Guantánamo Drives Prisoners Insane, Lawyers Say
Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense.
But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo “boil his mind.”
“He will shout at us,” said his military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer. “He will bang his fists on the table.”
His lawyers have asked a military judge to stop his case until Hamdan is placed in less restrictive conditions at Guantánamo, saying he cannot get a fair trial if he cannot focus on defending himself. The judge is to hear arguments as soon as Monday on whether he has the power to consider the claim.
Critics have long asserted that Guantánamo’s climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for insanity. But turning that into a legal claim marks a new stage for the military commissions at Guantánamo. As military prosecutors push to get trials under way, they are being met with challenges not just to the charges, but to Guantánamo itself.
Conditions are more isolating than many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the United States, said Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on U.S. prison conditions.
Pentagon officials say that Guantánamo holds dangerous men humanely and that there is no unusual quantity of mental illness there. Guantánamo, a military spokeswoman said, does not have solitary confinement, only “single-occupancy cells.”
In response to questions, Commander Pauline Storum, the spokeswoman for Guantánamo, asserted that detainees were much healthier psychologically than the population in U.S. prisons. Storum said about 10 percent could be found mentally ill, compared, she said, with data showing that more than half of inmates in U.S. correctional institutions had mental health problems.
With their filings, Hamdan’s lawyers are setting the stage for similar challenges to the procedures of Guantánamo in some 80 expected war crimes cases, lawyers for other detainees say. “The issue of mistreatment of prisoners, the miserable lives they live in these cells, will come up in every case,” said Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer for 35 detainees.
The case of Salim Hamdan is already a landmark because the Supreme Court used an earlier case against him to strike down the Bush administration’s first military commission system in 2006. But that case, like most of the legal battles over Guantánamo, did not affect conditions there.
Lawyers for detainees argue that the effects of intense isolation have gradually turned the prison camp into something of a highly fortified mental ward. Hamdan’s lawyers say his place as one of the best-known detainees has not spared him.
In more than six years of detention, Hamdan has had two phone calls to his family and no visits. He has been disciplined, legal filings say, for having a Snickers bar that was given to him by his lawyers and for possessing too many socks.
“Conditions are asphalt, excrement and worse,” he wrote his lawyers in February. “Why, why, why?”
At Guantánamo, there are no family visits, no televisions and no radios. A new policy will for the first time permit one telephone call a year.
In the cells where Hamdan and more than 200 of Guantánamo’s 280 detainees are now held, communication with other detainees is generally by shouting through the slit in the door used for the delivery of meals. Mail is late and often censored, lawyers say.
The military prosecutors declined to comment on the claims about Hamdan’s condition. As is common at Guantánamo, their legal filings were not made public before the scheduled court date. But defense filings released by Hamdan’s lawyers recited some of the prosecution arguments.
The prosecutors argued that the way that Hamdan was being held did not constitute solitary confinement in part because “detainees can communicate through the walls.” They said that Hamdan had denied having mental problems and that he was no model detainee, spitting at guards, threatening assault and throwing urine.
Speaking generally, Storum said detainees were enemy combatants held safely. “We are holding the right people,” she asserted, “in the right place, for the right reasons, and doing it the right way.”
Prosecutors have said Hamdan, now about 39, helped bin Laden elude capture after the 2001 terror attacks. He is charged with transporting weapons for Al Qaeda and being a bin Laden bodyguard and driver.
In recent weeks, his case has drawn wide notice because the defense asserted that senior Pentagon officials exerted improper influence over military prosecutors and pressed cases for political reasons.
Hearings on that issue, also scheduled for next week, may expose the internal workings of the military commissions. The former chief Guantánamo prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, who has become a critic of the way the war crimes system is run, is slated to testify for Hamdan.
But the claim about Hamdan’s mental health could expose the workings of Guantánamo. According to military statistics, three-quarters of the detainees have been held recently in two “camps” that look much like American prisons. Camp5 and Camp6, heavily guarded concrete buildings, hold men who have yet to face trial. Behind a heavy door, each cell has a handful of sanctioned items including a cup and a Koran.
