[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Kids in America(n Torture Camps)

[Bill Totten]

Why Does the Media Cover Up War Crimes?

by Ted Rall

http://www.rall.com (May 27 2008)


In last week's column I cited New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau as
a prime example of what ails us: reporters who don't report, aka
journalists who love the government too much.

When Lichtblau found out that the Bush Administration was listening to
Americans' phone calls and reading their e-mail, he decided to hold the
story. Instead of fulfilling his duty to the Times' readers and running
with it, he asked the White House for permission. By the time the NSA
domestic surveillance story finally ran, fourteen months had passed -
and Bush had won the 2004 election.

Again, in a May 17th piece bearing the headline "FBI Gets Mixed Review
in Interrogation Report", Lichtblau is running interference for the
government. "A new Justice Department report praises the refusal of FBI
agents to take part in the military's abusive questioning of prisoners
in Guant叩namo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan", begins the article, "but it
also finds fault with the bureau's slow response to complaints about the
tactics from its own agents".

"Abusive questioning". "Harsh interrogation tactics".

According to the Justice Department report, "routine" treatment of Guant
叩namo prisoners - witnessed by the FBI - includes "bending the
detainee's thumbs back and grabbing his genitals". Military and CIA
torturers chained detainees' hands and feet together for as long as a
full day, "left to defecate on themselves". They terrorized them with
dogs, stripped them and made them wear women's underwear and subjected
them to blaring music, freezing cold and searing heat.

Torture. Such a simple word. Why not use it?

Lichtblau's "mixed review" appellation notwithstanding, the report by
the Justice Department paints a shocking, uniformly negative portrait of
a federal law enforcement agency whose officers react to appalling
conduct with the Nuremberg defense - "I was just following orders".

"Indeed", reported US News & World Report, "time after time, the report
concludes that FBI agents saw or heard about numerous interrogation
methods - from sleep deprivation to duct-taping detainees' mouths to
scaring them with dogs - that plainly violated their own agency's code
of conduct". (Not to mention the Geneva Conventions.) Rather than report
their scruples to someone who might raise hell and put a stop to the
systemic torture at Gitmo and other US concentration camps - that is,
the public - FBI agents turned to the criminals. Just like Lichtblau did
with domestic spying.

"When [one] agent mentioned [a torture] incident to the general [at
Guant叩namo], the general's response ... was 'Thank you, gentlemen, but
my boys know what they're doing'". Ultimately the FBI, worried that
agents could be charged with war crimes if they continued to witness the
torture by CIA operatives and mercenaries, pulled its employees out of
Gitmo and other camps. No one called a Congressman. None called a press
conference.

FBI agents kept quiet - even when the CIA frat-boy-style torture tactics
screwed up their interrogations.

In 2003 one FBI agent had "begin building a rapport" with Yussef
Mohammed Mubarak al-Shihri, a Saudi citizen. Al-Shihri told the agent
that female CIA agents had "forced to listen to the 'meow mix' jingle
for cat food for hours and had a women's dress 'draped' on him". As
usual, the agent turned to the torturer. "The agent said he confronted a
female military intelligence interrogator who admitted to 'poaching' his
detainee, but there was little more the agent could do. Following the
incident, al-Shihri became uncooperative, and the agent said he never
bothered to tell his superiors about the military interrogator's actions."

Turning a blind eye to torture. Watching passively as CIA goons destroy
the trust of a possible material witness to terrorism. What "mixed review"?

As usual, the Newspaper of Record's worst sins in Gitmogate are those of
omission - the really weird stuff that could deprive the Administration
of its few remaining supporters. "Buried in a Department of Justice
report", reported ABC News, "are new allegations about a 2002
arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese
intelligence to visit Guant叩namo and interrogate Chinese Uyghurs held
there".

Like their Tibetan neighbors, the Uyghurs of western China are victims
of government oppression, including mass executions. Throughout the
1990s, US-funded Radio Free Asia urged Uyghurs to revolt against Chinese
occupation. After 9/11, however, the US agreed to help China capture and
torture Uyghur independence activists - as a quid pro quo for not using
its UN veto to stop the American invasion of Afghanistan. (There's more
about the US betrayal of the Uyghurs in my book "Silk Road to Ruin".)

"Uyghur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and
forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by
Chinese interrogators", said ABC. "When Uyghur detainees refused to talk
to Chinese interrogators in 2002, US military personnel put them in
solitary confinement as punishment".

It's a tale bizarre enough to make Rush Limbaugh blush: intelligence
agents from communist China invited to an American military base, where
they're allowed to torture political dissidents in American custody,
with American soldiers as their sidekicks. In light of China's crackdown
on Tibet during the run-up to the Olympics, it's a tasty news tidbit.
But it didn't run in The Times - as far as I can tell, it only ran in
one newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.

At the same time journo-wimp Lichtblau was penning his "balanced" take
on the Justice Department's bombshell report, the US government admitted
that it has more than 500 children in its torture and concentration
camps. More than 2,500 children have gone through US secret prisons
since 2002, including at least eight at Guant叩namo.

I know a lot of right-wing conservatives. We don't share much political
common ground, but it's hard to imagine any of them thinking the
indefinite detention and torture of children, against whom there is no
evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing, is anything other than the behavior
of a monster.

If a man screams in a government torture chamber, does he make a sound?
Not if the only one who hears him is an American reporter.
_____

Ted Rall is the author of the book Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia
the New Middle East? (Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing, 2006), an
in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign
policy challenge.

Copyright 2008 Ted Rall


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