October 18, 2004
Could it get worse?
The New York Times reported yesterday that guards at Guantanamo Bay used coercive treatment on detainees held there that will make you sick. Now we know why the administration denied these prisoners their right to counsel. Read this and weep for our country.
"One regular procedure described by people who worked at Camp Delta...was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underpants, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor and forcing them to endure strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers while the air conditioning was turned up to maximum levels...such sessions lasted up to 14 hours."
The Geneva conventions were adopted out of self-interest. No nation wants to have its soldiers tortured. What is the lesson from this administration to the world? That the most powerful need not follow conventions of the civilized world?
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