Officials concede that the daily two hours of recreation in a chain-link pen is sometimes offered in the dark. From inside their cells, detainees cannot see the outdoors. From the exercise pens they sometimes can see only a sliver of sky.
Michael Mone Jr., a Boston lawyer, visited a client last month in Camp5, where Hamdan is held. Mone said his client, an Uzbek detainee, asked why he could not be held in a place where he could see the sun.
This winter, lawyers for Abdulghappar Turkistani, a detainee in Camp6, received a letter describing life there. “Losing any contact with anyone,” he wrote, “also being forbidden from the natural sunlight, natural air, being surrounded with a metal box all around is not suitable for a human being.”
Reporters are not permitted to interview detainees, and some international groups, like Amnesty International, have been denied access to them. In leaked reports in 2004, investigators for the International Committee of the Red Cross, who do see detainees, said their treatment, including solitary confinement, amounted to torture. But the Red Cross usually keeps its conclusions private.
As a result, much of what is known about current conditions at Guantánamo comes from lawyers, who visit regularly under tight restrictions. Many describe the men as depressed or delusional. Some, they say, show obvious signs of what some of them call “Guantánamo psychosis.”
Four detainees are believed to have committed suicide in 2006 and 2007, but the military has never released the official details.
Some of the men are increasingly paranoid and some are losing touch with reality, said Rebecca Dick, a Washington lawyer who visited two Afghan detainees in March. “One client said, ‘I’m talking to the ceiling now,’ ” Dick recalled.
Six detainees, according to military officials, are now on hunger strikes. They are fed liquid nutrition through tubes inserted in their nostrils daily.
Stafford Smith said one of his clients, a hunger striker, was fixated on a mathematical formula that he believed proved that he would be the next to die. Another detainee, Stafford Smith said, has smeared feces on his cell walls. “When I asked him why he was doing it, he told me he had no idea,” Stafford Smith said.
Last month a lawyer for nine detainees who are members of China’s Uighur ethnic minority told a congressional committee that one of them, Huzaifa Parhat, said that life at Guantánamo was like having already died. The lawyer, Sabin Willett, said Parhat asked the lawyers to pass on a message. He told them to tell his wife to remarry.
Military officials often dismiss such descriptions as accounts by gullible lawyers manipulated by terrorists trained to make false claims of mistreatment.
Detainees’ lawyers say the military methodically understates the mental illness at Guantánamo for public relations reasons.
In military commission proceedings in recent weeks, there have been hints that some of the men facing charges may be deteriorating psychologically. A military lawyer for a Sudanese detainee said her client appeared frantic and asked that he be evaluated. When a judge asked a Saudi detainee the name of a lawyer, the detainee’s answer was: “I have been here for six years. Thank God I can even still remember the names of my own family.”
But Hamdan’s case is the first in the current military commission system to try to air fully the claim that Guantánamo is warping the minds of the men held there.
Mizer said Hamdan talked unendingly about his desire to be moved to Camp4, the only place at Guantánamo where detainees are permitted to live communally. Camp4 is believed to house 50 or fewer detainees whom officials classify as highly compliant.
Hamdan blames his lawyers for failing to get him out of Camp5, Mizer said, and will talk only about that. “He refuses to talk about his case,” he said.
The trial is now set to begin on May 28. But twice in recent months, Mizer said, Hamdan has said he was dismissing Mizer from the case. “He said I don’t ever want to see you again,” Mizer said.
There is only one subject, he said, that Hamdan discusses: Getting out of his cell in Camp5 at Guantánamo Bay.
Copyright © 2008 the International Herald Tribune
The Bush administration, at the very least, stood by and allowed 9/11 to happen because it needed a Pearl Harbor-like event to justify going into Iraq. Then it set up Guantanamo Bay prisons which have turned out to be one of the most effective recruiting devices for al- Qaeda and other Islamist groups. Is it just possible that cynically the Military-Industrial Complex needs the “war on terror” to justify our catastrophically enormous expenditures on war? Eisenhower was right in his warning in his final address to the American people before finishing his presidency. The Military-Industrial Complex, corporations and government working together in classic fascist manner, poses the single greatest danger to democracy in the United States. Its probably already too late to break the power of the tyranny here though.
