Forced to torture
A profound letter to the editor from a veteran in today's Star Tribune:
Forced to engage in torture
Being a member of the Minnesota Republican Party, this is hard to write, but being a combat veteran requires me to. I would like to thank Sen. Dick Durbin for having the courage to stand up and demand that we close our prison in Guantanamo Bay.
Now that Colin Powell has left, there is no one in a leadership position in the Bush administration who has seen combat. If they had, they would realize the lifetime of psychological trauma that is inflicted on our troops when they are required to chain prisoners to the floor -- leaving them in that position so long that they urinate and defecate on themselves. FBI reports tell how some prisoners left in that way have pulled their own hair out.
Years from now, American Marines, who volunteered to defend our country, will still be going to counseling, trying to get rid of the guilt of knowing that they were forced to engage in torture.
James P. Glaser,
Northome, Minn.;
commander,
American Legion Post 499.
Mr. Glaser is correct: these people will be racked with guilt for what they've done if they have any soul at all. But it's worth remembering that not everyone has followed orders.
The unsung heros of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and Abu Gharib are the courageous whistle-blowers who report the abuse. The are true, patriotic Americans who see men chained to the ceiling, forced to defacate on themselves, urinated on, sexually abused, beaten...and know that it is not right. These brave men and women deserve our respect.
posted by Luke Francl @ 10:13 AM |
| 
19 Comments:
Hey there.
I'm happy to see this person's thoughts.
I found this piece of nuttiness regarding Guantanamo and had a few thoughts on the interview the blogger did with someone who is supposed to have been an interrogrator at the camp.
Yowling from the Fencepost -- It's not torture. It's modulated discomfort.
Clearly, those people that exposed the criminal activity at Abu Gharib deserve credit. They have done a valuable service to America and its important to drive out fear of exposing abuse when it occurs.
However, Gitmo !=Abu Gharib. The perspective of the left is irrational and far from the mainstream.
Visit a nursing home and you'll see the same, never mind asylums. This isn't torture. Its what is (unfortunately) necessary. Nothing more.
-Censored.
If my grandpa was at a nursing home where he was chained in the fetal position for 24 hours at I time, I'd be mighty pissed.
Stop trivializing torture.
Do you realize how much it would HURT to be chained in the same position for a day? How much your muscles would ache, how thirsty you would be in the 100 degree tempature? How your ears would buzz and your head pound from the ear-splittingly loud music?
Your fat American ass couldn't take it. You would do anything to make it stop. You would betray your own mother if they asked you to -- even if it wasn't true. And that's the point isn't it?
It's torture.
Nursing homes and mental hospitals !=Gitmo any way you slice it. I don't know if you've ever visited either, but even the dimentia wards in nursing homes seem like a party compared to Gitmo. Mental institutions have changed a lot over even the last thirty years and you'd be hard pressed to find one with conditions similar to Gitmo. Even before the advent of modern drugs for mental patients, their treatment was better than what's been described.
"If my grandpa was at a nursing home where he was chained in the fetal position for 24 hours at I time, I'd be mighty pissed."
If your grandfather had been caught on a battlefield in action against Americans, not in uniform and not in his own country, I'd be even more pissed. But neither of you should be; under the Geneva Convention, Grandpa could be court-martialled and shot.
But let's get back to the "FBI Memo"; there was no context given for any of the "torture". Was the terr chained up, for example, because he'd been attacking people? Harming himself?
Did the guy crap all over himself to piss off the guards? These ARE the same people who toss their crap at the guards constantly. Would it be out of character to do it on purpose to piss off the guards, to say nothing of discrediting the US?
The "Torn out hair" - people who are mentally ill do that frequently. Mental illness can be a byproduct of torture - but it is much more often not. Is it a huge stretch to think that people who plan suicide bombings might have a screw loose? I mean, the Unibomber was not a lot different - want him babysitting your kids?
But as I said - after this past year, after Rathergate and the Downing Street memos - all memos produced to support lefty positions should be treated as fakes, frauds, or hopelessly out-of-context until proven otherwise.
