U.S. torture revelations: Gitmo & Abu Ghraib

As I’ve predicted a few times, further revelations about Uncle Sam’s terrifying record of detainee abuse have continued to come out throughout the summer. Today, we had the news about the start of the trial of a visibly pregnant (but still truculent) Lynndie England. There have also been a couple of other tidbits in the major media that give notice of intriguing additional news items to come…
First, Newsweek has this story, by Michael Hirsch and John Barry, telling us that the Schlesinger Commission, appointed by Rumsfeld himself to look into the detainee abuse issue, will be issuing its report in mid-August: and it may assign blame to people high up in the Pentagon, including possibly Bombs-Away Don himself.
They write:

there is strong sentiment to assign some responsibility up the line to senior civilian officials at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, several sources close to the discussions say. The Defense secretary is expected to be criticized, either explicitly or implicitly, for failing to provide adequate numbers of properly trained troops for detaining and interrogating captives in Afghanistan and Iraq. His office may also be rebuked for not setting clear interrogation rules and for neglecting to see that guidelines were followed. The commissioners “are taking an unvarnished look at the issue as a whole,” said a source close to the commission. “A more extensive look than some people had initially thought they might take.”

Certainly worth watching out for. (Hirsh and Barry make clear that former Secdef Jim Schlesinger, who’s heading the four-person commission, may be a hawk, but he’s also a fiercely independent thinker who has already won at least one significant battle with Bombs-Away Don over the scope of the commission’s work.)
Over at ABC News, meanwhile, there’s an exclusive bit of reporting that the three Brit-cits who were freed from Guantanamo in March have produced a “written account” of their time there that details some pretty nasty treatment.
We actually saw this item on ABC Evening (TV) News this evening, and the reporter was holding up some kind of a bound, report-type publication that seemed to be the “account” in question. I even think the reporter (I forget who it was) said it would be presented to someone tomorrow, or soon thereafter.
There’s nothing about that in the ABC web story. But it does say this:

The men–who were released from Guantanamo in March and flown home to England, where police freed them without charge–describe an experience of isolation and brutality at the U.S. base.
Their account alleges that they were “kept in cages infested with rats.” One said he was put in a “cell smeared with excrement.” All say they were subjected to beatings.
Ahmed claims a guard “kicked me about 20 times to my left thigh and punched me as well. I had a large bruise on my leg and couldn’t walk for nearly one month.”
Iqbal said guards “would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it.”
The men declined to talk to ABC News directly about their account, but their attorney Gareth Peirce said they hope it illuminates the plight of the 586 detainees still held at Guantanamo.

This story is interesting in a number of ways. Firstly, obviously, I hope we can see the full text of the men’s “written account”, and soon.
Secondly, the three men’s story underlines yet again the total uselessness of “information” obtained through mistreatment of detainees. They had all, after many months of cruel and inhuman treatment at Gitmo, “confessed” to haveing appeared in a videa with Osama Bin L–

despite the fact that all three were in England at the time the video was taped, a fact later confirmed by British intelligence.
Rasul said, “I was going out of my mind and did not know what was going on. I was desperate for it to end and therefore, eventually, I just gave in and admitted to being in the video.”

And thirdly, the men’s story is particularly significant in view of the fact that the 586 remaining Gitmo detainees are supposed to meeting with “personal representatives” who are military officers who are officer-like, but not actually lawyers, sometime very soon.
I have long been eager to know what state these prisoners will be found to be in, once anyone outside Gitmo’s generally strong code of omerta gets to meet any of them.
Well, it turns out that may or may not happen.
The “personal representative” idea was the Pentagon’s response to the Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling in the “Rasul” case, when the Supremes ruled, among other things, that “United States courts have jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.”
I guess after that ruling, I was fondly hoping that the folks who run the detention camps down there at Gitmo would almost immediately let lawyers in to consult with the detainees. Uh-oh! Was I wrong! It certainly hasn’t happened yet.
Global Security has a good website where you can get well-compiled updates on the Gitmo situation. It has this:

On July 7, 2004, and in response to the previous week’s decisions by the Supreme Court, the Department of Defense announced the formation of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This tribunal will serve as a forum for detainees to contest their status as enemy combatants. Under this process, detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were to be notified within 10 days of their opportunity to contest their enemy combatant status. According to the DoD factsheet, the tribunals were to be “very much like those cited favorably by the Court to meet the unique circumstances of the Guantanamo detainees, and will provide an expeditious opportunity for non-citizen detainees to receive notice and an opportunity to be heard. It will not preclude them from seeking additional review in federal court.”
Tribunals are to be comprised of three neutral officers, none of whom were involved with the detainee. One of the tribunal members will be a judge advocate and the senior ranking officer will serve as the president of the tribunal. Each detainee, in turn, is to be assigned a military officer as a personal representative. That officer is to assist the detainee in preparing for a tribunal hearing. Detainees are to have the right to testify before the tribunal, call witnesses and introduce any other evidence. Following the hearing of testimony and other evidence, the tribunal will determine in a closed-door session whether the detainee is properly held as an enemy combatant.

So, if all the treatment meted out inside Gitmo in the past 30 months has been quite legit and publicly defensible… why haven’t these Review Tribunals been held yet? The Pentagon has, after all, had nearly a month to organize them. (Or, more than 30 months, depending how you look at it.)
If the delay goes on any longer, the only conclusion we can come to is that there are aspects of the detainees’ treatment that the Pentagon is desperate to hide from the public view, and that the Pentagon bosses are scared stiff that any contact between the detainees and people–even military people–from outside the Gitmo “code” will allow these facts to be known.
(I note that many, many people in the military’s own Judge Advocate-General –JAG–corps, that is, the corps of military lawyers, are firm defenders of the Geneva Conventions, which is an integral part of the body of law that they’ve all been trained to practice.)
All of which further underlines the significance of today’s ABC News report.
A “legal black hole” into which detainees can be dropped and then horribly mistreated is, I should note, a favored device of all regimes that torture people. But once such a black hole has been created, it’s often extremely tricky for its creators themselves to be able to climb back out of it. (See this recent JWN post on the topic.)
Maybe the easiest thing, at this point, would be just to fire Donald Rumsfeld and a few of his top cronies, and let the uniformed military do the job of restoring some order and integrity to the way they handle detainees?
Anyone have any better ideas?