Sadly zoo animals have known such conditions for centuries and they cant even be accused of a crime.
It’s never to late. Americans MUST wake up. I no longer have any idea what it will take, but there is no alternative. Our mass consciousness is already living a nightmare and it will only get worse until Americans take a close look at themselves in the mirror and FACE REALITY. That reality being that you have been lied to and used as tax paying slaves your entire existence.
I believe that’s a bulls-eye, bakunin.
How do they sleep or have sex or eat knowing they have another sentient being, just like them, undergoing such horrors?
I think maybe they are so drunk with power they just don’t think about it.
I think maybe the time will come when what they have done will be all they can think about.
This is the type of torture that is used across America’s jails, too. Solitary confinement and sensory deprivation. It’s purpose at Guantanamo is simply to punish prisoners without them ever having been found guilty of anything.
This treatment for a person who has not been convicted yet of any crime? And the crimes he HAS been accused of basically amount to being employed by someone we feel is a criminal?? In that case, all the people employed by the oil companies, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies better make their escape plans now…..oh wait, I forgot…man commiting crimes for his beliefs = bad….corporations commiting crimes for the sake of their shareholders, AOK. Well then, all the people working for the Bush administration based on his passionate christianity better make their escape plans now…..oh wait, I forgot, man commiting atrocities for his beliefs which DIFFER FROM OURS = bad, man committing atrocities in the name of OUR chosen lord and savior, AOK.
Sigh…so, because I work for myself, I should be ok, right?? Oh wait, I forgot…..working for myself means my employer is not exactly on board for what my country is currently up to….maybe its me who should be making my escape plan…
When a person has been wounded to the point that they can no longer defend themself this is called maiming. Is not the human mind an organ too? Thus we see that the brave American soldiers have been maiming their hostages to the point of organ failure. It is no surprise that suicide has become such a popular pastime for the returning Cheney/Bush veterans. Can you hear our complacient corporate controlled Congress voting their approval? When is the next Constitutional Convention?
I haven’t read the article yet and am just commenting based on the title:
“Guantánamo Drives Prisoners Insane, Lawyers Say”.
NO KIDDING; and it took them this long to realise this? They’re lawyers, not psychologists, so I guess they (maybe anyway ?) should be given a little break; but I wonder. I would not accuse them of anything, but if it really took them this long to realise that this imprisonment and the treatment received there can drive people insane, then these lawyers need to get some training in human psychology and in practical terms; not classroom theory stuff, but practical training that is then and immediately applicable.
” bakunin April 27th, 2008 1:24 pm
The Bush administration, at the very least, stood by and allowed 9/11 to happen because it needed a Pearl Harbor-like event to justify going into Iraq.”
AT LEAST, i.e., minimally, and with plenty of cause to believe that it’s much worse than only the ‘at least’ possibility; f.e., orchestration, or else full knowledge with the desire to lustfully or fiendishly exploit and profit.
“Then it set up Guantanamo Bay prisons which have turned out to be one of the most effective recruiting devices for al- Qaeda and other Islamist groups.”
MANY people say that, but I’ve seen only theoretical or hypothetical viewpoints or beliefs expressed, for I’ve seen NO proof that the above is or ever will be true. But the cause has been established, it’s real, so it’s just a question of whether or not people will act on this basis and subsequently or consequentially attack the USA and/or its foreign “interests” or allies, or forces (military, diplomatic, …).
In serious part, it also depends on whether or not it is true that Al Qa’ida still, while secretly, works for and/or with the CIA, etc.
One thing everyone must keep in mind is the Bush Administration is akin to the Mafia. These guys along with other Republicans are gangsters, and they have no regard for human life whatsoever (despite the fact they say they do, which is a crock of shit). If you encounter these people, you need to treat them with disrespect and hit them hard below the belt. The more you watch how these people operate, it becomes painfully obvious they do not conduct themselves as politicians, but thugs. Look at all the global suffering that has taken place because of these guys.
