Vice Magazine:
What really happened at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on the night of June 9, 2006?
According to the US government, three detainees — all imprisoned as part of the global war on terror — hung themselves in their cells that night. But Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman, who was on guard that night at Camp Delta, came to believe something very different: that the three men were murdered in a secret CIA black site at Guantanamo.
After leaving the Army, Hickman spent years looking into the deaths. His investigation has led him to write a new book, Murder at Camp Delta…
There was speculation at the end of the year that “The Obama administration is accelerating its efforts to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center, preparing to move dozens of inmates out of the prison in coming months in a step forward for President Obama’s redoubled attempt to achieve a core national security objective before he leaves office.” It was elsewhere reported that President “Obama is also shifting his strategy by portraying the closure of the facility in Cuba as a fiscal issue… the administration hopes that reducing the prison’s population to just a few detainees will bolster its argument that keeping the facility open isn’t cost-effective.” When the new Cuba initiatives were announced, even the Grey Lady admitted that Guantanamo “remains a sore point for Cubans, a deeply felt grievance that the Castros, first Fidel and now his brother Raúl, have long pointed to as a stinging symbol of American imperialism.” The sooner that blot is removed, the better!
I read the Harpers excerpt from Hickman’s book (mentioned in the video around the 10:30 mark) back in 2010, but Harpers notoriously discourages internet links to its print work, and trying to write a coherent post eventually drove me to give up in despair. It’s become clear, since then, that a significant portion of the American public is perfectly happy that “we” torture people to death, and an even greater percentage just doesn’t care enough to keep the torture enthusiasts in line. But “we” will be paying for our sins, at Guantanamo and elsewhere, long after Dick Cheney’s artificial heart has ceased to propel his carcass.
PIGL
But, but, but,…”this is not who we are”.
At least that claim will be harder to make in future, which I’m sure will be great comfort to the shades of the tortured dead.
But, no, who am I kidding? Relatively clean public murders by beheading are the worst barbaric activity in the whole world ever, while silent cowardly murder under cover of night is forgiven. It’s alright if you are an American in uniform, it seems.
And your population of vicious pricks wonders “why do they hate us?” .
KG
Guantanamo isn’t an issue for the Cuban government because of the detention facility (specifically). It’s an issue because the base itself exists. Even if we were to close the prison, the base isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
I wonder if/when we will ever directly deal with the evilness perpetrated in our name following Sept 11. Given we are basically still trying to do that with slavery and Jim Crow, I’m guessing not in my lifetime… And I’m in my mid30s
ruemara
pfft. I’ve never doubted that they were probably murders. Not with what they do to make sure you can’t commit suicide in a prison. And this is exactly who and what, we are.
SRW1
@KG:
Sadly, you are most likely right: Omelet, eggs, etcetera.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
I’m assuming that a discussion with Cuba about the Guantanamo base (as well as the prison) is on the table with the recent normalization of relations. I doubt the U.S. would be willing to give it up entirely — do we pay “rent” to places like Germany and Japan for our bases there? I honestly have no idea.
Snarki, child of Loki
Want to get torture back to the category of “stuff the US NEVER does”?
Start torturing RWNJs to expose their terrorist connections and conspiracies. Start with the (remaining) OKC bomber.
Omelettes, eggs, indeed.
Mandalay
Thanks for posting this.
It’s easy to find articles and journalists sneering at Hickman’s claims. After all, what would happen to their precious access if they didn’t? Here’s loyal Villager Jim Miklaszewski doing exactly what is expected and required of him:
Imagine that – a group of people complicit in murder, and none of them talked! Nobody could have predicted…
And that’s all Miklaszewski’s got: nothing. But his empty disparagement is enough to ensure that he is still permitted to lob his softball questions at those inside the Pentagon.
billb
I am fine with gitmo torture as long as we start with War Criminals like darth cheney and rummy and especially mr yoo. while he is despicable, GW is too stupid to treat.
eemom
@PIGL:
The latter is NOT forgiven or forgivable by any decent person, here or anywhere else — but your “relatively clean” characterization of the former is some seriously sick shit.
Glad you are not among us in this country, wherever you are. Just as you say, we’ve got enough vicious pricks already.
