So, we’ve got Special Forces units in Afghanistan engaged in abuses similar in scope and magnitude to those at Abu Ghraib. And we’ve got the same tactics employed by a military intel battalion there too. So that’s one or two other Abu Ghraibs in Afghanistan.
Do we even know how extensive the American gulag was/is, let alone how far the abuses went? It appears that we’re still trying to figure out how many prisoners were tortured to death in various places.
Whatever the culpability of the actual soldiers and intel operatives involved, such widespread abuses scream “systemic problem.” The ‘bad apples’ were at the top. You can’t institute policies calling for a great deal of ‘torture-lite’, for lack of a better term, then fail to institute any safeguards to make sure torture-lite didh’t cross the line into torture (like making sure those ultimately carrying out the policy knew prisoners’ rights, and their own, under the Geneva Convention) finally putting a great deal of pressure on people to get more results, without getting exactly what we got here.
There were similar allegations from by detainees at Bhagram, and about Gitmo too, way before Abu Ghraib proved that it could actually happen. Of course these were roundly dismissed by many on this board as BS. Because “make no mistake, these are bad people”, as GWB said.
This would be even more damning if true, IMNO. At Abu Ghraib the “undertrained, ill-prepared weekend warrior” card could at least be plausibly played. This involves the most highly trained and elite soldieers we have. If they are engaged in the same activites, then it means the whole tree is rotten, not a just a few apples.
That only helps if you don’t have the twisted definition of torture held by “then-assistant attorney general Jay Bybee, [who] offer[ed] a restricted definition of torture, saying only actions that cause severe pain akin to organ failure would be torture.” Or a President who believes “that [he has] the authority to suspend Geneva (conventions) as between the United States and Afghanistan,” or any other future conflicts [cite], or a Secretary of Defense who promotes the author of “Interrogation Rules of Engagement,” specifying that soldiers… may subject prisoners to dietary manipulation, sleep deprivation, stress positions and the “presence of mil working dogs,” to reign over all the prisons in Iraq. [cite].
Why any of these monsters still have jobs is beyond me. Why anyone in this country is willing to vote these monsters back into office to continue their reign of terror is also beyond me.