May 19 2009
Obama and Bush Birds of a Feather; IRF Teams at Gitmo Continue to Beat and Torture Detainees
It is little wonder that the Obama administration is reluctant to prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration since the criminal activity of the former administration is being carried on by the present administration. In spite of all the declarations of reform, President Obama has not stopped the torture at Guantanamo. The Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) is a goon squad operating at Guantanamo responsible for beating, torturing and humiliating detainees. And in spite of President Obama’s pledge to end torture they are still on the job abusing and torturing detainees.
In February the Center for Constitutional Rights released a report titled “conditions of Confinement at Guantanamo: Still In Violation of the Law”. This report seems to have gone relatively unnoticed by the mainstream media. The Center found that the abuse is continuing. Reuters reported that, Ahmed Ghappour a lawyer for detainees in Guantanamo said that his clients were reporting “a ramping up in abuse” since Obama was elected. Abuses that included “beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force feeding detainees who are on hunger strike” While the CCR has called on the Obama administration to end the use of IRF teams at Guantanamo, the torture continues. 
In April Mohammad al-Qurani a 21-year-old prisoner at Guantanamo from Chad reported to Al-Jazeera that he has received almost daily beatings since the new President came to power. Reporting a specific incident that took place since Obama has taken office; al-Qurani stated that; “They had a thick rubber or plastic baton they beat me with. They emptied out about two canisters of tear gas on me,” “After I stopped talking, and tears were flowing from my eyes, I could hardly see or breathe.”“They then beat me again to the ground, one of them held my head and beat it against the ground. I started screaming to his senior ’see what he’s doing, see what he’s doing’ [but] his senior started laughing and said ‘he’s doing his job.’”
For those who may doubt the veracity of detainee’s consistent testimony regarding the tactics of the IRF, I would refer you to the case of Army Sgt. 1st Class Sean Baker. In January of 2003 Sgt. Baker was ordered participate in a drill where he would play the role of an uncooperative prisoner. He dressed in the traditional orange jumpsuit. He was told that if the situation became unbearable he was to yell out the code word “red” to stop the drill. Allegedly the IRF team knew he was a soldier and that this was a drill but maybe not. This is what Sgt. Baker reported; “They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and, unfortunately, one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was ‘red.’ … That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: ‘I’m a U.S. soldier. I’m a U.S. soldier.’Baker reports having his head slammed to the floor once more and groaning “I am a U.S. soldier” once more. “I heard them say Whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, like… he was telling the other guy to stop.” All IRF extractions are videotaped as part of standard operating procedure. Sgt. Baker attempted to obtain the video tape of the drill but to no avail. He was told by his squad leader that “There is no tape.” The New York Times reported that the military says it can’t find the tape. Secondary to the beating Sgt. Baker has been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. He has suffered multiple seizures and now has permanent brain damage.
This is what they did to one of our nation’s soldiers! What are they doing to detainees?
To those who have told me I am too critical of Obama and I need to give him time. Well, times up! IRF teams at Guantanamo need to be shut down, we need to see the video of what they have been doing. And a war crimes tribunal needs to be convened, and if it’s not done promptly then President Obama needs to be on the list of defendants!
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/19/jeremy_scahill_little_known_military_thug
I think so much is expected from Obama and we all know the daunting dissapointment that sometimes comes with such expectations. He’ll battle to find solutions to US’s legendary problems such as the hive of enemies across the middle east. To be honest i’m not that opposed to torture but the problem with such a system is that innocent people are likely to suffer the same fate of terrorists.
Iwazi,
Torture simply doesnt work, under torture a person will say anything and your right innocent people are likley to be tortured. It is a war crime. Either people stand for something or they go for anything. Obama is a corporate democrat a wolf in sheep clothing.
Wow, what an over reaction…these people are in jail, they are prisoners. Every jail in America has a reactionary team that responds to incidents. They are not thugs…they are trained to take control of a prisoner. Any prison sucks and so does Gitmo…so what? This is not torture nor is it a war crime…it’s prisoner management….
