What’s the deal with this administration’s fascination with torture? I certainly have little sympathy for anyone at Guantanamo, but hey, if we want to keep our boys safe from torture … no matter how it’s defined … we absolutely MUST refrain from even hinting at it ourselves. Abu Ghraib has ruined our integrity, and we still don’t seem to get it. We should be held to a higher standard because we’re supposed to be better then ‘they’ (whoever that is) are. Appointing a rationalist for torture to the top law enforcement position somehow seems anti-American to me.
[ from the NYT:
Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo ]
The conclusions by the inspection team, especially the findings involving alleged complicity in mistreatment by medical professionals, have provoked a stormy debate within the Red Cross committee. Some officials have argued that it should make its concerns public or at least aggressively confront the Bush administration.
[ from the WP: Rights Groups Urge Scrutiny of Gonzales ]
In a letter to Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the organizations, all members of the Washington-based Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, expressed concern about the role Gonzales played as White House counsel in setting the administration’s policy on the detention and interrogation of prisoners in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
[ from the WP: Red Cross Has Concerns About Treatment at Guantanamo ]
It said ICRC delegates found during a June visit to Guantanamo that U.S. authorities had devised and refined a system to break the will of the prisoners, using humiliation, solitary confinement, temperature extremes and force positions.
