Documents Describe First Year Of Gitmo As “Chaotic”

You can thank the ACLU again. They sure are determined…

Documents pertaining to Guantanamo Bay’s first year have just been released. They show some disturbing scenarios, including riots and questionable interrogation methods.

Says one ACLU lawyer:

These documents provide further evidence of the widespread and systemic abuse of prisoners conducted at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas locations.

Major General Michael Dunleavy provides a very good insight into what happened at Gitmo.

Dunleavy described the chaos he found when he arrived: a lack of security and control over detainees who would riot and throw food and turned items like spoons, magnets and welding rods into weapons. He said his interrogators were virtually inexperienced and that the military linguists “were worthless.”

Dunleavy said he was brought in to bring “a commonsense way on how to do business.” He had experience with more than 3,000 interrogations going back 35 years.

Dunleavy said physical torture would not produce intelligence, but instead they needed to build rapport and create a “dependency relationship” with prayer beads and the Quran. He said he treated detainees “as human beings, but not like soldiers” and denied there was any torture.

One interrogator had to be removed, Dunleavy said, after the interrogator “physically mishandled” a detainee, belting and handcuffing him to an eyebolt on the floor. An FBI agent was removed after “he went across the desk at a detainee” after the detainee threatened to kill his family, Dunleavy said.

Loud music and yelling were used to disrupt detainees’ thought process, Dunleavy said. Chaining a detainee in a fetal position was “not a normal procedure,” he said, but may have been used to secure a prisoner who leapt at an interrogator.

Nothing wrong so far…

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who commanded Guantanamo from late 2002 to March 2004, said in another newly released document that he had rejected a proposal to use the harsh techniques employed by survival trainers to prepare American troops for combat. He said some of the techniques “went beyond what I felt comfortable with.”

Uh-oh!

“Please assure (redacted) that their detainees have never been subjected to torture or systematic abuse,” wrote Matthew Waxman, then the director of detainee affairs for the Pentagon, in an October 2004 memo to an undisclosed recipient. “Additionally, while he has some mental health issues, these are not the result of any physical abuse at Guantanamo.”

Most of the details of the detainee’s account were blacked out. But he said he once was forced to stay awake for 70 days, that interrogators put ice all over his body directly against his skin inside his clothes, and that there was a room that the detainees called the “freezer.” He said he made a false confession while being tortured.

Another document detailed “troubling” interrogation techniques used against the detainee during that period, including a threat that if he didn’t talk he would “soon disappear down a very dark hole” and that his “very existence would be erased.”

Hmm…70 days? Is that physically possible?

I always have trouble believing these people…

Complete Story