Horrific Scenes Of Brutality And Degradation

I once was sceptical about all the allegations of torture and abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but this latest report from the Washington Post has overcome my incredulity.

The U.S. government must do everything in its power to stop these atrocities and bring the perpetrators to justice:

Female interrogators repeatedly used sexually suggestive tactics to try to humiliate and pry information from devout Muslim men held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a military investigation not yet public and newly declassified accounts from detainees.

The prisoners have told their lawyers, who compiled the accounts, that female interrogators regularly violated Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The women rubbed their bodies against the men, wore skimpy clothes in front of them, made sexually explicit remarks and touched them provocatively, at least eight detainees said in documents or through their attorneys.

It gets worse. Much worse:

The military investigation of U.S. detention and interrogation practices worldwide, led by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, confirmed one case in which an Army interrogator took off her uniform top and paraded around in a tight T-shirt to make a Guantanamo detainee uncomfortable, and other cases in which interrogators touched the detainees suggestively, the senior Pentagon official said.

Is there no end to this inhumane and barbaric treatment?

German detainee Murat Kurnaz told his lawyer that three women in lacy bras and panties strutted into the interrogation room where he was sitting in chains. They cooed about how attractive he was and suggested "they could have some fun," he said.

When Kurnaz averted his eyes, he said, one woman sat on his lap, another rubbed her breasts against his back and massaged his chest and a third squatted near his crotch. He head-butted the woman behind him, he said, knocking her off him. All three ran out and a team of soldiers stormed in and beat him, he said.

Such depravity, unprecedented in the history of civilized warfare!

Yasein Esmail, a Yemeni detainee, said he had been interrogated more than 100 times since being "kidnapped" in a marketplace in Kabul, Afghanistan, and brought to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted to his lawyer that when he refused to talk in one interview, a female soldier entered wearing a tight T-shirt.

"Why aren't you married?" she reportedly asked Esmail. "You are a young man and have needs. What do you like?"

Esmail said "she bent down with her breasts on the table and her legs almost touching" him. "Are you going to talk," she asked, "or are we going to do this for six hours?"

Six hours? Even the strongest man could not but break down under the pressure of such unrelenting torture after six minutes!

There are far more humane methods of persuasion which do not degrade their subjects' pride and human dignity, such as beating, whipping and electric shock, as practiced by progressive nations as pre-invasion Iraq, China, North Korea and Iran, and which the United States would have done well to emulate, instead of engaging in these unspeakable cruelties.

Such practices are a reproach to a civilized nation.