MORE GUANTANAMO….Knight Ridder reports on the latest disclosures about interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay during the 2002-2004 period when Major General Geoffrey Miller was in charge of the prison there:
Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.
Honestly, when I read this stuff I don’t know whether to be more disgusted by the moral obtuseness it displays or by its sheer stupidity. Maybe this will help make up my mind:
Military interrogators “are adamant that their interrogation strategies are the best ones to use despite a lack of evidence of their success,” [an e-mail] said.
The same e-mail complained that the military officer overseeing interrogations, a lieutenant colonel whose name was blocked out, “blatantly misled the Pentagon into believing that the (FBI’s behavioral-analysis team) had endorsed the (military’s) aggressive and controversial interrogation plan” during a teleconference with Pentagon officials.
The Pentagon’s response? The usual. They’ve never had a policy that “encouraged or condoned abuse of detainees at Guantanamo.” They must practice saying that with a straight face for hours every day.