Feeding someone who is on a hunger strike…good. Pepper spraying an unruly inmate…great. Forcing them to the ground and using force to subdue them…excellent. Not torture…
Now using electrods, waterboardings, bamboo sticks under finger nails…Torture. Peeling their skin from there bodies….torture. Cutting off fingers and toes…torture.
This is not day camp…It’s prison.
After having spent considerable time in a green jumpsuit back in the day; I can see where konadude is coming from. To clarify; in Mass., those convicted already wear green whereas those awaiting trial wear orange. When a disturbance broke out-the “Boys in Black” responded in what seemed like 30 seconds. Everyone on the block was ordered to lay face down on the ground whether you were involved or not. Those who were foolish enough to ignore this order suffered the consequences. The two combatants (or whatever #) were shackled and brought to solitary (the hole). However, I believe what the author is trying to portray is the continued, warrantless beatings that are still being handed out. To be honest; I have read reports that would refute those allegations but I have learned a couple of things from this site. 1) Don’t propose an opposing viewpoint without ample empirical data and 2) Don’t argue with the Emperor unless you are well armed. Since I have neither the time or the inclination to dig through newspaper articles; I will bow to his claims but when I get the energy (lol); I will be back. Much respect dissent! To konadude: You are also right when you say that prison is not day camp nor should it be. The use of pepper spray is common and I have felt my share of it (deservedly). However; if the practices we have all been bitching about (myself included) are still being used-then something is definitely wrong. Well written my friend. New e-mail address: connor.dean@ymail.com. My hotmail account was hacked and I cannot access it.
Oh I am so happy that my 2 favorite respondents have come to by blog today. Tailback, thank you for your deference now while I will script my comments for both of you since you seem to be on the same page, I will reserve the harsher of my comments for KonaD, since he brought his ass I feel it only appropriate to hand it back to him. Happy days, love and respect to both of you and here we go……..
Allow me to preface my comments by saying that in 12 yrs in the ER I have participated in numerous “take downs”, I never slammed a patients head into the floor, I never punched a patient, I never kicked a patient, I never beat a patient, I never needed to use chemical sprays to subdue a patient. I have participated in taking down many of combative large men and never did one of them need medical treatment secondary to my actions. So as for justifying assault on someone you are trying to subdue, BULLSHIT, it is not required, it is battery plain and simple and using the fact that they are in protective custody to excuse beating someone is chicken shit. If you don’t have the nads to scrap for control of a detainee without engaging in battery then you are a thug plain and simple.
Many of the detainees in Guantanamo are not “guilty” of anything, they are simply in custody, if you think being in custody means that your captors have the right to beat the shit out of you and cause brain damage then you then you are fucked in your head. Prisoners have been released from Guantanamo who were tortured and later found to be guilty of NOTHING! NOTHING! Did I mention NOTHING! When you keep a man in a cage like an animal for years and don’t charge him with a crime and subject him to forced feedings, ( Oh, by the way do you know what its like to have a E-tube forcibly shoved down your throat? Have you done it? I have. It is abusive to say the least, I have participated in many forced evacuation of patients stomach contents, and I can tell you from experience that if they did it to you forcibly you would call it abuse and torture). But I’m sure KonaD knows all about it, as he refers to it as “Feeding someone who is on a hunger strike” BITCH please you don’t know what you are talking about. KonaD, lets imagine you had a son, and that he was taken into captivity and was innocent of any crime and held for years without charge or trial, and in protest of his treatment he decided to go on hunger strike, would you refer to shoving a large tube down his throat and OVER-feeding him as “feeding someone who is on hunger strike”? Or would you say that your son was being abused? If his captures placed pepper spray on his toilet paper would you say hey he is “in jail, they (he is a prisoner) are prisoners” Would you say that if they slammed his head into the floor when he was not resisting and caused him brain damage that it was a reasonable action since he was in custody? I think not brah, you are FOS, (Full of Shit). And tailback, is a towel soaked in pepper spray and rubbed in a mans eyes required for extrication of a prisoner from a cell? Would you say that was a reasonable way to treat one of your loved ones who was in custody? The results of that action left a man blind in his right eye. Oh but yes he was in custody, not charged, no crime being alleged but he was in jail so WTF rub pepper spray in his eyes if he doesn’t do whatever you say. Well maybe you guys are a bit more passive than I am because if I was kept in custody for years when I had not committed a crime and I was not charged with anything I might start to resist my captors. I guess you guys would just quietly do whatever was asked of you by your captors. What polite and servile gentlemen you must be.
