McClatchy News Service reports, after an eight month investigation, wide spread abuse and torture of detainees held in US custody at the former Soviet Bagram Airbase outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. McClatchy journalists interviewed 66 former detainees who told of repeated brutal beatings, the widespread use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, and various forms of psychological humiliation. The systematic brutality lasted for some twenty months starting in late 2001. Former guards interviewed said they beat prisoners in "retribution for 9/11". All such actions are prohibited by the 1949 Geneva Conventions that the Regime ordered did not apply to suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. To further limit any legal liability for torture, the Regime pressured Congress to narrow the definition of a war crime under the War Crimes Act of 1966. Afghan detainees Dilawar and Habibullah were beaten to death while chained to the ceiling of their "cages" in December 2002 [see eyewitness diagram]. No military officer above the rank of Captain has been called to account for the rampant brutality in their commands.Update: "Yesterday's Man", as the British press refers to the current occupant of the bunker, made another outrageous comment to a TV interviewer who asked him how the torture at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo squared with his claimed belief in "universal freedom". The Charlatan responded saying critics of US human rights violations are "slandering America"[video] . Only this deluded man who appears to suffer from some variety of schizophrenia could make a remark so wildly inaccurate as to itself constitute slander of those journalists with enough spine to point out the obvious hypocrisy of America's current policies in the Middle East. The Regime clearly wants to continue a military occupation of Iraq for the foreseeable future. Even the Maliki puppet government is balking at US demands for 58 permanent bases and control of Iraq's airspace and foreign policy. Clearly, Iraqi freedom is wholly contingent on US security interests.
Wackydoodle sez: "Them camel drivers can't handle freedom, but I figure the Constitution is worth a city."