The Democrats do not get a pass either, because they are complicit in these crimes against humanity.
” the spokeswoman for Guantánamo, asserted that detainees were much healthier psychologically than the population in U.S. prisons”
Asinine!
A: Our prisons are our mental institutions.
B: Would Osama’s right hand man and weapons transporter be a certified nutcase?
We have to ask ourselves why the US appears to be systematically trying to drive unknown targets (aka people) insane.
This is very, very bad.
Shall we all ask the OSS about this?
http://www.foia.cia.gov
Where does “Commander Pauline Storum” get her statistics? Ten percent could be found mentally ill vs. fifty percent in US prisons? I’d like to know how well “Commander Storum” would do under similar conditions.
You have to suppose that Americans care about this to think anything will change. Buit the truth is, they don’t. Like the capital punishment fanatics who want the deaths to be as painful and excessive as possible, the majority of voters want the “bad guys” in Guantanamo (and in all the other prisons) to be tormented by punishments as inhumane as their uniformed heroes can devise. Underestimating the viciousness and absoluteness of the desire for pay-back is a bad mistake liberals tend to make. It leaves them defenceless against the evils they want to eradicate.
The activities of the USA in this regard, are no different than the Nazis. This is not new, except for the cast of characters.
It seems the efforts at Nuremberg, in regards to learning, were a complete waste of time.
N.B. The original words written in Eisenhower’s final address was, “Military, industrial, congressional, complex”. He scratched out “congressional” because it included his government years.
Prisoners 5150?
That is from being Tortured on LSD. For a Year or Two.
And Only then being Thrown in the Hole to Die.
Signed, A Yellow Dog Democrat.
The T.V. images of orange suited people,shackled hands and feet,shuffling along between four guards,inside a barbed wire Guantanimo prison,all totally unnecessary and probably a propaganda prop for the fearful folks back home,tells the real story.
Of course they are trying to reduce the prisoner to some form of insanity which will give them the answers already written down for the inmates to sign.
A high percent of these inmates have been shown to be guilty of nothing (after years in jail) and one can only guess at their level of sanity after cruel and sadistic treatment by their jailers.One could also wonder about the sanity of these same jailers and their superiors.
i remember when Jose Padilla, the u.s. citizen charged with thinking abut a dirty bomb (totally phony charge by the way) was about to face trial, and his lawyers said he’d been driven nuts, was incoherent and talking to himself and so on, and of course he was “tried” (moscow version) and found guilty (also moscow) anyway. Padilla’s case was the standard for everything that has followed.
Of course the poor prisoners go crazy. But how reassuring to learn that it’s much worse in u.s. prisons where half of them have mental problems!
i fell bad for Salim and Jose and all the other innocents who have been snared and locked up and tortured by the
u.s.
But I also know this:no matter how batty those people might be they can never become as crazy as the u.s. gov. and the defense dept. and the white house.
What’s truly appalling is not so much that a small band of sociopaths, otherwise known as the neocon elite, set out to wage aggressive war, torture people, dismantle the constitution and rule the world on behalf of oil companies, military industries and investment banks; it is that so many civil servants and military personnel have so willingly complied and that the vast majority of the American people have been so morally and intellectually torpid that they have supported it, or at least passively permitted it.
Consider the optimism of Studs Terkel: “Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing.”
Because he’s correct, Bush and his like and reporters who won’t ask the proper questions make me puke– and I’m not alone!
” the spokeswoman for Guantánamo, asserted that detainees were much healthier psychologically than the population in U.S. prisons”
I would go a little further than that and add that all these detainees together were much healthier psychologically than the population in the White House.
After having read all of the above comments, I must add that I have no hope that our country will ever regain its innocence. When I served as an officer in the Armed Services I never experienced any of the attitudes I see exposed today by the unbalanced candidates for the assumption of power in the next election. One could almost wish for the worst to happen — which is for not only Bush to have confessed to condoning torture, but for all the lunatic excuses and exercises to torment mankind, including citizens of the United States. John McCain, who once commanded great respect, is now living only on his bravery when a POW, but he has lost his mind from that experience and its deterioration over the years.
