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Wikileaks Releases Sensitive Guantanamo Manual
James Hardine writes "Wired is reporting that a never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, via the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks.org, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002. The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. The disclosure highlights the internet's usefulness to whistle-blowers in anonymously propagating documents the government and others would rather conceal. The Pentagon has been resisting — since October 2003 — a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union seeking the very same document. Anonymous open-government activists created Wikileaks in January, hoping to turn it into a clearinghouse for such disclosures. The site uses a Wikipedia-like system to enlist the public in authenticating and analyzing the documents it publishes. The Camp Delta document includes schematics of the camp, detailed checklists of what "comfort items" such as extra toilet paper can be given to detainees as rewards, six pages of instructions on how to process new detainees, instructions on how to psychologically manipulate prisoners, and rules for dealing with hunger strikes."
The folks at wikileaks.org http://wikileaks.org/ should be prosecuted for being party to endangering National Security.
No matter what the ideological slant you may take, I strongly suspect that the truth is going to be a lot more mundane - again, assuming this thing is not a fabrication in either one direction or the other.
(speakin' of which, how do you tell for certain that it's not just a fabrication, either for or against? It's something I've always wondered when it comes to public wikis - unless you can verify who submitted it --or it can be independently verified-- you'll never be quite sure of its veracity.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wikileaks actual article on the leak
Related article on the leak: "US violates chemical weapons convention"
If my wikileaks I'll be seeing a doctor, thank you very much.
... I'm pretty sure I'd rather have publically-elected and appointed officials be the final arbiters of government secrecy, and not self-appointed anonymous individuals. Sometimes for true liberty and justice you need someone other then the government controlling the information. To really have liberty you need to know what your Publically-elected and appointed officials are doing. Democracy doesn't work when the information is controlled by the government. If the government is the sole arbiter of information then you in fact no longer live in a democracy."There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The founding fathers were pretty clear: secrecy is the enemy of democracy. If it's not troop movements during wartime or plans to the new Deathstar, there are very few reasons not to have something public knowledge in a democracy. After all, it's my money.
Really, how many "vast" conspiracies were ever really proven?
:-P
Four words:
Milli. Vanilli. Lip. Synching.
So there!
While I'm not a fan of this current administration or many of the things it has done and continues to do daily, who in their right mind would consider it SMART to release schematics to a fucking military installation?
Yeah this just happens to be a prison but how are you going to feel when someone releases the schematics to the air conditioning system at jrandom fort in your town and proceeds to gas and entire base of people?
I'm as big an opponent of fearmongering as there is. I hate the war on "terrorism" but for god's sake people, have some common sense.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
When the negatives so far outweigh the positives, are the positives really that important any longer? The women going to school thing was bullshit, under Saddam education was handled secularly, and with little to no discrimination. Now that the religious leaders are in charge we're seeing just how far that's taking them back to the dark ages.
Also, so fucking what if we (the US) are able to open a few schools? If the kids die on their way to the schools because of suicide car bombers, then the whole open schools argument is moot.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Chapter 1 Section 1-7 Paragraph (2):
Detainees must be treated humanely
Chapter 1 Section 1-8 Statement (a):
Detainees are to be treated in spirit of Geneva Convention
Chapter 16 essentially outlines how to respect the religious tenets of the Islam
NO WHERE in the report is the word torture mentioned...
INTERESTINGLY, the CINC is only mentioned once; that the implentation of the SOP should follow the CINCs AND Geneva Conventions intentions
Basically, this document says follow international law and respect the detainees. This is not going to be a watershed or bring about the impeachment of the President. Not much to speak of really. That being said, it is an illegal prison and needs to be shut down and a new way of dealing with these people devised.
...and it should be known by now
Of course comparisons with the IRA don't fit 100% with the current spate of terrorism because on the one hand the IRA were much more organised and effective than the current jokers and on the other the current terrorists don't have seem to have a political wing or any sensible demands they want met or anyone to meet with to discuss them.
In my opinion we should take reasonable steps to prevent terrorism, use the current police powers to deal with those we catch and chalk up any actual terrorist "successes" to being an unvoidable fact of life and not get ourselves worked up into a foaming lather over what seem to be at the most a hundred or so deaths. This might sound heartless and disrespectful to the victims but at least as many people seem to die in train crashes as die from terrorism which compared to Europes annual number of deaths is a completely insignificant figure.
Of the millions of items sent to Iraq, less then 200 cases of CS grenades were sent. Somehow that leads someone to believe that they are being used in combat, even in the absence of any proof or allegation. More likely they are being used for training.
Ya see, chemical training is required yearly. That means ya gotta have CS. Generally, you get a small cinder block house, put your people in it, pop the grenade and then let em scramble for their masks. I have personally been exposed to CS many times, having gone thru Nuclear-Biological-Chemical (NBC) training before the first Gulf war.
The 'people' we are fighting in Iraq can and will use any weapon or tactic. You can't fault us for training our 'people to prepare for them.
