No Puking Allowed.

[spindrifter]

Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba

By TIM GOLDEN
Published: February 9, 2006

United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.

In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods to keep them from being pressured by other hunger strikers, the officials said.

<snip>

Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantánamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the prison.

Colonel Martin said force feeding was carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner," and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. He said in a statement that "a restraint system to aid detainee feeding" was being used. He refused to answer detailed questions about the restraint chairs.

<snip>

It is clear that the government has ended the hunger strike through the use of force and through the most brutal and inhumane types of treatment," said Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, who last week visited the six Kuwaiti detainees he represents. "It is a disgrace."

The lawyers said other measures used to dissuade the hunger strikers included placing them in uncomfortably cold air-conditioned isolation cells, depriving them of "comfort items" like blankets and books and sometimes using riot-control soldiers to compel the prisoners to sit still while long plastic tubes were threaded down their nasal passages and into their stomachs.

<snip>

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The article goes on to discuss ethical issues involved in the hunger strikes: whether it is moral to allow someone to commit suicide.
Is it moral to imprison people for years without charging them? Is it moral to take affirmative steps to keep them from living their lives as human beings?


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/politics/09gitmo.html?hp&ex=1139461200&en=2800c00498318013&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[wtmusic]

1. carried out in a "humane and compassionate manner"

I bet.

[Warpy]

2. We always knew when a severely head injured patient was

starting to wake up, because the first thing he'd do would be pull that feeding tube.

Feeding tubes go in the nose and down the back of the throat and into the stomach. They are never humane in fully awake and unwilling patients. This force feeding of the prisoners at Guantanamo is just another kind of torture.

It needs to stop. The inmates either need to be formally charged and put on trial, or they need to be repatriated with our sincere apologies. Keeping them caged indefinitely with no hope of release is not what this country is all about, especially since so many of them were just foreign nationals in Afghanistan at the wrong time and not wild eyed terrorists, something that has been grudginly admitted to more than once.

This bunch in DC is so terrified of admitting they made any sort of mistake that they will keep people they know to be innocent bystanders in prison forever rather than lose face by letting them go, something that could have and should have happened two years ago.

I think we need an exchange. We'll put the Bush gang in Guantanamo. We'll give the bad guys there now a fair trial. And we'll let the innocent people go home.

[spindrifter]

3. I think the BushCo plan

is to try to keep Gitmo as low key as possible and let the next administration deal with the releases, the repatriations and the reparations for their abomination.

[benddem]

4. this is TORTURE

I've been in the ER tons of times when we had to put tubes down noses for drug over doses. If someone is awake and conscious and fighting you...you are torturing them.