Perhaps the word of someone who has spent a year work at Gitmo would help calm your concerns. Of course it is a posting at the EVIL Powerline and can have no creditabilty in your eyes. Worse yet it is the words of an EVIL service member who is obviously beholden to bushilterMcChimpy.
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/010812.php
Dave
Please Mitch.
Doesn't anything shine through your conservative epistemology? These are authenticated FBI memos uncovered by ACLU Freedom of Information Act requests. That doesn't mean they're God's honest truth, but they're credible. Unless you believe the FBI made them up to discredit the ACLU!
Let's apply Occam's Razor here. Is it more likely that the guy shit himself because he was chained up for 24 hours (how long can you hold it?), or because he wanted to anger his guards?
Why was the guy chained up for 24 hours? Does it matter? I can hold a "stress position" for about 5 minutes before my muscles start aching with lactic acid build-up. I can't imagine the pain of being forced to hold that position for days at a time.
Also, you assume this person was a terrorist. Do you have any proof? How do you know some tribal warlord didn't just sell him off to the Americans for cash? How do you know he wasn't a Taliban footsoldier pressed into service?
That cuts to the quick of the matter: If these people are terrorists, charge them, give them a fair trial, convict them and throw away the key. It is anti-constitutional to hold people indefinately, which our government now claims as its right. That's why they're in Guantanmo and not some holding facility in the US...it's intentionally a legal black hole so the government can hold these people as long as possible without solid evidence.
The letter made a good point about the long term problems associated with any of this. I do some volunteer work with PTSD support...regardless of your thoughts on this issue, PTSD is apolitical and it will be there regardless of what name we can come up for people shitting themselves in cold rooms after pulling their hair out.
If you want to follow the VA angle, Durbin's support of the troops has few spotty marks. I posted a little bit about it here:
http://monkeysponge.blogspot.com/2005/06/durbin-down-road.html
CP
www.monkeysponge.blogspot.com
Luke,
You're quoting the same sissy Clinton era FBI crybabys that failed to protect America in the first place.
We have seen the results of that approach. They are simply unacceptable.
So far as soft? That's a personal attack. You should read your rules.
Regardless, I don't have very high expectations of you, but I can assure you that many of our enemies don't cave that easily.
I suppose some people might think that makes them better men than you. I think intentions count, and I think yours are largely good (although I disagree with your position more often than not.)
-Censored
"Please Mitch.
"Doesn't anything shine through your conservative epistemology? These are authenticated FBI memos uncovered by ACLU Freedom of Information Act requests."
"Did the FOIA request uncover the context of each of these supposed incidents of torture? That's kinda
important. It should be for you, if anything can shine through your liberal assurance that as long as
an authority tells you something, it must be true...
"Let's apply Occam's Razor here. Is it more likely that the guy shit himself because he was chained up
for 24 hours (how long can you hold it?), or because he wanted to anger his guards?"
Does Occam's Razor go into determining motives?
Neither you, Occam or I are clairvoyant.
"Also, you assume this person was a terrorist. Do you have any proof?"
Everyone in Guantanamo has been through a military tribunal to determine their enemy combatant status. 30-odd were released.
" How do you know some tribal warlord didn't just sell
him off to the Americans for cash?"
Paging Mr. Occam. I don't know that. I also don't know that he wasn't beamed down from a Vogon
battlecruiser - or for that matter that a warlord didn't turn in a genuine terrorist for cash (it
happened!).
Shall we trade different permutations of possibilities until our bandwidth bills eat our disposable income?
Interesting that you put absolute trust in an FBI memo, but not in the integrity of the troops doing the
capturing...
" How do you know he wasn't a Taliban footsoldier pressed into service?"
If you have any serious evidence of this, sound off. Because the Afghans in the Taliban were local indigenous militias, covered by the Geneva Convention of 1947, and subject to being treated as Prisoners of War which, to the best of my knowledge (and yours) they all are. If you have evidence that legitimate POWs (uniformed government troops or un-uniformed but native, indigenous troops)
are being held, please cough it up.
"That cuts to the quick of the matter: If these people
are terrorists, charge them, give them a fair trial, convict them and throw away the key."
