhile, what cannot be debated is the US's (specifically, the CIA) complicity in torture by handing prisoners to countries who use torture in the full knowledge that they will be tortured.

Or, as was quoted in the Washington Post of an unnamed US official: "We don't kick the s4!t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s4!t out of them."

This, O Lord, is the country taking the moral high ground with brutally repressive regimes like Afghanistan and Iraq.
 
"Specific allegations of prisoner torture were first published in the Washington Post in December last year.

According to the paper, interrogators from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been subjecting Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects to "stress and duress" techniques of dubious legality. "


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2825575.stm

This article of course doesn't disprove the 'cats one. But Wildcat's doesn't disprove this one either. Both types of treatment could exist simultaneously at different times or locations within one area of interest... however, one type of treatment should be expected from the world's policeman, and one should never be tolerated by it. The important thing is that there are accusations of torture. And 2 people are dead. And we don't even know on what grounds these people were being held. And that should be a cause for worry, not cheap point scoring by posting links that other people aren't dead, or weren't treated badly.
 
P.S.A. said:
"Specific allegations of prisoner torture were first published in the Washington Post in December last year.

According to the paper, interrogators from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been subjecting Taleban and al-Qaeda suspects to "stress and duress" techniques of dubious legality. "


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2825575.stm

This article of course doesn't disprove the 'cats one. But Wildcat's doesn't disprove this one either. Both types of treatment could exist simultaneously at different times or locations within one area of interest... however, one type of treatment should be expected from the world's policeman, and one should never be tolerated by it. The important thing is that there are accusations of torture. And 2 people are dead. And we don't even know on what grounds these people were being held. And that should be a cause for worry, not cheap point scoring by posting links that other people aren't dead, or weren't treated badly.
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That article is 7 months old, surely there would have been some follow up by now if the deaths were homicides?

"Stress and Duress" - nothing police here don't do while interrogating suspects, why should Gitmo detainees be any different?

The site you've linked to describes the release of several elderly people who the US obviously weren't interested in. Any reports from those the US still have in custody? What? What's that? You don't?
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Elderly?
The third man, Jan Mohammad, 34, was taken prisoner during a battle for Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. He said that he had been forced to join the Taleban. “I didn’t commit a single crime,” he said. “The Taleban forced me to join their ranks. I was never truly a Taleban fighter. “In each village a number of people had to join, so I went with them, then surrendered. The Americans took me to Kandahar, questioned me, put something over my eyes and took me to Guantanamo Bay. Their behaviour was good. During the past 15 days we played football together and they were sad when we left.”
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Nobody has reports from the prisoners still in custody, including the lawyer in your link making wild accusations w/o any evidence, names or sources. But it is telling that of the prisoners who have been released, none has reported mistreatment. They were there, you know. Prisoners do know what goes on in prisons, their not in isolation from each other.
 
But the US aren't going to torture people who don't know anything- and therefore will be released to tell the media how they weren't tortured.

Put it another way. You get arrested in the US, the media can find out how you're being treated. Why do you think there's a media blackout on Gitmo?
 
Mr Manifesto said:

Put it another way. You get arrested in the US, the media can find out how you're being treated. Why do you think there's a media blackout on Gitmo?
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Could be a number of reasons, but you seem intent on only one. The US wants to keep terrorists uncertain about who it has in custody, so that they don't have confidence in what information has or has not been compromised. That's certainly a part of why they're keeping things hush-hush. They also probably don't want a lot of spurious accusations of torture, and those are bound to surface, considering Al Quaeda training manuals specifically instruct members to make accusations of torture (regardless of their veracity) if they are captured. So it's really not so simple, and you can only ascribe dark motives if you KNOW that torture was happening. Which you don't at this point. Calling for more openness is reasonable, but merely repeating unsubstantiated accusations as if they were true doesn't really accomplish anything.
 
Mr Manifesto said:
But the US aren't going to torture people who don't know anything- and therefore will be released to tell the media how they weren't tortured.

Put it another way. You get arrested in the US, the media can find out how you're being treated. Why do you think there's a media blackout on Gitmo?
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But how would they know if they're innocent w/o torturing them, if that's standard practice? If they "knew" they were innocent why take them to Gitmo in the first place? There's been at least 35 prisoners released from Gitmo so far, while it wasn't pleasant there none have reported the torture you described. And it is common for prisoners to attempt suicide - people hang themselves in jail for a drunk driving charges and much less, this is why they remove your shoe laces before they lock you up.

