Friends With Benefits

The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration, since 9/11, has been sending terrorism suspects to Jordan to be questioned and tortured by its intelligence service (known as the General Intelligence Department, or “GID”). As the article notes, the GID had gained a reputation for “persuading tight-lipped suspects to talk, even if it meant using abusive tactics that could violate U.S. or international law.” In fact, abuse is what the GID appears to specialize in:

Former prisoners have reported that their captors were expert in two practices in particular: falaqa, or beating suspects on the soles of their feet with a truncheon and then, often, forcing them to walk barefoot and bloodied across a salt-covered floor; and farruj, or the “grilled chicken,” in which prisoners are handcuffed behind their legs, hung upside down by a rod placed behind their knees, and beaten.

In a report released in January 2007, Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator for torture, found that “the practice of torture is routine” at GID headquarters and concluded “that there is total impunity for torture and ill-treatment in the country.”

This makes me sick.

8 Responses to “Friends With Benefits”

1. domajot says:

   December 2, 2007 at 1:10 pm

   This makes me sick, too.

   We are destroying ourselves, no help from enemies needed, it would seem.
2. Jeb Koogler says:

   December 2, 2007 at 1:14 pm

   I totally agree.
3. Rudi says:

   December 2, 2007 at 1:32 pm

   We’ve become the East Germans in torture and chemical abuse in sports. The Bush administration embraces torture, our ahtletes(Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds) and management discovering “better living through chemistry”. So much for the moral high ground, McCain response to torture draws a negative response from the crazy RIGHT. The same Right that hated Communism for it’s occupations, surveillance and torture. They now embrace the same.
4. StockBoySF says:

   December 2, 2007 at 2:38 pm

   It’s high time for all candidates to stand up against torture and talk in explicit terms about what they do and do not consider torture. Romney’s dance around this issue during the last debate seems to be acceptable Republican spin (not the only view, I know, but still an acceptable view for many Republicans). This is not acceptable and all he is doing is continuing with the Bush line. We’ve seen what the Bush Administration and his enablers have wrought and continue to do. Let’s make it stop with this Administration.

   We need to talk about this not only on here but with our friends and colleagues. It would be great if we could send letters/e-mails to all our elected representatives to let them know enough is enough.

   If we don’t care enough about this issue to let our elected officials know what we think, then who else will do it?

   I don’t expect anything to happen overnight (and we didn’t get to this sad state overnight) but we have to start somewhere to change this situation.
5. JSpencer says:

   December 2, 2007 at 6:33 pm

   With so many people in the USA willing to be apologists for torture, I have to wonder if we haven’t already lost. To me it’s a metaphor for a greater loss though. Think about all the promise that came from the first 3/4 of the 20th century, and how so much of it has been squandered and dismissed by small-minded, powerful people – and of course the fools in the electorate who let their minds be shaped by them. Torture you say? No big deal…
6. Don Quijote says:

   December 3, 2007 at 5:26 am

   This makes me sick.

   Why? This is what people voted for. TWICE!!!

   Outsourcing Torture

   Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”

   CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?

   He says he told the Americans he’d never been involved in militant Islam. El-Masri says he wasn’t tortured, but he says he was beaten and kept in solitary confinement. Then, after his five months of questioning, he was simply released.

   At that point, did anyone ever tell him that they’d made a mistake? “They told me that they had confused names and that they had cleared it up, but I can’t imagine that,” says el-Masri. “You can clear up switching names in a few minutes.”

   He says he was flown out of Afghanistan and dumped on a road in Albania. When he finally made his way back home in Germany, he found that his wife and kids had gone to her family in Lebanon. He called there to explain what happened.

   El-Masri says that his wife believed him: “I never lied to her, and my appearance showed that I had been in prison.”

   How did he explain what happened to him to his son? “I explained to him what happened to me. And he understood,” says el-Masri. “I said it was the Americans [who did this to me].”
7. Davebo says:

   December 3, 2007 at 8:44 am

   Taxi to the Dark Side apparantly details the steps taken by the administration to skirt prohibitations on torture and should be released in January.

   I look forward to seeing it. And don’t at the same time.
8. domajot says:

   December 3, 2007 at 9:13 am

   I agree with JSpencer.
   It would be bad enough, if the administration were some isolated renegade group.
   By far the most blood curdling aspect is that so many Americans actually support torture and its outsourcing.

   Slowly and incrementally, we are becoming a blood thirsty mob, although a well orgnized and well financed one, instead of a nation with principles.
   When we get to the top of the hill, there is no shining city. Thee is only ruthless machiney cheered on by mindless crowds.