Two new weekend articles that are being widely quoted in the blogosphere add new details to the story of the development of the extralegal gulag system run by the Pentagon, torture included:
The Grey Zone by Seymour Hersh New Yorker, posted 05/15/04
The Roots of Torture Newsweek 05/15/04 issue, accessed 05/16/04
From the Newsweek article:
Indeed, the single most iconic image to come out of the abuse scandal—that of a hooded man standing naked on a box, arms outspread, with wires dangling from his fingers, toes and penis—may do a lot to undercut the administration's case that this was the work of a few criminal MPs. That's because the practice shown in that photo is an arcane torture method known only to veterans of the interrogation trade. "Was that something that [an MP] dreamed up by herself? Think again," says Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. "That's a standard torture. It's called 'the Vietnam.' But it's not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them."
David Neiwert in two blog posts from last week reminds us again just how asleep at the wheel the mainstream press can be. Three names that have been prominently featured in the gulag torture stories were also important players in the 1993 Waco disaster at the Branch Davidian compound. That incident made David Koresh a martyr for the far right, even though he was a cop-killing, child-molesting, fanatical cult leader. But even those who had no admiration for Koresh recognized that the incident was badly mishandled. Thanks in no small part to these three men:
Boykin, Schoomaker and Cambone: A Bushian trifecta 05/12/04
Sour Krauthammer 05/14/04
The "Boykin" would be Jerry Boykin, the Christian General.
2 comments:
and where would you be without the Boykin's of the world? Are you going to step up?:
Step up to do what? Propose disastrous strategies for dealing with armed cult groups? To promote illegal torture in prisons? No, I think I'll leave that to the Boykins of the world. - Bruce
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