The following quote, used as the preamble to the SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY, is used here are as a starting point for the reports and discussions:

“What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings”
—General David Petraeus
May 10, 2007

As President Obama’s change policy on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars goes into effect publicized concomitant actions will expose issues related torture and the abuse of detainees, including innocent victims, children, and those guilty of war crimes.  These issues will further expand the questions raised about U.S. and other country’s war policies and policy-makers such as Rumsfeld, Cheney, MI5, the CIA and others, and their possible prosecution.  This thread will list the concomitant actions and open short discussions about the abuses they expose.  My comments will follow each report between square brackets in green text.

Guantanamo Bay inmate to be sent to Britain:

LONDON — A former U.K. resident who alleges he was tortured while in U.S. custody will soon be released from Guantanamo Bay and sent back to Britain, authorities said Friday.  Binyam Mohamed — accused by U.S. authorities of conspiring to take part in a dirty bomb plot and training in al-Qaida camps — was kept at the military prison camp even though charges against him were dropped in October.

[There is, apparently, evidence that Binyan Mohamed was tortured and abused by both MI5 (British Secret Service) and CIA officials.  He was originally arrested in Pakistan, then flown to a Black Prison in Morocco, where he was severely beaten and tortured, and then he was taken to Guantanamo.  He is being released into British custody because he is considered a British resident (citizen) and he is on a severe hunger strike which has resulted in force-feeding to keep him alive.  He is very fragile, and The U.S. authorities at Guatanamo are afraid he will die if his hunger strike continues and they do not want this on their hands because of the publicity surrounding the case in Britain and Europe.  The British media is fired up about this particular individual’s treatment and the following weeks should produce some interesting developments.]

02/20/2009
Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners
The Associated Press - 15 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.

[This includes child prisoners and will include all detainees in foreign countries detained in “Black Centers” such as the one in Morocco where Binyam Mohamed (see last post) was tortured.  Charges against him have been dropped.  The current Obama Justice Department ruling will allow CIA and other operatives to imprison the guilty and the innocent with impugnity for as long as they wish, and to treat them as they see fit even though they may be innocent without access to lawyers or any legal system.]

[NOTE: According to a number released and correlated prisoner eyewitness testimonies, Bagram Airforce Base Prison is the site of a number of continuing child prisoner rapes by soldiers of boys as young as eight years old.  Apart from the legal ruling by Obama’s Justice System which will curtail and ban all legal representation to such children, military authorities have consistently refused entry to the prison by the International Red cross.]

AP: Abu Ghraib reopens with a new name and a new coat of paint.

By KIM GAMEL – 7 hours ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — A gym, barber shop and planters of plastic flowers: Welcome to the gentler face of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
The lockup where U.S. military guards tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners west of Baghdad has reopened with fresh paint and a new name in a bid to shed its notorious reputation.  Mohammed al-Zeidi, the assistant director of the Iraqi Rehabilitation Department, insisted the new prison would be operated in accordance with international standards.

“All kinds of human rights violations took place in this prison. So we felt that it was our duty to rehabilitate the prison,” he said Saturday during a press tour of the grounds. “We turned it into something like a resort not prison. The first step was to change the name.”

Iraqi officials defended their decision to reopen the facility — now called the Baghdad Central Prison — saying they need the space as the U.S. military has begun handing over the thousands of detainees in its custody under a new security agreement that took effect on Jan. 1.

The Justice Ministry has about 17,000 prisoners under its control, while the U.S. military recently said it had 14,500 remaining in its custody after it began this month releasing an average of 50 detainees per day in accordance with the security agreement.
Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

[Abu Ghraib is a symbol for human rights abuses, including torture, by U.S. authorities and soldiers.  Some of the prosecutions of U.S. soldiers for these abuses are only now producing results.  While junior officers are among those who will be jailed for abuses, no senior officials or military officers were ever held responsible for crimes in Abu Ghraib although a general was demoted and reposted when the worst of the abuses came to light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse).  Current expanded perspectives may include members of the Bush government and Bush himself (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=684).]

New Abu Ghraib pictures spark fear, outrage.

updated 4:04 p.m. ET, Wed., Feb. 15, 2006
SYDNEY, Australia - New images showing Iraqis abused by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib prison three years ago threatened Wednesday to inflame public anger already running high over footage of British soldiers beating youths in southern Iraq.

Images of naked prisoners, some bloodied and lying on the floor, were taken about the same time as earlier photos that triggered a worldwide scandal and led to military trials and prison sentences for several lower-ranking American soldiers.

Many of the images broadcast by Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, including some that appear to show corpses, were more graphic than those previously published. One of the video clips depicted a group of naked men with bags over their heads standing together and masturbating. The network said they were forced to participate.

A Good Book on Subject, two reviews.

“The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” By Jane Mayer 392 pages. $27.50. Doubleday.

The Taipei Times:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2008/07/20/2003417971
Torture is wrong; end of discussion. Except that the discussion has been in full swing for several years now. As soon as Americans began to debate the advisability of torturing prisoners in the war against terror, the US had ceded the moral high ground it once occupied, or at least laid claim to.  In Jane Mayer’s angry and important book The Dark Side, the tenacious New Yorker reporter takes us, step by step, through the process by which practices and methods we associate with tyrannies became official US policy.

International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/24/arts/bookjeu.php
“‘The Dark Side,” Jane Mayer’s gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it.”

More Books:

“Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” - Philippe Sands

“Guantanamo: What the World Should Know” - Michael Ratner

02/23/2009 @ 3:45pm

Guantanamo detainee freed after 7 years of prison
 
4 hours ago
LONDON — A Guantanamo prisoner who claims he was tortured at a covert CIA site in Morocco returned to Britain a free man Monday after nearly seven years in U.S. captivity — the first inmate from the U.S. prison camp freed since President Barack Obama took office.

Binyam Mohamed flew into a British military base and was expected to be out of custody within hours.

Mohamed’s claims of torture, abuse and extraordinary rendition are at the heart of several lawsuits. Lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic are suing for secret documents they say prove the United States sent Mohamed to Morocco and that Britain knew of the mistreatment — a violation under the 1994 U.N. Convention Against Torture.

“I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares,” Mohamed said in a statement released by his attorneys.

“Before this ordeal, “torture” was an abstract word to me ... It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways all orchestrated by the United States government.”

He said he wasn’t yet “physically nor mentally capable of facing the media.”

British authorities said he would undergo interviews Monday with the police, border control agents and immigration officials, who would help him apply for temporary residency.

His lawyers said they would provide money for his accommodations and living expenses.

[Legal issues surrounding this case will result in a number of new court cases both to give Binyam Mohamed civil dispensation, but, more importantly to those others who have been tortured, to get U.S. and U.K. government secret documents which will begin to clarify government/agency/individual involvement in decision-making re: torture in Guantanamo and in secret prisons associated with Guantanamo and torture policies (also known as “black centers” or “black prisons”) developed in association with a number of other countries.]

Ecrasez l’infame! - 21 February 2009 08:59 PM

More Books:

“Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” - Philippe Sands

“Guantanamo: What the World Should Know” - Michael Ratner

I’ll have to check those out.

In the meantime, you should read “The Lucifer Effect” - Phil Zimbardo

The first half covers the Stanford Prison Experiment, but the second half deals with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo…