The Guantanamo Guidebook

bobbyjoe

Anyone watch this last night?
I found it shocking.

Monday 28 February at 11.05pm
http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/T/torture/cases.html
According to George Bush, 'torture is never acceptable'. The interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay have been calibrated to fall short of a legal definition of ‘torture’. However, legal experts say they do still constitute torture. The Guantanamo Guidebook reconstructs the regime at the US's Cuban base. For 48 hours, seven volunteers are subjected to interrogation techniques known to be used in the camp, ranging from harassment and abuse to sensory deprivation – with shocking results.

Seven volunteers were given 48hours of detention by ex military interrogators. The interrogators used methods used in Guantanamo bay and in Iraq among others. These methods were described in emails made public by the freedom of information act.
They only used the light methods, they obviously couldn't physically damage the volunteers.
Two were Muslims, two supported the actions in Guantanamo saying that the ends justified the means. After 48 hours all said that they would confess to anything after the abuse they got. One guy only lasted 12 hours. All were fit healthy people.
They also said that constant treatment in the fashion without any release date or trial date would drive anyone insane.

The story used to justify torture is that if some terrorist knew the location of a nuclear bomb would you torture him to find out where it was a save millions. Most people would agree that it would be worth it. Though in fact a CIA agent of 15 years said that he couldn't think of a single incident where pressure applied to a prisoner resulted in foiling a plot. The Vietnam Vet who interrogated people during that war said that information gained was only useful in the short term that after even 24 hours info gained from a terrorist is practically useless.

The Orwellian language used is also shocking here are some of the terms and what they really mean.
Guantanamo had many suicides and attempted suicides but after one occasion when 21 prisoners tried to hang themselves the word for suicide was changed to "Manipulative self-injurious behaviour", now there are no suicides in Guantanmo problem solved.

The following are some more terms you might be familiar with and their meanings.

Environmental manipulation
Subjecting prisoners to extremes of hot and cold.
Forced grooming
Forcible shaving. Deeply humiliating for some Muslims.
Manipulative self-injurious behaviour
The US government’s description of 21 attempted suicides at Guantanamo Bay.
Pride and ego down
Label for techniques used to undermine prisoners’ self-esteem and dignity.
Rendition
Kidnapping terrorist suspects and delivering them to a foreign country for trial. In ‘extraordinary rendition’, suspects are ‘lent’ to a foreign country for interrogation and torture.
R2I
Resistance to interrogation: a training system used by British special forces, in which subjects are stripped naked and sexually humiliated.
Rumsfeld processing
Colloquial term for removing prisoners from army camps and holding them in CIA facilities, which the Red Cross is not permitted to visit.
Sensory deprivation
Depriving prisoners of both sight and hearing, for example, by hooding combined with white noise.
Sleep adjustment
Repeatedly interrupting a prisoner’s sleep, while allowing them adequate sleep overall.
Stress position
Position which a prisoner is ordered to maintain, causing discomfort or pain without physical contact.
Unlawful combatants
US definition of Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners; as such, they are said to be unprotected by the Geneva Conventions.
The Vietnam
Treatment in which electrodes (real or fake) are attached to the victim's body.
Waterboarding
CIA treatment in which the victim is smothered with a wet cloth, creating the sensation of drowning.

Anyone who doesn't consider these things torture should check out the program its probably online somewhere.

gandalf

Saw this program and yes it was shocking but then again I always believed what has gone and is going on in Stalig Bush was illegal and hypocritical.

If someone was not a terrorist hell bent on destroying America before they went in they will be if they ever make it out.

toiletduck

it was very interesting. i dunno how any of them imprisoned there are still sane.

SkepticOne

Stuman134 wrote:

Besides being morally wrong, torture in grossly ineffective and outdated. There was a time in the world when torture was an acceptable means of gathering intelligence. I would certainly say that time has passed. Now I would say the assets in our intelligence agencies are a much more effective and much less dehumanizing tool for preventing terrorist attacks.

It is really more of a political tool rather than an intelligence gathering one. The purpose is to extract confessions regardless of whether or not the person committed the crime. During the second world war, the British did not use torture (although there may have been abuses) on captured German prisoners for the simple reason that whatever was gathered was likely to be highly unreliable - precicely not what is wanted in a war situation.

In an earlier documentary on c4, the presenter made the point that countries that use torture (and get told by prisoners what they want to hear) end up in a sort of descending spiral where torture is used to justify further torture.