A key thing to remember in reading this is the CIA released him. He was innocent.
Inside the CIA’s notorious “black sites”
The CIA held Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in several different cells when he was incarcerated its network of secret prisons known as “black sites.” But the small cells were all pretty similar, maybe 7 feet wide and 10 feet long. He was sometimes naked, and sometimes handcuffed for weeks at a time. In one cell his ankle was chained to a bolt in the floor. There was a small toilet. In another cell there was just a bucket. Video cameras recorded his every move. The lights always stayed on — there was no day or night. A speaker blasted him with continuous white noise, or rap music, 24 hours a day.The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation — one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.
It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words “I am innocent” in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.
“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.”
— Adolf Hitler
“It is a quite special secret pleasure how the people around us fail to realize what is really happening to them.”
— Adolf Hitler
“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.”
— Adolf Hitler
Here is the dirty laundry we Americans don’t want to talk about — we’ve known full-well for five years that America is imprisoning and torturing innocent people. And hardly anybody cared. Many approved of it.
So, pardon me, if I don’t fully buy the American self-congratulations that we’re the most humane, just nation on earth.
The United States is finally achieving a level of hatred and contempt around the world only previously achieved by the Brits, French and Turks.
The worst political creeps in our country are proud of that – of course.
The neocons have always justified the use of torture (or semi-torture) because it is better to torture than have a terrorist bomb our cities.
Of course, the logical flaw in all the neocon arguments has been the presumption of guilt. So, really the argument is torture them all and let God sort them out.
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–for ever.”
1984
#2 – Greg Allen
You’re right, Gitmo was a mistake. All enemy combatants should have been killed on the battlefield and this wouldn’t even be an issue.
In case you didn’t get the memo we are talking survival, not who is the most humane.
#3 – moss
No, people with cowardly ideas like yours are becoming the most hated in the world. There are groups out there that would like nothing more than to kill or make a slave of you and you are worrying it they like you or not. Pleeezzee!
#6 – George Jetson – No…I don’t worry about the terrorist that already hates my guts, wants nothing more than my head detached from my shoulders, and has no ability to think for themselves.
I worry about the people around him who do not hate my guts, yet have been raped, imprisoned, family members killed, and atrocities visited upon them without cause or determination of guilt.
The best quote I have ever heard concerning this war is “Terrorism is a tactic not an enemy”, from Robert Speik. This war will never end with the current thinking, and for those politician that use the fear business to get elected, that is a perfect situation. The war has been misguided and mishandled to an insanely criminal level.
I am truly sad for our country and ashamed of our government.
#7 prophet
War is not an encounter group where you have the luxury of sitting around judging everyone by their feelings. If those beside him are… well beside him, we must conclude they agree with what the terrorist is doing. Especially when the silence is deafening when it comes to condemnation.
I always knew Republicans were fans of hard core Gay BDSM.
Was he an American? Nope.
Was he here legally and therefore given protection of law or the constitution? Nope.
FTA – “And while he was seldom beaten physically while in U.S. custody, he describes a regime of imprisonment designed to inflict extreme psychological anguish.”
I’m sorry, but after reading this I just don’t feel too bad for this guy. Again, the ones I feel for are the men and women who have to do this work in order to keep us free. It’s a dark secret world, but fact is that Islamic Terrorists want to kill us. Period.
I’m sympathetic to a story of an American being detained without cause and believe that should be dealt with. I’m even sympathetic to violations of civil rights within my own country (say putting citizens on the no fly list without any due process).
But, I just can’t say I care all that much for a guy who even admits we didn’t beat him. We didn’t kill his wife, kids or parents.
That’s what his fellow believers do – they like to bomb our civilians and cut off our limbs. Or have we forgotten that?
[Duplicate comment. – Deleted. – ed.]
#10
Just because we’re at war with Al Qaida does not give us permission to “inflict extreme psychological anguish” on non-American 3rd parties who happen to share a faith.
With your perverted logic, if a Catholic Ireland had a war with a radical Protestant group, all Protestants anywhere can be arrested and subject to “extreme psychological anguish” regardless of their association with the group or any acts on their part, as long as they’re not Irish.
Guys like you will make us into what we hate.
