[Vision2020] US Funded Uzbekistan Boils Them Alive: Bush or McCain: Who's Right on Torture?

[Ted Moffett]

All:

John McCain is not correct that "the new bill on detainees will guarantee
that they will never be tortured again."  The new bill has loopholes that
will de facto allow secret torture to continue and not be exposed in the
legal system.  And in the reality of battlefield conditions in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and elsewhere where US agents operate, legislation from the
US Congress on torture tactics can be ignored... just as the legal and
procedural rules for treating prisoners were already previously ignored in
many cases before this recent politically motivated dog and pony show was
put over on US citizens by the US Congress.

Torture of prisoners is ultimately the responsibility of the upper level
military or intelligence agency (CIA) authorities to prevent, and if no one
in upper level command is prosecuted for these abuses, it sends a message
the conduct can continue.  That's the bottom line reality on this issue:

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/1.htm

*On their day off people would show up all the time.  Everyone in camp knew
if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC
tent.1<http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/1.htm#_ftn1>
In a way it was sport.  The cooks were all U.S. soldiers.  One day [a
sergeant] shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole.  He told him to bend over
and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat.  He was
the fucking cook.  He shouldn't be in with no PUCs*.
— 82nd Airborne sergeant, describing events at FOB Mercury, Iraq

>From the link above:

 The torture of detainees reportedly was so widespread and accepted that it
became a means of stress relief for soldiers.  Soldiers said they felt
welcome to come to the PUC tent on their off-hours to "Fuck a PUC" or "Smoke
a PUC."  "Fucking a PUC" referred to beating a detainee, while "Smoking a
PUC" referred to forced physical exertion sometimes to the point of
unconsciousness.  The soldiers said that when a detainee had a visible
injury such as a broken limb due to "fucking" or "smoking," an army
physician's assistant would be called to administer an analgesic and fill
out the proper paperwork.  They said those responsible would state that the
detainee was injured during the process of capture and the physician's
assistant would sign off on this.  Broken bones occurred "every other week"
at FOB Mercury.

-----------------
The implication in John McCain's statement that torture was used in the past
against detainees in US or US sponsored custody in pursuing the war on
terror is well documented.  The fact this is even being debated is
astonishing.  The evidence from Abu Ghraib alone, much of which has been
censored by the US media in part due to the unspeakable horror of what
occurred, is enough to settle the question.

US Congressmen knew of torture used by US agents in Iraq from first hand
accounts:

http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us0905/1.htm

>From the link above:

One officer and two non-commissioned officers (NCOs) of the 82nd Airborne
who witnessed abuse, speaking on condition of anonymity, described in
multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their battalion in 2003-2004
routinely used physical and mental torture as a means of intelligence
gathering and for stress relief.  One soldier raised his concerns within the
army chain of command for 17 months before the Army agreed to undertake an
investigation, but only after he had contacted members of Congress and
considered going public with the story.

----------

Those who wish to justify torture in pursuing the war on terror should call
a spade a spade.  Torture was used and will continue to be used, despite the
recent US Congressional legislation, not only by the USA, but by US "allies"
Israel, China, Russia, Uzbekistan etc. nations that face Islamic militant
movements they wish to subdue.

Why has the US media given such scant attention to the US complicity in
torture in Uzbekistan?  The reporting that these events occurred comes from
Britain's Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic Of Uzbekistan efforts to
get this story out:
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2005/04/us_complicity_w.html

----------------

Warning: the links below to the Abu Ghraib prison torture info and photos is
not for the sensitive:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/16/abu_ghraib/

