And this is how he does it

One of the five Britons recently released from Guantanamo Bay told a British paper that US guards at the camp tortured him, the BBC reported on Friday.

Jamel Udeen, of Manchester,

says he was beaten by men in riot gear after refusing to have a mystery injection. ...

They were shackled and attached to metal rings on the floor during interrogation, Mr Udeen claimed....

[He] said inmates were kept in wire cages with concrete floors and no protection from the elements.

He claims water to the cells was often cut off before prayers so Muslim prisoners could not wash themselves as their religion instructs them to. ...

[T]heir "recreation" time involved being untied and allowed to walk up and down a strip of gravel.

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

In fact, methods such as sleep and food deprivation, being shackled and hooded in cortorted positions for hours, being slapped and shaken just short of permanent injury, methods dubbed "torture lite",

are now a prevalent part of the U.S.-led war on terror, human rights groups say.

These methods - which U.S. officials describe as "stress and duress" rather than torture - recall the "moderate physical pressure" Israel's Shin Bet security service uses on detainees believed to be withholding information about impending attacks.

According to Israeli security sources, the Shin Bet has shared interrogation expertise with American counterparts since the mid-1990s amid fears of new Islamist violence on U.S. soil.

So under the Clinton administration we began to learn from the Israelis how to break people physically and mentally without leaving any evidence and while pretending that we weren't doing anything all that bad, not really, no. Now, apparently, those in Gitmo are the targets of such means.

Which brings us back to those just released and an additional question. The five UK citizens were sent back home after being determined to be "low risk." But to be blunt, I just don't understand how that can possibly be true. I mean, after all, the US justifies the total lack of civil or even human rights for those trapped in Gitmo on the grounds that they are "the baddest of the bad."

in fact, they're so bad that

Pentagon officials have confirmed that Guantanamo detainees may still be kept in detention, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal ... if they are considered a security risk.

If found guilty, they could also be held beyond any sentence laid down by the tribunal.

And they're so confident in the prisoners' guilt that a Pentagon memo describing a proposed annual review process for them says that it gives a prisoner the chance "to explain why he is no longer a threat to the United States...." (And have you stopped beating your wife, too?)

So how in hell could these guys have been "low risk?" There were supposed to be no such people at Guantanamo, only, again, "the baddest of the bad." Could it be - no matter how incredible it seems - but could it possibly be that the militarists occupying the White House exaggerated just the least little bit? If so, How many of the other "baddest" are actually "low risk?" And how would we ever know, since the Bushites' position is that either we take their word for it or we're on the side of the terrorists?

And how is it that after two years of detention and interrogation under inhumane conditions, after two years of being held without a hearing, without evidence, without even a charge, these men are in effect just shipped off to the UK without even a "sorry for the inconvenience?" And how is it that it took two years for the US to determine they were "low risk" when Britain managed to release them all without charge in a little over a day following their return?

How is it all possible?

Footnote: "Baddest of the bad," indeed. One of the five, Jamal al-Harith,

was picked up by the Taliban in Afghanistan because he had a British passport and couldn't account for his presence. U.S. forces found him in a Taliban jail.

I wonder how long it took him to realize that the US forces were not going to rescue him.

Update: All five returnees have now accused US forces of mistreating them during their time in captivity. They spoke of beatings, extended sensory deprivation, being forced to hold painfully contorted positions, and being interrogated while kneeling "with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head." They also said that before their release, the FBI tried to get them to sign statements admitting links to terrorism. All refused.

Footnote to the Update, Bizarro Award Dept.: Secretary of State Colin Powell denied accusations of mistreatment, saying "because we are Americans, we don't abuse people who are in our care."

Uh, "care?"