"They blinded me" - Omar Deghayes

[DoYouEverWonder]

Oct 7, 2005

Hypocrisy and a disregard for basic human rights and international laws continue to mark the American President’s so-called “war on terror".

Bellow are details of one of the most horrific incidents that took place at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where American soldiers tortured and abused prisoners, whom they labeled enemy-combatants.

Omar Deghayes is a British resident who has been tortured by U.S. guards at Guantanamo Bay, suffering violent sexual assaults, near drowning and an attack in which he was blinded.

Deghayes said the soldiers tortured him using electric shocks. They also put him in a room with caged snakes when he was in Pakistan before he was taken later to Guantanamo.

Deghayes was first jailed in a U.S.-run jail in Afghanistan, which he likened to a "Nazi camp."

http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2005/10/05/4126.shtml

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[stillcool]

2. give them some time....

Did you even read the article?

[tompayne1]

5. not even funny

Trust me on this one. i have never met an american soldier who was bent on destroying all arabs. I met many germans who were intent on killing all jews,blacks,etc.

[stillcool]

13. No way will I trust you on this or anything else....

to assume that you know because of your familiarity with American soldiers is ludicrous. Surely you understand what happens psychologically when human beings hold other human beings in captivity. Surely you understand what a power-rush it is to control those beneath you? And, if you know so much, than you know what human beings are capable of. We are all the same.

[tompayne1]

16. how old are you?

There is no culture of hate among the american soldiers. I might sound like a freeper but i am telling you those camps are not as bad as all the former detainees are saying.

[stillcool]

22. old enough to have...

been affected by war and feel the affects from those that fight it. Old enough to see people do unspeakable things, and love them still. Old enough to have seen in myself that which I so hate in others. Old enough to never say never.

[democracyindanger]

23. Yeah, that's why the Pentagon

was so intent on denying the release of all videos and photos from Abu Ghraib.

And when were you at the prisons, since you're an expert?

[tompayne1]

24. I have been to gitmo

And i was interned in Auschwitz

[democracyindanger]

26. What an interesting life you must have led

To have visited Guantanamo, as well as have been a prisoner at Auschwitz.

And how odd that you describe your time at Auschwitz as "interned." I think that's the first time I've ever seen a Holocaust survivor refer to it in that way.

By the way, if you're glomming on to the liberal spirit of the Revolutionary Era pamphleteer, it's "Paine," not "Payne."

[chalky]

27. I'm thinking more on the line of "pain"....but that's probably just me.

And for some reason the use of the word "loose" rang a bell in my head...but again, that's probably just me.

[readmoreoften]

31. Nah, it's not just you.

I can't imagine any holocaust survivor making excuses for such brutality--especially one who discovered DU 9 days ago and posted 331 times in 9 days to get his post count up.

Especially when a US civilian would HARDLY have access to any interrogations (or...anything, really) at gitmo.

Personally, I don't like to see DU turned into a 'role-play fantasy game.'

[mattclearing]

41. Ouch. n/t

[lectrobyte]

38. It ain't so bad... I'm sure someone like Zimbardo would disagree with

your assessment. Either charge the people with crimes and let the justice system take its course, or declare them as POWs and treat them accordingly. This "enemy combatant" stuff is just bullshit.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. This is LBN

I didn't write the article.

Besides what do you know about Gitmo? I'm curious.

[tompayne1]

6. my knowledge of gitmo is not as great as my knowledge of auschwitz

But i have a friend who served there and i have visited him once. they are treated like humans there. I can't say anything about the interrogations because neither of us were party to those.

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. So you're knowledge is second hand

and therefore doesn't count as much as the fellow in the article who was actually imprisioned there.

[tompayne1]

12. I am saying that he is hyping it.

That is how you get attention.

[Tinksrival]

30. How would you know in this instance.

And how does one hype blindness!! I'm sorry but your out of line with this blanket comment. You couldn't posibly know. Time to step back Jack, er Tom.