When an IRF team goes in to a cell and takes a man who “was totally shackled, and they would hold his head fixed still. They would force water up his nose until he was suffocating and would scream for them to stop. This was done with medical staff present, and they would join in” you’re really going to argue that that is not torture and is simply part of extricating a SHACKLED prisoner from his cell? BULL FUCKING SHIT do your goddamned homework. KonaD, Over reacting my ass, the man had not been found guilty or charged with anything! You want to live in a country where your government reserves the right to treat people like this when they have not even been charged?!!
Or when a man is laying face down in his cell with his hands on his head the team is reacting reasonably to enter the cell and knee him full weight in the back and smash his face into the concrete floor and punch him repeatedly. No that’s not torture or abuse. It’s a simple extrication. BULLSHIT, you guys never bothered to read what is going on there, I gave you the links, but becase the team is considered to be a “reaction force” they must only be doing things in reaction to dangerous prisoners. Wake the fuck up! This is not cell extrication, this is abuse and torture, there is no reason to place pepper spray on a mans toilet paper. Get fucking serious, apologetics for torture that’s what you are giving me, you haven’t done your home work.
How can you consider it reasonable to take “NG tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, reinserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were reinserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from the other detainees remaining on the tubes.”
Get the fuck out of here! If that happened to either of your loved ones you guys would have a fuckin shit fit and you goddamned well know it.
I could go on but I think you see my point, and if you actually read up on what’s happening you might not bring such lame defenses of torture and abuse. But thank you so much for playing and I hope you come back for more. Respect and have a pleasant day.
konadude
Come on now, most of these people are only “suspects” so I don’t think they deserve the punishment meted out. However, I would condone torture on arrogant criminals like Bin Laden, who’re willing to destroy a country with it’s people for the sake of ideology or political disagreements.
My concern however is the fact that president Obama is seemingly taking on too much too early. I don’t think the urgency with which he declared the pending closure of Gitmo was necessary.
Iwazi,
See that’s just the thing, when torture is practiced on an administrative basis it is not only applied to “bad men”. Torture is not effective it is something that is done to satisfy sadistic tendencies and produce bogus confessions. With torture you can make almost anyone say almost anything, it is not something that is done for practical reasons, it does not produce reliable information but people have a deep need to feel like someone is paying for the bad things that happen, so, it is acceptable in many peoples minds. Making people feel better is not a reason to torture 1 person wrongly, and since there are no safe guards against that happening it is completely unacceptable. But that is simply an ethical stand. Ethics aside it is strictly against the law and that is what is at issue now. For top government officials to ignore both international and domestic law and commit war crimes and crimes against humanity is an outrage, common people in this county can go to prison for possession of small amounts of drugs, yet our leaders can commit war crimes with impunity. Oh hell no, either we are a nation of laws or we are a nation of men, when powerful individuals are not subject to the law tyranny is the result and innocent people get harmed and killed.
oh and thanx for stopping by again
Bitch please….nice rant but I don’t see it that way. I think Obama is doing a fine job and I’m willing to let things play out, abuse maybe, torture no way.
konaD,
Way knock a reply out of the park. Did you work long on that? Hey if you support torturing innocent people I don’t suspect any argument will work for you.