I think the media is barred from Gitmo because they don't want the prisoners communicating w/ other terrorists, but I don't see a conspiracy behind every tree...
 
WildCat said:

But how would they know if they're innocent w/o torturing them, if that's standard practice? If they "knew" they were innocent why take them to Gitmo in the first place? There's been at least 35 prisoners released from Gitmo so far, while it wasn't pleasant there none have reported the torture you described. And it is common for prisoners to attempt suicide - people hang themselves in jail for a drunk driving charges and much less, this is why they remove your shoe laces before they lock you up.

I think the media is barred from Gitmo because they don't want the prisoners communicating w/ other terrorists, but I don't see a conspiracy behind every tree...
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It sounds like in a few of those cases, it was 'arrest first, ask questions later'. I don't think the US would torture at the drop of a hat. This is a country that is concerned with it's PR image, unlike some countries that use torture. They wouldn't want to beat someone's feet and find out later that they weren't even the friend of a friend of a terrorist.

But once they know someone's a person of interest, and that person isn't giving with the goods, well, then the fun begins.
 
Ziggurat said:


Could be a number of reasons, but you seem intent on only one. The US wants to keep terrorists uncertain about who it has in custody, so that they don't have confidence in what information has or has not been compromised. That's certainly a part of why they're keeping things hush-hush. They also probably don't want a lot of spurious accusations of torture, and those are bound to surface, considering Al Quaeda training manuals specifically instruct members to make accusations of torture (regardless of their veracity) if they are captured. So it's really not so simple, and you can only ascribe dark motives if you KNOW that torture was happening. Which you don't at this point. Calling for more openness is reasonable, but merely repeating unsubstantiated accusations as if they were true doesn't really accomplish anything.
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This is a joke, right?

"Hey, has anyone seen Nizar lately?"
"No, not since that American raid on the Taliban training camp."
"You don't suppose they have him in custody, do you?"
"Nah, they'd say so on CNN if they did..."
 
Mr Manifesto said:
But once they know someone's a person of interest, and that person isn't giving with the goods, well, then the fun begins.
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Only you have no evidence of this!
 
WildCat said:

Only you have no evidence of this!
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It's a plausable scenario. The US is concerned with her image on the world stage. The US took a lot of people in custody all at once, and it isn't too much of a stretch to assume that they weren't ALL terrorists. Some preliminary sorting had to be done first.

As for evidence of torture after the preliminary sorting, you're right, I don't have evidence. Just the prisoners yelling through the wire, the complaints by organisations like Amnesty International which the US is ignoring, and other unproved accusations. But like I said, if the US has nothing to hide, why not let these organistations do some investigating? Hmm?
 
Mr Manifesto said:

This is a joke, right?
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No, it's not. I don't think it's a complete explanation, but it's a factor. Communications between cells may be quite spotty, so it's quite possible that a cell in one country wouldn't hear that a member was arrested half-way around the globe if it never made it onto the news. And since a good number did escape and may still be hiding out in Afghanistan (which doesn't exactly have a phone booth on every corner) it's also concievable that members who were not captured would still end up unexpectedly out of contact for extended periods. And the uncertainty that could cause is a good thing.

There's some cost-benefit tradeoff here (I mentioned some potential benefits and there may be others, costs being a rise in suspicions like you have), and I'm not going to claim that I know they made the right choice regarding this tradeoff. But it's foolish to assume that there are no potential benefits, or that they're necessarily up to something nefarious. The Bush administration is secretive on just about everything. On some issues it's quite likely that it is to cover up something unsavory, on others it's probably just paranoia, and on others perhaps just habbit, but you have no specific knowlege that this is a case where the secrecy is covering up anything unsavory. Calls for more openness are reasonable, and perhaps more openness would be best. But unsubstantiated accusations of torture don't really accomplish anything.
 
So, Ziggurat, would you like to go on record as saying there is no torture going on at Gitmo? I'm happy to say it is. If you put your money where your mouth is, one of us would have to be wrong.
 
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