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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Rumsfeld personally supervised torture, says Human Rights Watch Big News http://Network.com Monday 17th April, 2006 Human Rights Watch says it believes U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be criminally liable for the torture of a detainee at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002 and 2003. The universally respected international organization was commenting on an Army Inspector General's report which contains a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt that implicates Secretary Rumsfeld. The report, obtained by http://Salon.com, was based on an investigation that was carried out in early 2005, and included two interviews with Rumsfeld. In the report Gen. Schmidt describes the defense secretary as being "personally involved" in the interrogation of detainee Mohammad al-Qahtani. Human Rights Watch has urged the U.S. to name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Rumsfeld and others in the al-Qahtani case. "The question at this point is not whether Secretary Rumsfeld should resign, it's whether he should be indicted," said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. "General Schmidt's sworn statement suggests that Rumsfeld may have been perfectly aware of the abuses inflicted on al-Qahtani." Gen. Schmidt said that Secretary Rumsfeld was "talking weekly" with Gen. Miller about the al-Qahtani interrogation, and that the secretary of defense was "personally involved in the interrogation of [this] one person." Schmidt's statement indicates that Rumsfeld maintained a high level of knowledge of, and supervision, over al-Qahtani's treatment. Although Schmidt said that he believed that Rumsfeld did not specifically order the more abusive methods used in the al-Qahtani interrogation, he concluded that Rumsfeld's policies facilitated the abuse. The Pentagon has acknowledged that al-Qahtani's mistreatment was not unplanned. "Al-Qahtani's interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," wrote Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, in an email to http://Salon.com. "Nothing was done randomly." Human Rights Watch has obtained an unredacted copy of al-Qahtani's interrogation log, and believes that the techniques used during al-Qahtani's interrogation were so abusive that they amounted to torture. The interrogation log reveals that al-Qahtani was subjected to a regime of physical and mental mistreatment from mid-November 2002 to early January 2003. For six weeks, he was intentionally deprived of sleep, forced into painful physical positions (known as stress positions) and subjected to forced exercises, forced standing, and sexual and other physical humiliation. After refusing water, al-Qahtani was forced to accept an intravenous drip for hydration and, on several occasions, was refused trips to a latrine, so that he urinated on himself at least twice. He was also threatened with forced enemas, and on one occasion was forced to undergo an enema. "A six-week regime of sleep deprivation, forced exercises, stress positions, white noise, and sexual humiliation amounts to acts that were specifically intended to cause severe physical pain and suffering and severe mental pain and suffering," said Mariner. "That's the legal definition of torture." In 2005, the Judge Advocates General of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps told the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that the techniques used on al-Qahtani violated the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, and would have been illegal if perpetrated by another country on captured U.S. personnel. The U.S. State Department also regularly condemns as torture the same techniques in its annual Country Report on Human Rights, citing their use in countries such as North Korea and Iran. Human Rights Watch says it believes Secretary Rumsfeld, Gen. Geoffrey Miller, a senior commander at Guantanamo in 2002 and early 2003, and the interrogators who took part in the interrogations could be criminally liable under federal or military criminal law for torture, assaults and sexual abuse.
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#5. To: Zipporah (#0)
That's not torture to Rumsfeld. That's Little Donny's recreation.
That's not torture to Rumsfeld. That's Little Donny's recreation. GACK!!.. Are these people dealing with a full deck or what?? This is some of the sickest shit (literally).. re Abu Ghraib I've ever read..well other than Japanese porn.. which is a close 2nd.
Richard Nixon on Rumsfeld: " I don't think we have to worry about Rumsfeld, he's a ruthless little bastard isn't he ? "
Interesting forum.. to say the least.. hmm maybe someone needs to join and do an invitation or two.. On Rumsfeld.. the man is majorly screwed up.. obviously..
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