#10
Allow me to translate:
“American citizens are human beings.
Non-Americans are not human.”
Have I got it right?
Hey, if the guy didn’t do what they think he did (or if he doesn’t know what they want to know), then he probably did something else (or know something else that they want to know.
Right?
Murder the Americans, torture the ragheads to within an inch of their lives.
He was released. When they were sure he wasn’t what the Jordanian goverment thought he was, he was given care, and brought back into a normal prison mode before being released to home.
More than we can say for American, British, Italian, Indonesian, Japanese aid workers, and humanitarian groups that have been beheaded, and blown up in Iraq, and Afghanistan or Jordan, or Palestine.
I knew this was a just some large BS when the guy says at the end, he is suing so that the American people will understand that Islam isn’t a violent religion….at that point I gagged. Am I the only person here that gets the irony of this story? The guy is SUING…..if he had been an American, or any non-Muslim and captured by al Quieda or the Taliban, he would be DEAD….not getting a chance to be rich.
We have done some awful things in this war. But I have news for you bleeders out there, so has the other side, and they were doing them long before Bush was President or 9/11. Groups like Fatah have been massacring innocent civilians for 60 years, with bombs and guns, then came the airplane hijacks, the cruise ships (where passengers where thrown overboard for being Jewish), then the explosions all over the world, killing everyday, ordinary women, children and men. There was the Olympic athlete’s murdered for simply being Jewish.
Islam is NOT a religion of peace. And don’t insult me with the usual crap about murderous Christians, it’s been a few hundred years since that kind of thing has happened. Islam is committing 14th century crimes NOW, not 600 years ago (though they were then as well).
And there are apparently no moderate Muslims, since every atrocity committed by a Muslim terror group is either cheered on or met with hems and haws by so-called **moderate muslims**…..almost never a voice of condemnation. ask yourself why it is that the media, comedians, columnists, have no fear of bashing Christians or even Jews or Blacks, but keep their mouth’s shut about Muslims?? Because they don’t fear being beheaded, or shot or blown up by the Christian’s, Jew’s and Blacks, but they sure as hell do from the Muslim’s, because it’s happened and is happening all over the world.
So plead your bleeder crap somewhere else, to people who are uninformed enough to believe that all evil emanates from the US. If you’re so damn concerned about the state of your country, then do something about it besides bashing it.
The U.S. is an embarrassment to all who have brains. The remaining just don’t have the capacity to understand the value of human life.
#16….solspin….please enlighten us oh great one……name these places where human life is valued. Lay your blessing’s upon us with your knowledge of these utopia’s, Oh wise one!!
Could these utopia’s possibly be among the many human life valueing nations in Asia, or maybe in the human life revering nations of Africa, or could it be in the human life loving precient’s of theMiddle East, or surely the great lover’s of humanity in Europe, or South America, or Central America….oh wait, it has to be the Polynesian Island nations, or New Zealand or Australia…..what???….you say the utopia you speak of isn’t among those places????
Then stuff it!!!
#15, Jerk,
You are an embarrassment. It is the arrogance of the asswipes like you that foment terrorism.
“Well they have been doing it to us for years”.
/sarcasm in a whiny voice
Bull shit. The “Christians” and “Jews” have been doing it to them for just as long. And more. And harder. Then the Turks did it to them before that.
Your fucking xenophobic type is the same that would lynch a “niggar” because he held his head up.
There was the Olympic athlete’s murdered for simply being Jewish.
Somehow that is a crime (and it is) yet massacring Muslims is OK? So what is the pay off here. One dead Israeli is worth what, 112 dead Muslims? 586 dead Muslims? Every Muslim killed?
So the guy is suing. Good for him. OUR country detained and tortured him for a year and a half. He didn’t detain any American. He didn’t even say anything negative about Americans. And you think giving the guy a clean pair of underwear, a bandage with a happy face on it, and a lollipop makes everything equal?
Fuck you asswipe.
#16, Jerk,
#16….solspin….please enlighten us oh great one……name these places where human life is valued. Lay your blessing’s upon us with your knowledge of these utopia’s [sic], Oh wise one!!
Well, it is apparent it wouldn’t be in Arizona.