No. They are not criminals, they are not prisoners. They are not subject to US civil law; as un-uniformed non-indigenous people captured in action against the
US and its allies, they are NOT subject to the Geneva Convention or ANY international law (remember that? The stuff that you on the left put absolute faith in?). Under 300+ years of *western* legal tradition, they can all be given summary courts-martial, lined up
and machine-gunned with neither a legal nor a moral qualm (as the Russians do with foreign jihadis in
Chechnya, fully legally). The *fact* is, even *with* the "torture" allegations (which I'm fairly convinced time will show are baseless), we treat this class of
people better than any other nation on earth *ever* has.
I don't personally condone torture (the real thing) or inhumanity; it's a religious thing. But I've seen no dispositive evidence that that's happened.
In the meantime, there is *no* justification for treating them like criminals accused of a civil crime.
"It is anti-constitutional to hold people indefinately, which our government now claims as its
right."
Please
show me where the constitution refers to treatment of
prisoners of war. But pack a lunch; it does not. The Constitution is not a set of rules of war.
"That's why they're in Guantanmo and not some holding facility in the US...it's intentionally a legal black hole so the government can hold these people as long as possible without solid evidence."
The only legal black holes are:
a) The one that they exist in under international law; the Geneva Convention does not cover them, and either does the Constitution.
b) The ones from which the chattering classes are drawing their logic on this issue.
By the way, Luke et al.,
During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Germans and Italians were held in the United States. What were they charged with, and how did their court cases turn out?
As for the U.S. legallity of hold the prisoners at Gitmo the Supreme Court of the United States in the Keiran ruling regarded foreign citizens AND U.S. citizens engaging in terrorist activities without a uniform. Covers the exact situation at Gitmo and it even allows military tribunals and execution.
Mitch has covered the rest very well in regards to Geneva conventions. All prisoners have had at least one military review of thier prisoner status per Article V of the Geneva conventions even though they are not covered by the accords.
Yet, since the basis of this discussion is about torture, no one has bother to comment of the words of a military officer who has actually been to gitmo for an extended time.
Dave
I don't think there's any denying that Hegseth didn't see abuses. Curiously, a Google search shows that a Lt. Hegseth, a Princeton graduate, also was the editor of the Princeton Tory, a conservative newsmag. That's not to say that he's not being honest, but it also doesn't mean that he is without an agenda.
Hey Mitch & cohorts: You can stop putting torture in quotes now.
...
US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo and Iraq, Afghanistan: UN source
Er, the story says the US is admitting to non-systematic abuses by low-ranking troops who are - didja catch this - being investigated, tried and sentenced. Y'know - the things that nobody who carried out torture in Iraq and Afghanistan BEFORE the liberation of both ever got.
Rumors that Guantanamo is a big bad torture factory rivalling the Lyubyanka and Dr. Mengele's clinic (honk if you're a NewPat reader who's heard of either of them!) are greatly exaggerated.
Sorry, Chuck. It's neither news nor any reason to cop to Durbin's slander - to say nothing of the frothing of the guy in the Strib editorial.
Er, who said anything about Durbin?
I'm just saying -- it happened. Will you admit it happened and stop putting it in quotes?
. . .
Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.
The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.
"They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN," the Committee member told AFP.
"They they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be kept in the dark."
UN sources said it was the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.
And the best part Chuck, is that its an annonymous source at the UN.
WTF? Is it really news that the US is trying and convicting soldiers who abuse prisioners? You need to wait for an annon UN source before you believe it?
_Censored
Our biggest complaint in regards to claims of torture is that the more libral side see it as policy. Most on the more conservative side see the overall protection from mistreatment that is designed into the system and which eventually helps to weed out those who do not follow the policy. Our society is one that follows the rule of law, justice, and compassion. When there are those very few who deviate from the norm are exposed as they inevitably are. The conservatives look on and see a system that works the liberal side see the sky is falling and scream like Chicken Little with little or no context or understanding. Thus the on going debates.
DAve
Why do liberals hate America so much?
Post a Comment
<< Home