It would almost be better for brother Bush to announce that he has decided to be President for life. Then we would know immediately and finally what to do with people like he is and those who follow him. But the plan is to sneak it up on us until it is too late to even object to a friend about some insanity and you will learn that there are worse places than Guantanamo. Millions of us will disappear when this finality is obvious, and the world will be turned over to the Chinese, making Napoleon’s fears finally come true. Those of you who are young and angry must put aside your pompous complaints and prepare militarily for the worst. And you are four years late in getting started. Who of you will respond to the challenge? I will be looking from my 80-year old position to see if there are any true Minutemen alive and kicking.
Good luck. Show the bastards no mercy. None.
My God I despise this country. I am so ashamed of being an American. May the rest of the world - and the millions of innocents we have wronged and whose lives we have destroyed over the decades - find it in their hearts to forgive us. I have no hopes of that.
We deserve everything we have coming to us in the coming decades of America’s long slow fall.
I must completely echo the remarks of Demonstorm. As I read this terrible story the word “fascism” kept running through my head.
We have destroyed the lives of so many without another thought.
Recently I met with a woman who had survived more than two years in an Argentine concentration camp during the reign of the fascist generals in the mid 1970s. I asked her how many of the survivors are in reasonably good mental condition today. Sadly she replied, no more than 6 out of 100. Most are living ruined lives.
This brave woman is one of the more fortunate six only because she was able to immediately have psychiatric care. Thirty years later the mental scars are still there and she still sees a therapist.
Today several of the Argentine torturers are behind bars. One can only hope that the same punishment will be meted out to those Americans who tortured and condoned torture.
I am old now, and hope only that my grandchildren will not be held accountable for these atrocities.
I’m not worried about the money. It’s an abstraction after all.
It seems to appear and and disappear without any good reason being given for where it came from or where it went (unless you are working for it).
Does the title of this article imply that George and his cabal are sane?
What about the secondary effects? The torturers, the guards, the raping and murdering soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, the shadowy figures in the secret prisons will all return to the United States. They will be in your shopping centres and at your workplaces - they will move in next door. They too are psychologically damaged. God help America.
We, you and I, sit at our computers and read, type, worry, and then do nothing!!! Why? We don’t know what to do. Our neighbors are not very well informed because they watch the girlie shows on TV or go shopping or work and never pay attention to informative emails on their computers - they don’t believe what I tell them but look at me and say - “who in the world said that?” And when I explain, they act as if I’m crazy for reading “such stuff” and some even speak up for McCain! The thing is - all I can do is read, worry, and do nothing about it……..so if I said, “Let’s march on Washington and on every state capital” I’d have to do it alone - if I shout from the rooftops they would put ME in jail - I even find myself wondering if my emails are being scanned…..are yours?…. Washington can do it now ….. what are the key words they scan for? Anyone think I’m getting paranoid? Or already paranoid? God help my grandchildren and their children!!! One day they’ll reap what’s being sown now…..
demonstorm___Many of us share your thoughts about what our country has done and is continuing to do. Yes, we despise the actions, and are ashamed that our country has stooped so low by treating detainees so horribly for no good reason.
We should not lose all hope, though, as our country has so many decent people that simply were blindsided by all of the propaganda and are now (although a little late) beginning to realize their terrible mistake for supporting the Bush war and occupation. Even many Republicans are not convinced anymore that their leaders were correct in their actions.
We do need to stay on alert for new developments that may be designed for the benefit of those now in power, and we should all strive to concentrate on the important issues and events and not be led into conflicts over trivialities by the media.
Just the title alone “Guantanamo Drives Prisoners Insane”,
came as no surprise to me. I was stationed there from ‘77
to ‘79 and it was a rough ride mentally just to be there.
On more than one occasion they had to take people out of
there on a rubber airplane. So stressful there was a lot
of violence of every stripe imaginable up to and including
one guy murdering his buddy over who was going to be first
to use the vending machine. For about twenty years after
I left there I had frequent nightmares about being back.
Gitmo would be an excellent place to send Bush Cheney
Rumsfeld Rice et al. No need to imprison them - just don’t let them leave the base. I don’t have the world’s most tightly wound brain but hey if I could survive it so could they.