[greyl]

15. Your friend "served" at Auschwitz?

This would mean your friend is/was a Nazi.

[tompayne1]

17. no i was interned in Auschwitz

My friend is a gitmo.

[democracyindanger]

29. Wow. You visited Guantanamo?

They just hand out visitor passes to a secure military base hundreds of miles outside of US territory? Cool. How'd you get there? Glass-bottomed boat from Miami? See any dolphins on the way?

[readmoreoften]

32. LOL! Don't you watch the movies!

DUH! He is fucking Magneto from the X-men! Using the iron from the blood of his jailer's body, he built a malleable bridge of metal droplets spanning from his high-tech security prison in (uh..) Washington, D.C. to Gitmo Bay, Cuba.

He did have to stop at a motel in Florida, though, to get out of the way of the most recent tropical depression.

He is also a top secret super agent for the United States Government. He fought in Korea, Nam, and the Peloponnesian War. In the 60s, he was a tireless champion of civil rights and a best selling novelist. He currently resides in his mother's basement and is best known for his mediocre attempts at freeping.

[Laelth]

7. 331 posts in 9 days?

My, you have been busy.

:hi:

-Laelth

[bemildred]

8. You were in the Nazi camps?

[tompayne1]

10. Yes

I really would prefer not to talk about it but let me tell you that the americans are not capable of the kind of numbness and disregard of human life that the nazis were. Simply not capable.

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. So didn't Hitler and his SS agents

claim that they treated people in the camps like humans?

There is overwhelming evidence that prisoners in US custody are being tortured and even killed on a regular basis.

I don't understand how anyone who has survived a Nazi camp could even try to defend what we are doing to people in our own camps.

BTW: Even though it's none of my business, you must be fairly old? All of the people that I knew personally who had survived the camps are all dead at this point.

[tompayne1]

20. yes i will tell you i am old older than you for sure.

And if you mean that propaganda film at Treblinka then they did claim that they treated them like humans. That was no more than a farce and everyone knew it. the only reports from gitmo are from foreign nationals who have a bone to pick with the US most are being sent home to their countries of origin not murdered by the tens of thousands.

[DoYouEverWonder]

25. What are you clairvoyant?

How could you 'know' that you are older then someone you've never met?

In regards to the reports of torture, it is not just foreign nationals, must of whom were arrested and never charge and later released, having a bone to pick.

There are also 100's of images and videos documenting all sorts of abuses and torture.

Beside, believe it or not this sort of thing even goes on in American prisons. Just most people never hear about it.

[readmoreoften]

34. Clairvoyant? No!

I already told you all! He's fucking Magneto, the supervillian! Okay, maybe Magneto is clairvoyant. (Actually, I only saw that movie once.)

[bemildred]

19. All right, I'm going to believe you.

Because you are right in a way.
But the difference is one of degree, not of kind.
The treatment of "detainees" is far from humane,
and no more justified than the Nazi camps.

[democracyindanger]

36. Don't

Because you're better than that.

[lateo]

35. My ass.

Anyone is capable of that sort of treatment. We are all just a bunch of hairless apes. Are you saying that Germans, on a whole, are just more evil than other human beings?

[lectrobyte]

39. You are so very wrong on that, unfortunately.

[Say_What]

40. BWAHAHAHA --americans are not capable of nazi-like behavior???

guess you haven't heard of the School of the Americas and the TORTURE books written by them for those they train.

http://haw.yachana.org/resources/torture/

http://www.alternet.org/rights/19313/

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=999

[lectrobyte]

42. So Gitmo is OK with you because it ain't as bad as Auschwitz?

[GliderGuider]

11. Sorry, no Godwin call on this one.

The comment about Nazi camps was in a quote from the original article. It is thus not a debating ploy or a response in a thread, which are the original underpinnings of Godwin's Law. Primary quotes that make such comparisons as their premise are perfectly valid.

