Harper's Magazine published this reply to an FBI survey of bureau personnel who were asked if they observed "aggressive interrogation techniques" at Guantanamo Bay. The survey was released by the FBI in January in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act suit:
On several occasions, Witness saw Detainees in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to the floor without food or water; most Detainees urinated or defecated on themselves and were left there eighteen, twenty-four hours or more. Once the air conditioning was so low that the barefoot Detainee was shaking with cold. Another time, it was off, so the unventilated room was over 100 degrees; Detainee was almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the night)...Upon inquiry, Witness was told that interrogators, military contractors, ordered the treatment.
And this outrage is what passes for humor at Gitmo:
Subsequently someone laughingly told the Witness, "You have to see this," and took him to an interrogation room where the Witness saw a Detainee with a full beard whose head had been covered in duct tape.
On a fundamental level, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib happened because Americans were complacent and uninvolved in their democracy. A vacuum of power was created, and as history repeatedly teaches, the vacuum was filled by a faction with the conviction of a radical ideology. The election result of 2006 was a good beginning to taking our government back from the so-called experts, cynical professionals, plutocrats and religious zealots, but more needs to be done. Here is a place to start: http://www.democraticmajority.com/