Rape Camps

Take some. You're gonna need it when you finish this story.

You think that torture is an old story? Think it's something that happened awhile back and has been stopped by the conscientious Bush administration? Think all the "bad apples" have been removed? Think again.

This is from yesterday:

Terror suspect David Hicks was sexually abused during two, 10-hour beatings by US attackers, his father Terry has told the ABC's Four Corners program.

Hicks has been in US custody since he was captured alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, and has spent most of that time at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

...

"He had two, 10-hour beatings from the Americans and I said to David, 'Sure they were Americans?' (because) he said he had a bag over his head and he said, 'Oh look ... I know their accents, they were definitely American'," Mr Hicks told Four Corners.

"Some pretty horrific things ... were done to him."

The program reported the abuse had included Hicks being injected and then penetrated anally with various objects.

...

Former Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee, Mamdouh Habib, who was released earlier this year, has also claimed that he was abused while on foreign soil.

In February, Mr Habib detailed how he was tortured in a military airport in Pakistan.

During a particular episode of abuse, Mr Habib said 15 men stripped him, inserted something into his anus, put him in a nappy and tied him up.

As Digby notes, what's with these guys and male rape? Either there's a consistent perverted strain of anal sadism rampant in the military, or there's a policy of having rape camps.

Someday, the pictures will be released and Americans will be shocked, shocked to learn that the U.S. government did this in their names.

The above story also makes this story much much clearer:

Jumah Dossari had to visit the restroom, so the detainee made a quick joke with his American lawyer before military police guards escorted him to a nearby cell with a toilet. The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had taken quite a toll on Dossari over the past four years, but his attorney, who was there to discuss Dossari's federal court case, noted his good spirits and thought nothing of his bathroom break.

Minutes later, when Dossari did not return, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan knocked on the cell door, calling out his client's name. When he did not hear a response, Colangelo-Bryan stepped inside and saw a three-foot pool of blood on the floor. Numb, the lawyer looked up to see Dossari hanging unconscious from a noose tied to the ceiling, his eyes rolled back, his tongue and lips bulging, blood pouring from a gash in his right arm.

...

Two dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees are currently being force-fed in response to a lengthy hunger strike, and the detainees' lawyers estimate there are dozens more who have not eaten since August. Military officials say there are 27 hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, all of whom are clinically stable, closely monitored by medical personnel and receiving proper nutrition. [I'll bet, whether they like it or not]

...

Military authorities do not publicly discuss individual detainees and declined to comment on Dossari. Lt. Col. Jeremy Martin, spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said yesterday that there have been a total of 36 suicide attempts by 22 different detainees, including three in the past 20 months. Martin said all detainees are treated humanely and "any threat of injury or suicide" is taken seriously.

...

Detainees "see it as the only means they have of exercising control over their lives," Colangelo-Bryan said in publicly describing the incident for the first time. "Their only means of effective protest are to harm themselves, either by hunger strike or doing something like this."

...

Dossari, 26, said U.S. troops have put out cigarettes on his skin, threatened to kill him and severely beat him. He told his lawyer that he saw U.S. Marines at Kandahar "using pages of the Koran to shine their boots," and was brutalized at Guantanamo Bay by Immediate Response Force guards who videotaped themselves attacking him.

As I've said in other posts, it's impossible to have this kind of sanctioned behavior happen in a narrow portion of a culture. Inevitable, the green light is given throughout the culture that life is cheap, the end justifies the means, and "bad guys" deserve what they get. Check out this, torturous treatment . Via Arthur:

SEATTLE (AP) - An [U.S.] Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says.

He then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain, attorney Douglas Hiatt said.

Steven W. Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court for a detention hearing Wednesday, Hiatt said.

"This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason," Hiatt said.

...

Tuck suffered debilitating injuries in the 1980s when his parachute failed to open during a jump, and those injuries were exacerbated by a car crash in 1990, Hiatt said. He said Tuck was using marijuana to treat his chronic pain.

...

"I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan said. "They sent people in to arrest him while he was on a gurney. They took him out of the hospital in handcuffs, put him in an SUV, and drove him to the border."

Hey, he broke the law! Right? He's a marijuana growin'- marijuana smokin' - flee the country - no good deadbeat!

Seriously. This continues to be disturbing while American citizens quietly sit back and tacitly support policies of torture.