Gitmo: New horrors.

The New York Times is reporting (registration required) today:

In a study released yesterday, two of those lawyers said Pentagon documents indicated that the military had determined that only 45 percent of the detainees had committed some hostile act against the United States or its allies and that only 8 percent were fighters for Al Qaeda.

On its own this would be a horrendous stain on America's honor, had she any left, but it gets worse. Much worse:

Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted

Remember when Congress caved (again) to the White House and exempted Gitmo from judicial review? Well this is what happened:

Detainees' lawyers said they believed that the tougher approach to the hunger strikes was related to the passage in Congress of measure intended to curtail the detainees' access to United States courts.
snip
"Because of the actions in Congress, the military feels emboldened to take more extreme measures vis-à-vis the hunger strikers," said one lawyer, Sarah Havens of Allen & Overy. "The courts are going to stay out of it now."

It is difficult to articulate the shame I feel reading that Americans are doing this:

"He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves," Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added. "Jum'ah understands that officers told the hunger strikers that if they challenged the United States, the United States would challenge them back using these tactics."

 to people who probably never intended us any harm:

The lawyers, who represent two Guantanamo detainees, noted that only seven percent of the 500 detainees had been captured by US and coalition forces.
Of the rest, 47 percent were turned over to the United States by Pakistan and Afghan Northern Coalition forces, and the captors of another 44 percent held were unknown.
The study suggests that at least some of these detainees were turned over to US forces by bounty hunters and reward-seekers without verification of the detainee's status.

via AFP
The symbolism of force feeding hunger strikers is so far beneath what the US is meant to stand for that it is hard to believe. In five short years we have gone from being the slightly tarnished shining city on the hill to a dishonorable and dangerous pariah.

•  Do read the whole story

  We rail at the NYT but they do write some powerful stories from time to time.

  by Athenian on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 03:27:59 AM PDT

•  so the horror was

  that they kept people from killing themselves?

  by BillyJack on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 03:51:51 AM PDT

  •  No

    the horror is that there are slack-jawed dickweeds who still support this sham of a President.

    by f furney on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 05:56:28 AM PDT

  •  Seven percent

    Only seven percent were captured by us. Why are we keeping them there forever? It's been years. Are we so incompetent that we can't weed them out and send the non-hostile ones home? Or maybe we think they are ALL hostile now because of the way we've treated them.

    Jamming feeding tubes down someone's nose so hard that they bleed and then filling them up so much that they shit themselves in agony while they are strapped into restraints is torture. You want to have a go?

    The horror is that people who may have nothing whatsoever to do with 'terror' are being held indefinitely with no due process and being tortured to boot when they try to use the only option at their command.

    Actually, the real horror is that America is allowing this (all of this) to happen with much less self-reflection than that occasioned by a sexual peccadillo some nine years ago.

    Arghh!  

    by Athenian on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 06:10:52 AM PDT

    •  They are criminals now.

      Their crime is knowing too much about Guantanamo.

      All of them are guilty of being abused, beaten, and tortured by American soldiers. They can never be allowed to go free, because their stories would damage the political fortunes of the Bush administration.

      Their only hope now is a 2009 administration that wants to separate itself from the sins of 2001-2008. Even that may not be enough. Re-read the first half of The Count of Monte-Cristo. They will have become Edmond Dantes.

      by Canadian Reader on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 07:06:35 AM PDT

•  We used to call it a war crime.

  Prisoners of war were beaten randomly and denied food and water for several days. Those who fell behind were executed through various means: shot, beheaded or bayonetted. The commonly-used Japanese "sun treatment" forced a captive to sit silently in the humid April sun without water or even the shade of his helmet.

  from here.

  Homma was executed.

  For more Japanese war crimes look here.

  by ek hornbeck on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 04:07:11 AM PDT

•  Our military men in Iraq

  are raping their fellow female soldiers.  I doubt that the soldiers at Gitmo care very much about the detainees there, guilty OR innocent.

  http://www.alternet.org/...

  by ShubTsaddiq on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 06:29:02 AM PDT

  •  Point taken but

    Guantanamo is much easier to control that the hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq. When this stuff happens there, it is because the commanders want it to happen whereas I doubt that the officers in Iraq want their female soldiers to get raped. Not that they will do anything about it, either to prevent more occurrences or to punish the guilty but it is not actual policy.

    by Athenian on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 06:37:26 AM PDT

    •  Sadly, true.

      I hope I didn't sound as if I was taking exception to your diary.  I abhor what's happening at Gitmo.

      by ShubTsaddiq on Thu Feb 09, 2006 at 06:49:35 AM PDT