Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Warning: This blog has not been approved by
the Department of Homeland Security.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Torture: An American Institution

(Btw, Happy Indigenous Peoples Day...)

A casual glance at the news these days might give one the impression that the Bush Administration invented torture last month. However, in the corporate media equivalent of a scoop, the Washington Post “broke” the story of U.S. torture of Arab and Afghan “detainees” nearly four years ago. A December 26, 2002 article, perfectly timed to get lost in the holiday shuffle, began like a bad spy novel: “Deep inside the forbidden zone at the U.S.-occupied Bagram air base in Afghanistan, around the corner from the detention center and beyond the segregated clandestine military units, sits a cluster of metal shipping containers protected by a triple layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism—captured al Qaeda operatives and Taliban commanders.”

The Post reported that those refusing to cooperate are “sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles” or “held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights” (euphemistically termed “stress and duress” techniques). And these are the lucky ones.

Read the entire article here.