Peace out, folks…..
Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children…..
OK this is not a subject to poke fun at, nor is the apathy and indifference of the American people about torture, illegal invasions, murders of tens if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the destruction of our image world wide, the looting of our treasury for Cheney and friends, ignoring a major city like New Orleans, flooded because Bush decided not to spend the dough repairing the levee system. All not so very funny examples of things we’d rather not consider….
So 10% of Guantanemo detainees are considered mentally unbalanced while fully 50% of the inmates of a typical civilian prison demonstrate mental instability, at least according to some military “water walker”…Talk about self ivolved!
Statistics , fun for the whole family…mm’kay?
1. fully 90% of the religious right demonstrate delusional behavior.
2. the entire membership of the DLC suffers from egomaniacal tendancies.
3. Far too many supporters of Senator Obama need to be locked up for their own protection. Oh, and for the protection of the rest of us as well. Sorry guys but really now, how far is too far?
….
Such strange creatures.
We are the epitomy of matter becoming conscious of itself and of its own consciousness. With this we have the means for utmost compassion.
Yet as Kelmer implies: there are some of us so outraged by this, yet as humans we are collectively responsible for the mistreatment of so many animals on this planet in this way: in the modern industrial farm pigs are confined in crates for their lives, for example, and sent mad and depressed. They can’t speak. So we ignore them.
As Nietzsche points out: we are so lacking in compassion.
It’s not only USA, though. Not only Bush. There is some of this in all of us. Their corrupt exploitation of power can not be possible in some way without our collective acquiesence. We need to think.
Another five-year prisoner: corruptin of power!
Sami Al-Hajj, prisoner 345 at the United States Detainment Centre in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, has been on hunger strike since 7th January, 2007.
Sami was arrested in Pakistan in December 2001 whilst travelling with a legitimate visa to work in Afghanistan as a cameraman for Al Jazeera. But he is being held as an ‘enemy combatant’.
prisoner345.net is dedicated to empowering Sami’s family, friends and colleagues, together with all supporters of human rights around the world, in the campaign to set him free.
Know what drives me crazy about torture? It never had to be legal. Here’s why.
Say the fate of the world, the nation, or a city, whatever, rested on being able to wrest info from a dangerous person. Say the law had to do anything, in this unique and seldom seen but ALWAYS used example of need to torture, to save thousands of lives.
What exactly stops the torture? The law? Does the law stop anyone from taking emergency measures?
And if someone does resort to such emergency torture measures…does anyone really think such an individual cares about punishment? Does such a person expect to be above the law?
Does their fondly remembered scene from Dirty Harry movie really illustrate a need for that character to have been above the law? Or did that character completely understand the penalty he would pay? Did he not FULLY understand what he was doing was wrong?
I say he did. I say he was willing to pay the price. That’s all there is to it. The penalty for torture should rest in the hands of the torture, and not our entire legal system!! I say that there is NO need to make torture legal, because ANY real need to resort to it needs no legal grounds. In an emergency situation, NO law makes a difference, and NO one expects to be above it.
Those who do it are willing to pay the price, aren’t they? Wouldn’t you be? Isn’t it fair that they would take their chances in a court of law? Isn’t THAT how it’s supposed to work?
So it makes me crazy, because there was never a need or a justification for legal torture. Doing things to people that you would NEVER want done to you for any reason. Or done to your children. Your grandmother? Think about someone torturing your own mother. Can you think of a good reason to ever do that? That’s what this is. Inhumanity.
Torture is sick. Leaving it as illegal works just fine, because in emergency situations…folks willing to give their lives to save others aren’t exactly worried about being punished for how they do it. Removing all punishments probably isn’t even what THEY want.
I can’t believe Dirty Harry would have supported legal torture. Can you?
The people responsible for Guantanamo are sick and twisted pieces of crap.
Of course … Gitmo is DESIGNED to drive prisoners insane. That is the entire purpose of the place.
