"the controversies over the Iraq logs released by Wikileaks last Friday escalate, with the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture calling on Barack Obama to initiate an investigation into the war crimes revealed in the documents’ release, not least U.S. connivance with wide-scale Iraqi torture, it is not surprising that other leakers and whistleblowers are wanting to get in on the act.
The story reported here also comes on the same sad day that Omar Khadr, after years of torture and solitary imprisonment in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo, locked away at age 15 for eight years, pleaded guilty to “terrorism” and multiple murders — including crimes for which he had never been charged — in a show trial confession engineered by the Pentagon. More will be written on this later.
The UK Guardian is reporting that secret training materials used by the British military in recent years include actions and behaviors that are clearly abusive and outside the treatment of prisoners mandated by the Geneva conventions. The article emphasizes the use of humiliation and sensory deprivation as primary tools of the British interrogator. Even “recent training material
blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic handcuffs are essential equipment for military interrogators.”http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2010/10/25/the-wikileaks-effect-uk-guardian-reveals-british-interrogation-manuals-authorize-abuse/