I’ll give you credit. You know the place names of somewhere outside Arizona. You even spelled some of them correctly. You don’t get credit for the flame though.
Solspin never used the word “utopia”. He never even alluded to it. Yet you expect him to tell you where it is. News for the jerk. Most places value human life even if the spiteful, xenophobic, bigoted, racist, hate filled, asswipes like yourself don’t value the life of those you hate. It is the hate that drives you.
When they dumped this guy off, they didn’t even say they were sorry for the inconvenience.
Phucing 25%* moran.
*- the number of people that support the President.
#19…Catshit….an appropriate name for someone who stink’s to high heaven with their view’s on the world.
You take it upon yourself to think you know my mind or my feeling’s about races or religions, when you know zip. You let slip YOUR feeling’s though when you talk about killing Jew’s(yep, it is a crime, nice recovery) and your use of racial slur’s. You can try to mask your anti-americanism in all the phoney left wing BS you want, but the true you comes across very clearly.
Please, point out to me the Christian massacure’s of Muslim’s….I really would like to see them. Your nothing more than an apologist for mass murderer’s, using their religion as an excuse to kill anyone that opposes them. Your part of the PC brigade that allow’s these people to feel free to slaughter indiscriminatly by your constant battering of those who would hold the terrorist’s and their supporters responsable for their actions. Maybe one day, you will get a chance to explain to the **peaceful** Muslim that comes to lop off your infidel head, or your wife’s or child’s or Mother’s, that you never said bad thing’s about him or his so-called **religion of peace**….I’m sure he’ll be thankful to you by using a sharp scimitar.
I already explained my feeling’s on the *poor* fella from Yeman. At least he is alive to bitch about his treatment at the hands of **someone** since no where in this article does it actually offer any proof as to who was holding him, which is more than American’s and other’s held by the **peaceful religion fundlementalists** can do.
Oh, and the 25% favorable….that’s the Democratic controlled congress’s number’s(you suppose it might be because they haven’t the cajone’s to match their rhetoric, and stand up to Bush?)….Bush’s is 34%(and I’m not one of them).
Have a nice day. 🙂
#15, #17, #20
Well said, Joshua!
MCatshit, I have no doubt that you will be the first to cry out for help when it all finally hits the fan. And later when the cold steel races toward your cowardly neck you will remain clueless as to why those you bash now are not willing to help in your time of need. slice… plop…
#21 and any other torture apologists:
Can you explain to me how this country managed to last 200+ years without consistently resorting to this sort of barbarism? Why does this current war require it?
George Washington left standing orders to severely punish or summarily execute any American soldier who tormented an enemy prisoner, despite the fact that the British in many cases had no such scruples. Was he some pussy bleeding heart liberal?
Teddy Rosevelt had soldiers up and down the chain of command severely punished for torturing prisoners and civilians in wartime. Another bleeding heart wimp who won’t fight?
The Army interrogators who got volumes of information out of high ranking Nazis did so without torture, are proud of the fact, and abhore what we are doing today. Are these solders a bunch of eldery pussy traitors?
McCain was shot down in VietNam, tortured himself, but would never condone doing it to another. Yet another wimp unprepared to defend his country?
You keep making comments about how this is neccessary, and how we should just shut up and accept this, and not criticize our ‘protectors’ for doing it. Get it straight: We’re Americans, not animals or savages. We _DO_NOT_WANT_ people like you protecting us.
#20, Jerk,
Please, point out to me the Christian massacure’s of Muslim’s….I really would like to see them. Your nothing more than an apologist for mass murderer’s, using their religion as an excuse to kill anyone that opposes them.
OK, jerk, you want some examples, lets start with a weapon of mass destruction.
The British Guardian reported on April 3, [2004] that the Baghdad Division of the Republican Guard defending the town of Kut and the southeast approaches to the capital had suffered “intense” bombardment over the past week. This included the dropping of two 15,000-pound “daisy cutter” fuel-air bombs on their positions.
Daisy cutters detonate above the ground, engulfing a square mile in a firestorm that sucks out all oxygen, incinerating or asphyxiating everyone in the area. One description of their impact reads: “Those not incinerated are injured by the massive blast or the vacuum. Typical injuries include concussion, blindness, rupture of the eardrums, seared airways and collapsed lungs, multiple internal hemorrhages, displaced and torn internal organs.”