Naomi Klein goes into this at the beginnings of “The Shock Doctrine”. The whole idea behind the US method of interrogations is to try to completely destroy the person being interrogated. The idea is to create a ‘blank slate’ upon which the interrogators can rebuild the person’s personality. Of course, they want a new personality that will be helpful to the interrogators and tell them everything they know. But the idea is entirely to ‘break’ the prisoner and rebuild them.
Unfortunately, when you break a personality like that, you don’t get a ‘blank slate’. What you get is a broken personality that’s more like the shards of a broken mirror.
But, there’s no doubt that the intention is to break people and this drives them insane. That’s what makes Gitmo a crime against humanity.
this is where we should hold Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Pearl, Rice and all the other lunatics who haves shown the world how we treat people without charging them with any crimes. The only crimes i see are the ones being created by Bush and Co.. They are by far the worst criminals since the GEneva convention was created. I would love to be their executioner. And 99% of the world agree with me. Bush and co. are nothing more than drug addicts, drunks and demented lunatics. They need to be put away from for the rest of their lives in the same conditions that they have created for the enemy combatants. Bush and co. make me embarrassed to be an AMerican. Hang’em all. That’s my opinion. And please…let me be the executioner.
“Consider the optimism of Studs Terkel: “Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing.””
Very true, and what gives me hope. When I see how hard they work to keep both the facts and the opportunity to act from the body politic, I know this must be true.
Argh… I just can’t take it anymore. I have to take a break from reading this shit. The US is a disgusting excuse of a country and they’re going to destroy us all!!!
What’s the difference between a Mafia hit man and a US soldier? The Mafia guy knows killing innocent civilians is bad for business, the US soldier knows it is good for HIS business. The Mafia is far more honorable than the US military or the Republican-Democrat war machine.
The Nazi POW camps were bad, but nowhere near as bad as Gitmo etc. And most of there prisoners were known terrorists, caught in the act of deliberately murdering thousands of civilians.
Some time ago, I wrote an article on the Nuremberg Principles
http://www.populistamerica.com/nuremberg_once_the_hope_of_the_world
and one on the Geneva Conventions
http://www.populistamerica.com/remember_the_universal_declaration_of_human_rights
About the only response I received was that those were documents by foreign interests and inimical to the best interests of the United States!
For crying out loud, if you have a few minutes, look those articles over, go to the sources. They were the hope of the world after WW-II. We the People of the world were tired of the insanity of war and conquest. These documents were to prevent any more wars of conquest, or aggression, or for greed and power. We took a leadership position in the world to see that these documents were subscribed to by most of the nations of the world!
Now, we are the ones acting like Hitler when confronted by the league of Nations. He spit on them and went his insane way. Now, we spit on the above documents and the United Nations and stride across nations leaving millions dead, tortured, starving, dying in poverty and disease, and spend our time equivocating about it, while the merchants of greed and death continue to revel in the carnage, count their profits and plan more death for the peoples of the world and poverty, homelessness, hunger and ill health stalks all but the privileged in the U.S.
We are truly showing ourselves as We the Sheeple, simply following the Judas Goat into the abattoir.
Wake up! Wake up!! Wake up!!!
Unfortunately, so far the over-riding Nuremberg principle is the one that is not explicitly stated. If you are powerful, you are not subject to prosecution, except by the more powerful, no matter how heinous your crimes. Curtis LeMay admitted that he and others belonged in the dock at Nuremberg if justice was to be applied fairly.
First we trick poor, under-educated American teenagers into thinking they could make money by being patriotic and have an exciting job too by joining up. Then we make them commit atrocities. Then they come home, essentially insane. Soldiers of any war who have any clarity at all after serving say the worst nightmares and waking craziness come from things they did, not things they saw. Soldiers whose bodies were mangled and who witnessed friends being killed were more likely to have healthy minds upon returning than those who killed, tortured, maimed, or hurt others up close and personal. Their bodies were whole, but the overwhelming shame of their actions would drive them insane. During a draft, Americans from more heterogeneous backgrounds are rendered insane and so the impact is spread thinner. Now we have mainly poor, less-educated soldiers returning insane. I wonder what, in addition to everything else, this will do to America.