Friday, July 15, 2005

Rumsfeld Authorised Guantanamo Torture Techniques!

The Americans at Guantanamo Bay forced a prisoner to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling dogs and attached a leash to his chains. They then exported the technique to Abu Ghraib.

Investigators briefed the Senate armed services committee that the techniques were personally approved by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

The briefing seemed to support the defence of those at Abu Ghraib charged for torturing prisoners that the torture was approved at the highest level, and not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers at the prison.

Major-General Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantanamo Bay and project officer for the Abu Ghraib interrogation centre was accused of failing properly to supervise the prisoners’ interrogation and recommended for reprimand. But General Bantz Craddock, head of US Southern Command, refused to adopt the recommendation.

By contrast, President Bush, on the recommendations of the Army demoted Army Reserve Brigadier General Janis Karpinski to colonel, effectively ending her career.

Why the double standards? Karpinski is (a) a woman, (b) a reservist, and (c) a scapegoat to protect Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, US military Commander in Iraq, who had personally authorised the interrogation techniques.

General Miller went to Iraq in September 2003 to advise in the setting up Abu Ghraib. He took along his ‘tiger team' or Gestapo from Guantanamo Bay to be advisers and trainers. Within weeks of his setup, Abu Ghraib used the same techniques such as threatening prisoners with military working dogs, and stripping them naked to be humiliated.

[also read my earlier post American Nazis! - hence my description of Miller's 'tiger team' as Gestapo]

The investigation at Guantanamo Bay was the result of the FBI making 26 reports of torture. Military investigators claimed to have found only three substantiated.

Related Posts:
(1) US Army Sacrified Goats to Gods! - (on demoted Brig General Janis Karpinski)
(2) Will the US Army now Sacrifice Pigs to Gods - (on Major General Geoffrey Miller)
(3) Two Generals from North America
(4) Jihad over US Military Desecration of Koran
(5) The Afghanistan Anti-USA Jihad
(6) Desecration of Koran – Pentagon Knew All Along
(7) The Tragedy of an Afghan Taxi Driver
(8) Guantanamo – Pissing in the Wind

No comments:

Post a Comment