If the last shred of decency you have 5 years into a life sentence on a god forsaken island is the peace from a (sacred to you) religious book and someone is about to piss on that (figuratively speaking) how would YOU cope with that?
You assume that these people have a great life and they're wimps because they get barked at or someone flushes the koran. Put yourself in there shoes where people scrutinize every time you east, shit, piss and sleep and control every moment of your life and then they turn around and destroy the last sacred bit of decency you ever had.
I find this topic and the arguments around it fascinating. My grandfather was imprisoned in Poland under false pretenses for five years. He had to negotiate for toilet paper. He performed many hunger strikes to win things like reading material, one time starving himself for 28 days. Seeing this manual is fairly chilling for me.
Many times over the years when I'd talk with people about his experiences, they would reassure me that such a thing wouldn't happen in a healthy constitutional democracy like the US. The cruelty and Kafkaesque behavior of his captors was relegated to the sickness of communism to be sure.
At some point long ago I realized that wasn't the case, and that we were very much capable of similar evils. Some people wouldn't agree with me, but here we have the plain as day proof.
I'm sure a percentage of the people reading this post think "who cares if they're mistreating suspected terrorists?". To each of you that feel that way, I would say this: if we had this conversation about my grandfather and communism before 9/11, or perhaps if you read his book, you'd have condemned his captors to hell for being so awful.
I love this country dearly but I'm ashamed of much of what we're doing right now.
Also: if the manual reads to you as being "not so bad" remember that it is very different when you're on the other side of it. And remember that it's just a manual: the real day to day life there is bound to be far more questionable.
Our fax cover sheets say that even if all that follows is a damned pizza order.
If gulags like Guantanamo Bay are required in order to win, is victory worth it?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Many of us are not aware how far reaching the precedents on war crimes and the "orders are no excuse" rule go. In the Nuremberg trial, the case was made that, even so the Navy never followed Hitler's order to execute all parachutists caught in Europe, they did turn over captured parachutists to the Army. And they should have known that the Army did execute them, so they are guilty just as if they'd done it themselves.
Every US soldier who sent a prisoner to Abu Grahib is guilty of war crimes under that precedent. We can only hope that we never loose a war and are actually put in front a tribunal. I bet Bush's biggest nightmare is a successor who signs the international war crimes tribunal treaty, and turns him over to The Hague. For irony, they could put him in Milosevic's cell.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Military bases are considered US soil where ever they are. just like each navy ship is a mobile part of US soil. Much like Embassys are considered soil of . The US soldier's duty to uphold the Constitution still applies while on base.
It is a lot of pages but so far this text seems to be pretty standard procedure for dealing with what the US claims are highly dangerous people. If the guidelines in this document are followed it is hard to see evidence of torture. Then again I thought abu ghraib was pathetic. If muslims talk just because a dog is barking at them, well, it is just pathetic. Read up on some real torture sessions, done against women and childeren and then come back. Being put into humiliating postions? Flushing a book? Oh yeah, that compares to electro shock, being beaten to death and seeing your fellows executed.
You don't know jack shit about Abu Ghraib. Men were beaten with table legs, and raped up the ass with broomsticks and chemical lights. Women were raped by guards. A man had his legs held open while an officer repeatedly kicked him in the crotch. You think it was pathetic because you don't know a damn thing about it. You only saw a couple photos of a guy with a hood on his head and thought "Oh that's nothing" and moved on with your life, even though you were told that there were even more pictures that were, and I quote, "much worse". Guess what? You bought into the media spin.
Do you think this guy was humilitated to death you dipshit?
A good place to start with actually informing yourself would be to google up the Taguba Report for a beginning of what went on.
Skimming the rest of your post, you make some decent points, I just get really pissed when people blow off Abu Ghraib because they think it's all just barking dogs and panties-hats. Well you're wrong. It was honest-to-god torture. People died from it. You don't die from dog barks.
The enemies of Democracy are
Normally I don't use expletives on the Internets but Fuck you! I am a muslim and I find your suggestions barbaric to the extreme. Did you know that most of the detainees in Gitmo were randomly or falsely accused. Did you know that they have no chance of finding out what the accusation were and even if they did, they couldn't do anything about it? Would you agree to muslims forcing non-muslims to follow our own practices, since this is similar to what you are proposing? Praying and reading the Koran is the most BASIC requirement to a muslim, not as you say a reinforcement to fundamentalism. I had hoped that Slashdot is populated by brother geeks who are above making such hate comments. If you are an American, than good luck to you when your government decides that you are a threat to national safety. Sure you say, they won't go after you. But maybe you download porn and as we know, porn is immoral. Maybe you pirate music and as we know, piracy is hurting the economy. Maybe you smoke weed and as we know, the war on drugs is still on. Maybe you buy products not made by American companies and thus you are not patriotic. We no longer view your country as a beacon of democracy and equal opportunity. Your country is no longer the good guys and no longer have the moral authority to chastise third world dictatorships if people like you condone torture and imprisonment without trial.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.