<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040308/005617.html
>
from which -
Daily Mirror (London) - March 12, 2004
MY HELL IN CAMP X-RAY By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.
<snip>
He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them.
Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.
Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.
[...]
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Fairly quickly after Sept 11 '01, a loose collective of 'liberal' pundits, academics and television talking heads began stating, timidly at first then with greater confidence once the national bellicose moment truly got underway, that torture was an acceptable, even necessary evil in the face of the greater evil of terrorism.
Harvard jackass and law professor Alan Dershowitz was (still is I believe) one of the most vocal proponents going so far as to insist upon torture being placed within the framework of American law (thus creating a nice, liberal wrapper for the bloody proceedings).
You can sample Dershowitz's ideas here -
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3044.htm
>
The presentation almost always goes something like this: suppose you captured a terrorist who, you were certain, knew the details of an impending and devastating attack. Wouldn't you use whatever means available, including torture, to get him to talk?
This tv-friendly argument depends upon a Hollywood-esque, edge-of-your-seat, race against the clock notion of counter-terrorist work (perhaps starring George Clooney as special agent Q). Several counter-arguments exist, but in the world of televised 'debate', there's seldom the space to develop them.
For me, one of the the best counter-arguments, co-equal with the clear moral objections, is that a system of torture exists only to feed upon itself and not as a way of saving lives, halting terrorism or teaching would-be 'evil-doers' a lesson. Torture cannot be used to determine guilt or innocence or to obtain intelligence; it can only be used to create a hell on earth for the victims and also for the torturers who are debased by their participation. It will not stop terrorism. It may even, like other 'extreme' American actions, increase it as outrage over the treatment of prisoners slowly spreads to concerned quarters across the globe.
...
So now we have the testimony of a released Camp X-Ray 'detainee'.
Now we learn about the 'Extreme Reaction Force', a group whose name sounds like something from a bad action film or Tom Clancy novel.
Now we know the true purpose of the camp is not to protect 'us' from 'them' or break the back of international terrorism but provide an outlet for the most ferocious and sinister elements of the American psyche.
DRM