These stories answer a series of important questions, but raise a number of new ones.
Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors, according to documents released yesterday.
In memos over a two-year period that ended in August, FBI agents and officials also said that they witnessed the use of growling dogs at Guantanamo Bay to intimidate detainees — contrary to previous statements by senior Defense Department officials — and that one detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music in an apparent attempt to soften his resistance to interrogation.
In addition, several agents contended that military interrogators impersonated FBI agents, suggesting that the ruse was aimed in part at avoiding blame for any subsequent public allegations of abuse, according to memos between FBI officials.
Devastating. In one of the disclosed reports, a witness reported physical abuses that included “strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees’ ear openings and unauthorized interrogations.” The Bush administration has, once again, been caught using torture as a routine tactic. Abu Ghraib was the tip of the iceberg; the idea we were dealing with a “few bad apples” who exceeded their authority is utterly ridiculous.
That said, there are a few things I’d like to know, by way of follow up.
First, Pentagon officials had insisted that dogs had never been used at Guantanamo Bay to intimidate detainees. They were lying. Who, specifically, disseminated the false information to the press? Was he or she instructed to do so by superiors?
Second, one of the newly-released documents suggests Bush personally signed off on an executive order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees. Specifically, FBI officials at Guantanamo Bay referenced authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” The White House yesterday denied that such an executive order exists. What’s the cause of this discrepancy?
Third, all of this devastating information comes by way of the ACLU, which obtained these incriminating documents by way of a Freedom of Information Act request. While the ACLU deserves kudos for the excellent work, why on earth did the group release these shocking revelations a few days before Christmas? Why not hold onto to the documents until January, when the impact could be far greater?
Finally, have the investigative-journalism departments at the major newspapers been downsized? Why is it that the ACLU is filing FOIA requests and obtaining blockbuster reports, instead of, say, the New York Times and/or Washington Post? (It’s worth noting, as Slate’s Sam Schechner does, that this is the second time this month that the nation’s media relied on scoops from the ACLU instead of doing the legwork themselves. On Dec. 8, the ACLU released an earlier set of torture memos, which led to big stories in the Post and NYT.)
This new round of torture stories should dominate headlines for the rest of the week. The timing couldn’t be worse — no one’s engaged in current events four days before Christmas — but Dems should demand hearings as soon as Congress reconvenes.