Torture and the war on terror

[struggle4progress]

By Rick Holmes
GateHouse News Service
Posted Sep 05, 2008 @ 09:18 PM

... The same things the North Vietnamese did to <John McCain> - beatings, sensory deprivation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, close confinement, denial of medical treatment - have been done to hundreds of prisoners in the name of the United States ...

People like Maher Arar, the former Framingham, Mass., resident kidnapped by the CIA while changing planes in New York and shipped off to Libya, where he was beaten and locked for months in a coffin-sized hole.

People caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, like John Walker Lindh, who thought he was held prisoner by Afghanistan's Northern Alliance until he heard American voices talking about whether he should be killed on the spot. He was labeled "the American Taliban" and held for 54 days without access to a lawyer, a bullet intentionally left in his leg.

Mayer writes about Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen detained at the Macedonian border in a case of mistaken identity. He was taken by the CIA to a prison in Afghanistan, where he was subject to the full range of "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Some CIA handlers suspected early on that he was no terrorist, but an official in Langley who had a "gut feeling" he was guilty insisted he be given the treatment. He lost 60 pounds before he was released 149 days after he was detained ...

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/opinions/columnists/x802007020/Rick-Holmes-Torture-and-the-war-on-terror

[OKDem08]

1. Want to go deeper down the rabbit hole?...

read Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine". Our involvement in these activities are systemic and have been ongoing for DECADES. The truth is difficult to accept.

[PDJane]

2. I've read that too..........

along with some interesting books about people like karen Silkwood. This has been going on for a long time, and it's becoming a habit.