Please keep in mind, too, that there were many kinds of "Nazi camps" with different levels of harshness - the original author didn't specify Auschwitz in his comparison. I'm quite sure that the Nazis had camps that were much more humane than GTMO - many of their European POW camps, for example. Quite a few here feel that imputing fascist leanings to the Chimp in Chief and his troop of Murder Monkeys is quite appropriate.

[tompayne1]

14. facist yes

Nazi, no

[democracyindanger]

33. Ach, und auch:

Sie sprechen Deutsch, ja? Wie geht's? Wie heissen Sie?

[lateo]

28. Try using a spell checker.

mmmk?

[Talismom]

4. This is just so shameful...I don't know what to say except I'm horrified

and shamed by the thought of how we go on with our lives while things like this are being done in our names.

[Judi Lynn]

21. There's no one in this world who can justify this kind of behavior

toward anyone. From the article:

In his prison notes, Deghayes said troops pushed their fingers in his eyes in 2003 because he refused a rectal search -- a controversial procedure at Guantanamo.

Among other abuses Deghayes detailed was having his head flushed in a toilet, feces smeared on his face and water forced up his nose with a pressure hose.

At the "Nazi camp" in Baghram, he said soldiers kept him naked, threatened him with sodomy, and chained him to a wall with his hands high above his head.

Deghayes said that in Pakistan, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks and dunked into a tub of water until he nearly drowned.
(snip)

The accusations, made by Deghayes’ attorney and human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, finally persuaded British ministers to take up his case.
(snip)

“He has been treated worse in Guantanamo than any other person I have come across. He is legally trained and tries to help other people there, so the Americans think he’s a trouble-maker. Consequently, he’s suffered for it,” he said.

People stopping through here to attempt to scuffle with DU'ers have taken too much upon themselves if they try to pick a fight over this man's case. There's NO JUSTIFICATION under any circumstance, no matter how low your personal morals are.

I grieve for this man's life. What a filthy tragedy.

[DoYouEverWonder]

37. Thank you

You nailed it. There's NO JUSTIFICATION under any circumstance.

Plus this is just one story of many. That's why they are refusing to release the pictures. It's not real until you have a picture of it.

[Say_What]

43. SOA training and torture.... our tax dollars at work

<clips>

Iraq, Guantanamo, SOA

Torture and empire do not fit the average American's vision of what the United States is about. The first impulse is to deny, then to deplore, then to point fingers, then to legitimate, then to forget. In a previous article, Abuse and Torture: Isolated Incident or Common Policy?, I brought up the connection between Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo - particularly in the person of Major General Miller. MG Miller came from Guantanamo to do an assessment of interrogation at Abu Ghraib. One has to assume that his recommendations probably reflected what was considered "effective" at Guantanamo. It may well have been to help implement a "new" interrogation policy.

The headline reads

The "techniques" used in Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere) are not new. They are documented as being used by US interrogators within the military - as with the manual described above - and within the CIA ( Torture by the Book, Dodd, Guardian, 5/06/04). These "techniques" are also referred to specifically by the CIA in Kurt Nimmo's CounterPunch article Inside the Cells of Abu Ghraib - The CIA Privatized Torture (5/04/04).

But despite "new" manuals and "old" manuals, the US has been training people in interrogation (and other) methods at the School of the Americas for decades. . The SOA changed it's name, but not its location or purpose, to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001.

There are added problems with the torture of people in Iraq. That is that these are not POWs. They are (from all reports) not insurgents or terrorists, or even on the whole what are referred to as "high value" prisoners. These people are (and were) primarily random folks picked up in sweeps or at check points. I have heard pundits arguing that these aren't like the prisoners at Guantanamo. Actually, there has been a lack of discrimination in who is at Guantanamo as well, and it has taken a lot of pull for some nations (like Britain) to get their citizens released.

http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/050904-iraq_guantanamo_so.php