Was that enough? Or would another help.
There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.
“Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,” said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.
The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by U.S. troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq’s Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to postions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660.
Want more?
Lagos, Nigeria, May. 5, 2004 (CWNews.com) – About 300 Muslims were killed last Sunday by a Christian militia in Nigeria’s central Plateau state, according to Muslim leaders and local authorities. The killings are part of escalating interreligious violence that has taken the lives of at 700 people over the last three months.
How about with some Jewish flavor added to Christian killing.
By noon of September 15th, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had completely surrounded the Sabra-Shatila camps, and controlled all entrances and exits by the means of checkpoints. The IDF also occupied a number of multi-story buildings as observation posts. Amongst those was the seven-story Kuwaiti embassy which, according to TIME, had “an unobstructed and panoramic view” of the camps. Hours later, IDF tanks began shelling the camps.
…
An hour later, 1,500 Christian militiamen assembled at Beirut International Airport, then occupied by Israel. Under the command of Elie Hobeika, they began moving towards the camps in IDF supplied jeeps, following Israeli guidance on how to enter the camps.
…
Immediately the unit began slitting throats, axing, shooting, and raping, often taking groups outside and lining them up for execution. During the night the Israeli forces fired illuminating flares over the camps. According to a Dutch nurse, the camp was as bright as “a sports stadium during a football game”
Had enough? Or is the slaughter of 3,500 Palestinians refugees just fine by you.
Israeli soldiers surrounding the camps turned back Palestinians fleeing the camps, as filmed by a Visnews cameraman.
OK, if that is too ancient for you, how about an Israeli (with US assent) massacre.
n one week of deliberately calculated act of aggression and savagery against Lebanon and the Lebanese people, the Israeli army have destroyed the entire nation civilian infrastructure and massacred more than 400 innocent civilians in cold blood, injured at least 1,000 people and caused a million people to flee their homes.
The “civilised”[sic] U.S. (and its Western allies) justified this massacre of innocent civilians and wanton destruction by publicly stating (at the UN) that there is no “moral equivalence” between innocent Lebanese civilians killed by Israel’s terror and those Israelis killed by Lebanese resisting it.
Shall we learn about another Muslim group murdered by Christians? How about Bosnia.
One of the largest massacres of the early part of the war took place at a gymnasium in the village of Bratunac in April 1992, when an estimated 350 Bosnian Muslim men were tortured to death and massacred by Serb paramilitaries and special police
Or another Serbian Christian massacre. Seblinka,
The Serbs, he said,:
picked out Muslims whom they either knew about or knew, interrogated them and made them dig pits. …During our first day, the Cetniks [Serbs] killed approximately 500 people [men]. They would just line them up and shoot them into the pits. The approximately one hundred guys whom they interrogated and who had dug the mass graves then had to fill them in. At the end of the day, they were ordered to dig a pit for themselves and line up in front of it. … [T]hey were shot into the mass grave. … At dawn, … [a] bulldozer arrived and dug up a pit …, and buried about 400 men alive. The men were encircled by Cetniks: whoever tried to escape was shot.” (Quoted in Mark Danner, “The Killing Fields of Bosnia”, New York Review of Books, September 24 1998.)
BTW, although the final number can not be confirmed, it is estimated to be in the region of 8,000 Muslims. Very few of whom were armed. Most of the men were very old or children.
The Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Radivoj Krstic, in a radio transmission intercepted by western eavesdroppers, told his forces: “You must kill everyone. We don’t need anyone alive.” (Mark Danner, “Bosnia: The Great Betrayal”, New York Review of Books, March 26 1998.)
Now ya racist, moranic, xenophobic, bigoted, racist asswipe. Are ya happy? Or would you like some more Muslims massacred in the past 25 years?
If you want to understand whats going on right now, watch the movie “Kingdom of Heaven”.
Its a story of one of the Christian Crusades when King Baldwin IV held Jerusalem against the muslim forces of Saladdin.
Its a religious war of idealogy. Its not about oil, its not about power, its not about money, land, democracy, WMD, or any other stated reason.