America can't handle the truth – about Guantánamo, torture or a man now free from both

[rafeh1]

This is why you didn’t see a photo of detainees released over the weekend. This is why I can’t tell you more about the force-feeding of Abu Wa’el Dhiab. This is how the dark heart of the national security state beats
Guantánamo release of six to Uruguay will not impact force-feeding lawsuit
Guantánamo detainees now in Uruguay can bring families and find work
Follow live updates: CIA torture report released


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/09/truth-guantanamo-torture-abu-wael-dhiab

[woo me with science]

1. Powerful piece. Thank you.

It is the soul of our nation we're fighting for.

The Pentagon’s approach throughout my client’s case has offered a disturbing glimpse into the US military bureaucracy’s mentality: Though indifferent to human suffering, the US defense department is strikingly keen to be sure evidence of that suffering never sees the light of day.

When news of Abu Wa’el’s possible release reached us here at Reprieve a short while back, we sent Abu Wa’el mango juice, in order to help him come down safely from his hunger strike. But in a bizarre twist I would have thought beyond the grim imagination even of his captors, the juice was confiscated. Rather than easing up on a man it knows full well would shortly be free to speak his mind, the Pentagon preferred to fiddle with timetables, in the dim hope he would land here in Uruguay before anyone could see what terrible shape he’s in.

This secret approach echoes the Obama administration’s attitude to the force-feeding tapes – the evidence that may well have gotten Abu Wa’el released. Days before they put him on that plane, the Obama administration filed an appeal against a judgment that the public and the press had the right to see this footage. (The Guardian is involved in the lawsuit.) Officials had insisted that the tapes would “inflame Muslim sensibilities”. We consented to hiding the faces and voices of guards; but it is the face of Abu Wa’el – his voice – that the US government is afraid you’ll see.

Make no mistake: the force-feeding tapes are upsetting. If they do go public, you will probably never see Guantánamo quite the same way again. The footage cuts through years of Pentagon rhetoric. It will force people for whom Guantánamo is a long-forgotten memory to see a human being trapped at the dark heart of the national security state. The tapes show a system that damages not just detainees but the young servicemen and women we ask to participate in it. They are, in short, the truth.