Torture galore

The ACLU's FOIA mining operation is unearthing more details about the torture of detainees in Iraq and Gitmo at American hands with each passing day. Below are some of the latest revelations.

From an ACLU press release:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

...The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.

The NewStandard fleshes out this story in a bit more detail:

The email, which was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, represents the first hard evidence directly connecting the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and the White House. The author of the email, whose name is blanked out but whose title is described as "On Scene Commander -- Baghdad," contains ten explicit mentions of an "Executive Order" that the author said mandated US military personnel to engage in extraordinary interrogation tactics.

An Executive Order is a presidential edict -- sometimes public, sometimes secretive -- instituting special laws or instructions that override or complement existing legislation. The White House has officially neither admitted nor denied that the president has issued an Executive Order pertaining to interrogation techniques.

Turning away from the issue of Presidential complicity, a LA Times story summarizes the rest of the allegations, including claims that interrogators stuck "lighted cigarettes...in detainees' ears," Arab prisoners were "humiliated with Israeli flags wrapped around them," some unnamed "officials 'were engaged in a cover-up of these abuses,'" "a female prisoner 'indicated she was hit with a stick,'" and "Army criminal investigators were reviewing 'the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison.'"

Going into more detail, the story continues:

In June, for instance, an [FBI] agent from the Washington field office reported that an Abu Ghraib detainee was "cuffed" and placed into a position the military called "The Scorpion" hold. Then, according to what the prisoner told the FBI, he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.

In Cuba, a detainee in May, 2002, was reportedly spat upon and then beaten when he attempted to roll onto his stomach to protect himself. At one point, soldiers apparently were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious.

Another agent reported this past August that while in Cuba he often saw detainees chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor "with no chair, food or water."

"Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left for 18-24 hours or more," the agent wrote.

Sometimes, he reported, the room was chilled to where a "barefooted detainee was shaking with cold." Other times, the air-conditioning was turned off and the temperature in the unventilated room rose to well over 100 degrees.

"The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him," the agent reported. "He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

The FBI documents also included a report about a prisoner in Cuba whose legs were injured and who said he lied about being a terrorist for fear that otherwise the U.S. military would amputate him.

"He indicated he was injured severely and in a lot of pain," the FBI wrote. Yet the prisoner constantly was being asked whether he had attended a terrorist camp in Afghanistan.

The agent wrote that the prisoner "stated he wanted to receive decent medical treatment, and felt the only way to get it was to tell the Americans what they wanted to hear."

And lastly, to top things off, Newsweek has a story on Alberto Gonzales' bloodied hands in the torture mess. Such fine moral leadership we have at the head of the American government right now.