MomSense
I think then Sen. Obama spoke about closing Guantanamo at just about every event during the 2007-08 campaign. While he was in the Senate he let lawyers representing detainees at the Supreme Court use his office. How many Senators like McCaskill and others went to multiple campaign events and nodded behind him as the crowd applauded closing that hellish prison. And yet all it took was a little Fox and right wing fear mongering about the dangers of bringing detainees to the states to stand trial and all of those Senators totally folded. Disgusting.
bago
Man, remember when Saddam was the only guy torturing people at Abu Ghraib and Castro was the only guy torturing in Cuba?
Good times.
Prescott Cactus
The US seems better with just moving on. Germany owns and admits it’s actions with memorials to the Holocaust in a way as an American I found bold. Never seen a Japanese internment camp in USA, though I haven’t looked too, too hard. Our slavery museums are still open, only called prisons.
cckids
@Prescott Cactus:
Well, Manzanar (former camp) is now a National Historic Site. My spouse & kids went there a few years ago, during a backpacking trip & were very moved & (the kids) appalled. Reading about it just isn’t the same thing.
Apparently the museum is very good.
Edit to add: From the NHS website: “Manzanar National Historic Site was established to preserve the stories of the internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and to serve as a reminder to this and future generations of the fragility of American civil liberties.”
wilfred
Where are the experts on Islam, who must know how terrible a sin suicide is? These religious fanatics have thus committed this sin, even though they are, by definition, religious fanatics? And no one wondered about this?
The Quranic source is sura An-Nisaa’ 4:29: “Nor kill nor destroy yourselves, for surely God has been to you Most Merciful.”
Muhammad said: “A man was inflicted with wounds and he committed suicide, and so Allah said: My slave has caused death on himself hurriedly, so I forbid Paradise for him.”
Zinsky
It’s no secret that America has tortured innocent people to death – go to Netflix and download “Taxi to the Dark Side”. Most Americans don’t know this, however. I was having a conversation with a conservative friend of mine recently and he about came unglued when I asserted that the U.S. had tortured innocent people to death. He said it could never have happened and that it was made up by liberals to make Bush-Cheney, et al look bad. There is a very wide streak of denial in most Americans.
Chris
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
The Navy doesn’t even want the base anymore, all it is to them is a money drain. Closing Gitmo certainly isn’t unthinkable, but with Congress in its present state, that kind of idea would never get off the ground. It’s among the many things where we’re incapable of going forward since the GOP lost its collective fucking mind circa 2008.
C.V. Danes
Yep. That, for me, was the most disturbing part of the torture report: that the response of the majority of the public was “meh, so what.”
We have become a country that not only tortures, but proudly tortures.
PIGL
@eemom: How is it worse than being shot or tortured to death? You are protesting way to much. Also, fuck you.
gratuitous
Yes, it appears that a majority of our fellow citizens don’t care very much about the torture and murder carried out with our tax dollars in our name. Part of that is certainly attributable to denial, part attributable to the activities of a certain media outlet that thumps the tub for American exceptionalism 24-7. Part of that is attributable to the craven response of other media outlets who are more concerned about the bottom line and offending the first two categories than they are about reporting facts. Part of it is attributable to beat reporters who have so merged with their subject that they are no longer distinguishable as a separate entity. The only clue we have that Jim Miklaszewski isn’t a Pentagon operative is that his paycheck is ostensibly written at 30 Rock and not Foggy Bottom.
I can’t do anything about any of that.
But I can do something about the people I am in contact with, in life and online. And you’ll never hear me justifying torture, murder or other forms of violence as the means of ending torture, murder or other forms of violence.
ecks
@PIGL:
really, more of one that lackadaisically tortures. “Wha, you mean our boys did that? Well, I guess bad or whatever. But OMFG, did you see who we’ve been linked with in the NFL draft?”
RaflW
@Prescott Cactus:
Ugh, yes.
My partner and I went to Selma & Montgomery last June, and we were shocked by how few, few people were at the civil rights museums. Only the Rosa Parks one was busy. Other than that? Crickets.
And when we first pulled into AL, we stopped at a rest area. The info booth was open, and I asked for info on Civil Rights. The nice older white lady came out and started showing me brochures on Civil War stuff. Oops! I guess white people don’t ask about Civil Rights much in her neck of the woods.
ETA: I do recommend the Rosa Parks experience. Really well done, it got at much more than the sanitized H.S. textbook story.