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

---------
Ted Moffett

On 9/30/06, nickgier at adelphia.net <nickgier at adelphia.net> wrote:
>
> Greetings:
>
> In about 30 minutes Jack Vincent, Borah Professor of Political Science,
> and I will be talking about the detainee bill just passed by Congress.  It
> will be aired on KRFP, 92.5 FM on your radio dial.  I'll start off with
> this statement.
>
> Nick Gier
>
> McCain or Bush: Who's Right on Torture?
>
>        President George Bush has repeatedly declared that the U.S. does
> not torture, but Senator John McCain assured Americans that the new bill on
> detainees will guarantee that they will never be tortured again.
>
>        Who is right?  I believe that McCain is telling the truth.
>
>        The fact that Bush has released 14 high level detainees from CIA
> secret prisons indicates that "alternative techniques," the new euphemism
> for torture, were used in these facilities.  The fact the CIA agents had
> refused to continue their interrogations also demonstrates that they were
> fearful about possible prosecution, from which the new bill protects them as
> well as everyone in the Bush administration.
>
> In his recent book The One Percent Solution, John Suskind reports that Al
> Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, one of the fourteen and known to have mental
> problems, was water boarded by the CIA.  He began talking about all sorts of
> plots, but not a single one was verified in a huge waste of resources.
>
> Bush claims that Zubaydah gave us the first information about a terrorist
> named Ramzi bin al Shibh, but members of Congress knew all about him in
> February, 2002, a month before Zubaydah was captured in Thailand.
>
> We now have hard evidence of suspects being to death as earlier as
> Februrary, 2003.  The U. S. military announced that an Afghan detainee had
> died in custody because of a heart attack.  When Carlotta Gall of The New
> York Times examined the death certificate, homicide was indicated as the
> cause of death.  The coroner wrote that the man's legs had "basically been
> pulpified" by constant beatings.
>
> The ACLU has released 44 military autopsy reports that clearly demonstrate
> cases of death by torture.  DOD 003164 is one such example: "[detainee] died
> as a result of asphyxia due to strangulation. . . . Autopsy revealed bone
> fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen . . . Manner of death is
> homicide.  Whitehorse Detainment Facility, Nasiriyah, Iraq."
>
> Another detainee died under similar circumstances on January 9, 2004 in Al
> Asad, Iraq. He was asphyxiated and suffered blunt force injuries.
>
> Yet another Iraq prisoner died in Navy Seal custody on April 5, 2004 in
> Mosul, Iraq.  The ACLU reported that "he was hooded, fex-cuffed, sleep
> deprived and subjected to hot and cold environmental conditions, including
> the use of cold war on his body and hood."  He most likely died of
> hypothermia.  No wonder a great majority of Iraqis hate us and want us to
> get out of their country.
>
> There are many problems with the detainee bill which was rushed through
> Congress just in time for desparate Republicans to use a No vote as a way to
> say that Democrats are soft on terror.
>
> The most terrifying provision of this bill is the denial of habeas
> corpus  to detainees.  The basic right for prisoners to appear before a
> judge and respond to the charges against them goes back to the Magna Carta.
>
> Attorneys for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay say that they will take this
> issue all the way to the Supreme Court.  The sad irony is that high level
> prisoners, with much more presumption of guilt, may get more due process
> than hundreds of low level detainees, many of whom were not picked upon a
> battlefield, but turned in by bounty hunters at upwards of $1,000 per head.
>
> The story of three British citizens of Pakistani descent is good example
> of the type of people caught in this indiscriminate dragnet.  The main
> evidence against them was a blurry photo that purported to show that they
> attended an Al Qaeda rally in 2000.  All three were able to prove that they
> were in England at the time, and they were eventually released, but many one
> like these remain locked up at Gitmo.
>
> In July, 2003, George Bush declared that "the United States is committed
> to the worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by
> example.  Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture
> continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel
> methods match their determination to crush the human spirit."
>
> Sadly, the U. S. has not led by example.  Instead, it set up torture
> chambers in all the provinces of South Vietnam in the 1960s, it oversaw the
> torture of thousands in Central and Latin America, and now there is clear
> evidence of U. S. torture during the War on Terror.  How long will it take
> for us to restore our good name in the world of civilized nations?
>
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