Blasts From The Past

Iraq: • "It's not that they don't have rights. They have fewer rights [than prisoners of war]." -- Brig. General Janis Karpinski; September 17, 2003

Originally cited in "Is There A 'Mr. Orwell' In The House?"

• "For U.S. soldiers wondering what they should and should not do in their role as occupiers of Iraq, help may be on the way from the Israel Defense Forces." -- September 30, 2003

Originally cited in "Quote Of The Moment #0020".

• The United States yesterday blocked international efforts to allow a United Nations Human Rights Commission investigator of crimes under Saddam Hussein to look at the post-Saddam period.

Diplomats said several countries on the commission wanted the investigator, Andreas Mavromattis of Cyprus, to look at how the U.S. and British were behaving in Iraq and whether they had committed offenses in the war.

The United State's ambassador to the U.N., Kevin Moley, argued that it would be illogical for the investigation to go beyond "the crimes of the regime that has been replaced." -- April 26, 2003

Originally cited in "Crippled Inside".

Afghanistan: • One day, perhaps, there will be an inquiry into Guantanamo. Until then, some of their allegations -- which, it can be assumed, America is likely to deny -- cannot be corroborated. However, many of the experiences they describe, including gunpoint interrogations in Afghanistan and random brutality both there and in Guantanamo, have been related in identical terms by other freed detainees.

...

After 10 days the Red Cross arrived, bringing some improvement and an increase in the water supply. But by now all three were malnourished and suffering from amoebic dysentery. Ahmed says: 'We were covered with lice. All day long you were scratching, scratching. I was bleeding from my chest, my head.' Iqbal adds: 'We lost so much weight that if I stood up I could carry water in the gap between my collar bones and my flesh.'

Prisoners died daily: of the 35,000 originally marched through the desert, only 4,500 were still alive, the three men estimate. All this time they could see American troops 50 metres from their prison wing on the other side of the gates. -- March 14, 2004

Originally cited in "American 'Justice'".

• "Privately, the Americans admit that torture, or something very like it, is going on at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where they are holding an unknown number of suspected terrorists." -- July 26, 2003

Originally cited in "Another Day, Another Insipid Apologia".

• But unlike the Israelis, for whom moderate physical pressure was open public policy, the new tactics -- whatever they may be -- are being kept secret. The government, in fact, denies it is torturing anyone, insisting that all detainees are being held in a manner consistent with the principles of international law. But what, then, to make of anonymous comments from officials involved in the detentions? One is quoted in the story as saying, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job"? Another says that "our guys may kick them around a little bit in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath" of their capture. And while the government denies that its purpose in transferring prisoners to foreign custody is so that other intelligence services can torture them, still another official says, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them, we send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." -- December 27, 2002

Originally cited in "Orwell A-Go-Go".

• Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, say intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights — subject to what are known as "stress-and-duress" techniques.

Those who cooperate are rewarded with creature comforts and interrogators whose methods include feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, money. Some who do not cooperate are turned over — "rendered," in official parlance — to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human-rights organizations. -- December 26, 2002

Originally cited in "Orwell A-Go-Go".

Guantanamo: • PROFESSOR RUTH WEDGWOOD (Yale Law School): I don't have any information that there is a set of horror stories about to be unloaded. The US can be held to the standard of the commitment made by the President, which is part of human rights law as well, that you have to treat people humanely. If you talk to individuals, you may discover they have gotten better medical care than they ever dreamed of, they've gained weight, they have been allowed to observe their faith.

MARSHALL: But this is not a holiday camp. There are currently 660 prisoners. None has any idea if they will ever be freed. In the 13 months up to August this year, there have been 32 suicide attempts. Since then, there has only been one further attempted suicide recorded. They have, however, introduced a separate category -- manipulative self injurious behaviour -- SIB. It is applied to individuals deemed to have merely feigned suicide attempts. There have been over 40 SIBs since the summer. This new classification troubles Britain's leading forensic psychiatrist.

DR JAMES MACKEITH (Maudsley Royal Hospital): It is impossible to authoritatively assess attempts at self harm in such a way as to justify confidence that a particular self-destructive act is designed to have a manipulative purpose, rather than a self-destructive purpose.

MARSHALL: It is not a valuable clinical definition, as far as you are concerned.

MACKEITH: It is a new one on me. -- December 23, 2003

Originally cited in "What's So 'Civil' About War, Anyway?".

• A prisoner tried to kill himself again in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where U.S. authorities are preparing for military tribunals to try terror suspects, officials said Wednesday.

Tuesday's attempt was the 29th since the detention mission began 1½ years ago, said spokesman Lt.-Col. Barry Johnson. Most attempts occurred this year, a sign that the indefinite detentions are beginning to take their toll on the prisoners, who have not been formally charged or allowed to see lawyers. -- July 16, 2003

Originally cited in "'Disappeared'".

• They actually said that: "You have no rights here." After a while, we stopped asking for human rights -- we wanted animal rights.

In Camp X-Ray, my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, "I want his rights," and they replied, "That dog is a member of the U.S. army." -- April 1, 2004

Originally cited in "Quote Of The Moment #0049".

Posted by Eddie Tews at May 4, 2004 08:16 PM