Here is an excerpt from Human Rights First's blog from today's show trial of osama's "alleged" driver:
I was sick for a week and no one did anything, but as soon as I told the interrogator the doctor came.”
Mr. Hamdan suffers from sciatica, a painful back condition. He testified that, after repeated requests for help over a week, nothing was done. He was then taken to an interrogation session, and the interrogator had a doctor and corpsmen treating him in five minutes, in the interrogation room. He quickly learned that the path to medical care lay through cooperation with his interrogators. It is a violation of the laws of war to make medical treatment conditional on cooperation.
“I felt like I started to live again.”
This is how Mr. Hamdan described the feeling of leaving isolation and being transferred to Camp 4. Mr. Hamdan has been in isolation of some sort for virtually the entire time he has been at Guantánamo. For approximately 30 days, he lived in Camp 4 where he shared a dormitory style room with 9 other detainees, had access to outdoor exercise and could pray with other detainees. Despite a federal court order directing that Mr. Hamdan be placed in the general prison population, the government has kept him in isolation. Mr. Hamdan suffers from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, and his physical and mental condition has deteriorated continuously since he was removed from Camp 4.
“No recreation time per Intel”
The above is an entry Dr. Kemal discovered in Mr. Hamdan’s medical records for February 2004. Mr. Hamdan had seen the medical officer because of the pain of his sciatica. The entry indicates that “Intel” had directed that Mr. Hamdan be denied exercise. Exercise is a universally prescribed treatment for sciatica.
“Doctors or Butchers, How Would I Know”
Mr. Hamdan went on a hunger strike to protest his removal from Camp 4. After that, he was force fed. The first feeding was done humanely according to standard medical procedures. Subsequently, however, he was restrained and force fed using an oversized nasal tube and no anesthetics or lubricant, an extremely painful process. During this force feeding, Mr. Hamdan was placed in a full body restraint chair where he could not move. He was left there for three or four hours. He was told that, if he needed to relieve himself, he could do so in the chair. The persons who did this did not wear hospital uniforms, and Mr. Hamdan does not know whether they were medical personnel.
“He feels dead inside. He has not been treated like a human being here.”
I can’t compress eight hours of testimony into two pages. I haven’t discussed the sleep deprivation program, the anxiety-producing effect of removing comfort items a few hours or days before each interrogation, or the sexual humiliation a very disturbed Mr. Hamdan described today, but I think you may have gotten the general idea.
Anyone else disgusted? Why is impeachment not on the table? Why aren't Americans (good or otherwise) outraged?
Then you have newsweak and Stuart "Torture em then Pardon em all" Taylor putting out this horrific pile, claiming that it has to be done in order to find out what happened.....
Meanwhile, W is back on the links.
I'm going to assume that your question about why impeachment isn't on the table is rhetorical. We all know that the majority of the Ds are more interested in not appearing to be engaging in a "partisan" inquiry of executive malfeasance than in actually preserving the rule of law.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't know what I find more disgusting - our government's treatment of prisoners or the blind-eye we as a nation have turned to it.
Apparently, Ashcroft can't recall what he really recalls from what he was told he recalled....
ReplyDelete"Former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft continues to answer questions about his role in the drafting of detainee interrogation rules. In his opening statement, Ashcroft admitted that he had "limited recollection" of the events pertinent to the committee's inquiry" from C-span.org
but he is sure waterboarding ain't torture, and it was only done thrice!!!!
More and more, I can't help but think that this is what it must have been like to live in the Roman Empire.
ReplyDeleteAnyone know of a decent history of dissent movements within the Roman Empire? Do they exist? My knowledge of that time mainly derives from a study of early European history and the Roman Empire is pretty much held up as an unquestioned good.
The only story of dissent in the Roman Empire I know of is about that delightful gentleman from Palestine who was crucified after getting the rabble all riled up in Jerusalem during a religious festival.
ReplyDeleteOh, you said history. My bad.
We call guys like that "insurgents" or "Al-Qaeda"
ReplyDeleteI guess I meant dissent by Roman citizens against the idea of Empire or the manner in which the Empire ruled.
Here is an interesting chap:
ReplyDeletePublius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 56 – ca. 117) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire
Throughout his writing, Tacitus is concerned with the balance of power between the Senate and the Emperors, corruption and the growing tyranny among the governing classes of Rome as they adjust to the new imperial régime. In Tacitus' view, they squandered their cultural traditions of free speech and independence to placate the often bemused (and rarely benign) emperor.
Tacitus explored the emperors' increasing dependence on the goodwill of the armies to secure the principes. The internecine murders of the Julio-Claudians eventually gave way to opportunist generals. These generals, backed by the legions they commanded, followed Julius Caesar's example (and that of Sulla and Pompey) in realising that military might could secure them the political power in Rome. Tacitus believed this realisation came with the death of Nero, (Hist.1.4)
Welcome as the death of Nero had been in the first burst of joy, yet it had not only roused various emotions in Rome, among the Senators, the people, or the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all the legions and their generals; for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome.
Tacitus' political career was largely spent under the emperor Domitian; his experience of the tyranny, corruption, and decadence prevalent in the era (81–96) may explain his bitter and ironic political analysis. He warned against the dangers of unaccountable power, against the love of power untempered by principle, and against the popular apathy and corruption, engendered by the wealth of the empire, which allowed such evils to flourish.
from my favorite wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus#Works
May I refer you to the film Gladiator?
ReplyDelete