Category: Guantánamo Bay/G.I.T.M.O.

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Torture Comes Home to Roost – Andrew P. Napolitano 8/25/23

Source: Antiwar.com

“Maybe there is a beast. Maybe it’s only us.”
~ William Golding (1911-1993), “Lord of the Flies”

Hidden within some folks are the souls of saints. Hidden within others are the souls of beasts. Torture unleashes the beasts.

Nothing is more destructive of human decency, nothing is less fruitful in seeking truth, nothing is more totalitarian and nothing so undermines the government’s own cases as its use of torture.

Yet, torture is universally condoned by the government.

Continue reading “Torture Comes Home to Roost – Andrew P. Napolitano 8/25/23”

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U.S. Sends Home Brothers Held for Nearly 20 Years at Guantánamo Bay – Carol Rosenberg 2/23/23

Source: NYTimes.com

The latest release, of two Pakistanis never charged with a crime, reduced the detainee population of the once-sprawling prison complex to 32.

The U.S. military released two brothers on Thursday who had been held as detainees in the war against terrorism for helping to operate safe houses where suspected operatives of Al Qaeda holed up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Continue reading “U.S. Sends Home Brothers Held for Nearly 20 Years at Guantánamo Bay – Carol Rosenberg 2/23/23”

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Doctor Describes and Denounces C.I.A. Practice of ‘Rectal Feeding’ of Prisoners – NYTimes 2/24/23

Source: NYTimes.com

In a hearing at Guantánamo Bay, an expert gave a graphic public depiction of torture after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Over the years, the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of waterboarding and other forms of torture in its secret overseas prisons after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been revealed in government leaks, testimony and a damning Senate investigation.

But an expert’s testimony this week in pretrial hearings at Guantánamo Bay offered some of the most graphic details made public about the C.I.A.’s shadowy use of rectal feeding on its prisoners, a discredited practice kept secret long after other torture methods had been exposed….

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Tortured Guantánamo Detainee is Freed in Belize – CarolRosenberg 2/2/23

Source: NYTimes.com

Majid Khan, a Pakistani citizen who attended high school in Maryland, finished his sentence last year.

A small Central American nation, known for its barrier reef and ecotourism, has taken in a former terrorist turned U.S. government informant whose tale of torture by the C.I.A. moved a military jury at Guantánamo Bay to urge the Pentagon to grant him leniency.

Continue reading “Tortured Guantánamo Detainee is Freed in Belize – CarolRosenberg 2/2/23”

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The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers – AndrewP.Napolitano 2/1/23

Source: AntiWar.com

In the days and months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating the attacks on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after bin Ladin was murdered in his home in Pakistan in 2011, the government decided that the true mastermind of 9/11 was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin’s death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for two years in Pakistan and charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, to be tried before an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Continue reading “The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers – AndrewP.Napolitano 2/1/23”

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More Than 150 International Organizations Call on Biden to Close Guantánamo on 21st Anniversary – TheIntercept 1/11/23

Source: TheIntercept.com

Guantánamo Bay “is the iconic example of the abandonment of the rule of law,” the letter argues.

On the 21st anniversary of the first orange-jumpsuit clad “unlawful enemy combatants” arriving blindfolded and shackled to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, more than 150 international human rights organizations are urging President Joe Biden to finally shutter the prison. The letter, coordinated by the Center for Victims of Torture, or CVT, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, calls for a closure to the current prison, an end to the indefinite military detention of the men living there, and a pledge to never again use the naval base for “unlawful mass detention.”

Continue reading “More Than 150 International Organizations Call on Biden to Close Guantánamo on 21st Anniversary – TheIntercept 1/11/23”

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Guantánamo’s First 7,627 Days – KarenJ.Greenberg 12/8/22

Source: TomDispatch.com

Will America’s Forever Prison Finally Close on Biden’s Watch?

As of December 8, 2022, Guantánamo Bay detention facility — a prison offshore of American justice and built for those detained in this country’s never-ending Global War on Terror — has been open for nearly 21 years (or, to be precise, 7,627 days). Thirteen years ago, I published a book, The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days. It told the story of the military officers and staff who received the prison’s initial detainees at that U.S. naval base on the island of Cuba early in 2002. Like the hundreds of prisoners that followed, they would largely be held without charges or trial for years on end.

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Forever Prisoners – AndrewP.Napolitano 6/30/22

Source: LewRockwell.com

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 30, 1787

When Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend, neighbor and colleague, James Madison, his view that the basis of government must be to preserve liberty rather than order, the War of Revolution against Great Britain had been won, the Articles of Confederation were in place and Madison was beginning to prepare for his pivotal role in the drafting of the Constitution.

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CIA Files Confirm Guantanamo Bay Torture Program’s MKULTRA Roots – MintPressNews 4/21/22

Source: MintPressNews.com

Kit Klarenberg investigates the troubling links between the CIA’s clandestine Guantanamo Bay torture program and MKULTRA-era mind control experiments.

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — In March the CIA declassified a 2008 CIA Inspector General report on the agency’s treatment of 9/11 suspect Ammar al-Baluchi at overseas ‘black sites’ and Guantanamo Bay. The report was released as a result of legal submissions and its shocking contents offer an unprecedentedly candid snapshot of the brutal physical and psychological torment to which he and hundreds of others were subjected by the agency over many years, under its global torture program.

Continue reading “CIA Files Confirm Guantanamo Bay Torture Program’s MKULTRA Roots – MintPressNews 4/21/22”