Good for a laugh

Updated A new wrinkle has been added to the story of torture by US government forces. Now, not only are former prisoners at Guantánamo Bay saying they were mistreated, people who worked there are corroborating the accounts. Sunday's New York Times told the tale:

Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite longstanding assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in some isolated cases.

The people, military guards, intelligence agents and others, described in interviews with The New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive occurring over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators. ...

The new information comes from a number of people, some of whom witnessed or participated in the techniques and others who were in a position to know the details of the operation and corroborate their accounts. ...

In August, a report commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld found that tough techniques approved by the government were rarely used, but the sources described a broader pattern that went beyond even the aggressive techniques that were permissible.

The article also quotes a Pentagon statement as saying information obtained from the prisoners provided "valuable intelligence" that "undoubtedly" saved lives of "our soldiers in the field" and "innocent civilians at home and abroad." But tellingly, the article also quotes its sources this way:

After the scandal about mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public in April, all harsh techniques were abruptly suspended, they said.

Why suspend the rough stuff if it was so justified and saved so many lives? As the saying goes, "some questions need only be asked."

So can the military bull and add this to the long and growing list, the shameful list, the roster of disgrace, the list of items such as the Human Rights Watch reports about torture in Afghanistan and about "disappeareds," the Amnesty International report about torture in Iraq, and the one by Human Rights First about the US-run network of "secret prisons" scattered across several countries; add it to the testimony of prisoners released from Gitmo about the so-called "stress and duress" methods they experienced there; add it to what we know about Abu Ghraib, about "renditions," about the attempts by White House lawyers to justify torture - attempts which included

arguing that the campaign against terrorism should entitle [the administration] to greater leeway. Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel said, for example, in one memorandum that the Geneva Conventions were "quaint" and not suitable for the war against terrorism.

And a special section of that roster of disgrace is occupied by virtually all if not in fact all of the major media news outlets, both print and electronic, in this country for their desperate attempts to evade the truth by refusing to use the word "torture." The Times article linked here uses the serviceable euphemism "aggressive techniques." As another example, a Los Angeles Times article for October 15 reports on an Army criminal investigation into the deaths of two prisoners in Afghanistan, each found dead in his cell, dangling from his chains. Autopsies determined that they had died because blood clots caused by blunt-force injuries to their legs had traveled to their hearts and lungs. This is described in the article as "abuse." Not torture. Abuse.

(Sidebar: I don't have the words to express my disgust at the explanation offered by US officials: The injuries were caused by "soldiers who had jabbed their knees into the prisoners.")

Toward the tail end of the article, it says this about a U.S. Special Forces base in Gardez, Afghanistan:

According to both an Afghan government report and an internal memorandum prepared by a United Nations delegation, American mistreatment at the base allegedly included repeated beatings, immersion in cold water, electric shocks and prisoners being hanged upside down and having their toenails torn off.

"Mistreatment." That was the word used. Mistreatment. Not torture, oh no. Tearing someone's toenails off is not torture. It's "mistreatment."

So where is the laugh in all this you say? It's here, in an October 8 press release by the State Department:

The United States will not compromise its commitment to human rights and rule of law in order to fight the war against terrorism, the head of the U.S. delegation to a human rights conference promised October 7.

"Torture is not acceptable under any circumstances," Ambassador Larry Napper told the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, Poland.

"The United States complies with all of its legal obligations in its treatment of detainees, and in particular with legal obligations prohibiting torture," Napper said, adding, "The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture by its employees under any circumstances."

If that doesn't get you chuckling, the next day Napper told the conference that

[n]ations engaged in armed conflicts must comply with their obligations under international law, including the law of war, said Ambassador Larry Napper, head of the U.S. delegation to the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, Poland, October 8.

"In the 1994 Code of Conduct, each OSCE participating State resolved to ensure that its armed forces would be ‘commanded, manned, trained and equipped' in a manner consistent with international law," Napper said at the meeting, which is held annually by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

He cited agreements that represent the basic tenets of international humanitarian law, such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the 1992 Helsinki Document.

If at this point you're not at least shaking your head while displaying a slight sardonic smile, you'd better go read this quote before your head explodes.

Footnote: From the latter press release:

The United States "continues to believe that the conflict in Chechnya poses one of the greatest challenges in the OSCE's human dimension," Napper said, he but did not elaborate, saying the U.S. position on Chechnya is "well known."

Do you have any idea what that "well known" policy is beyond some harrumphing and tut-tutting? 'Cause I don't.

Updated to include the paragraphs about the media.