Pentagon Disputes Red Cross Criticism (Gitmo)

[maddezmom]

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon (news - web sites) spokesman said Monday that Red Cross officials have "made their view known" that the indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounts to torture.



Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said, "It's their point of view," but it is not shared by the Bush administration.


He noted that the administration believes it has the legal right to detain such suspects until the end of the war on terrorism because they are unlawful combatants not subject to the protections of the Geneva conventions.


The New York Times reported Monday that the International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the American military of using techniques "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=734&e=3&u=/ap/20041130/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_abuse

NYT-Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo

~snip~

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Doctors and medical personnel conveyed information about prisoners' mental health and vulnerabilities to interrogators, the report said, sometimes directly, but usually through a group called the Behavioral Science Consultation Team, or B.S.C.T. The team, known informally as Biscuit, is composed of psychologists and psychological workers who advise the interrogators, the report said.

The United States government, which received the report in July, sharply rejected its charges, administration and military officials said.

~snip~
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html?hp&ex=1101877200&en=8d107165e454d8b6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[purduejake]

1. No surprises there.

Stem cell research: bad. Torture: good. Why in the hell don't we just compromise and do experimental medical procedures on the prisoners? j/k, ugh.

[fraud08]

2. ILLEGAL COMBATANTS was the same term employed by the imperial japanese

during wwII - remember Nanking?

"because they are unlawful combatants not subject to the protections of the Geneva conventions" - * admin

and here i though that their kind had been relegated to the dust-bin of history.

how naive i must be...


Japanese aircraft bombed south Shanghai Station Aug.28,1937.
About 200 people in the waiting room were dead or wounded by the bombing. A crying baby was left alone after the bombing. - "Life" Oct.4,1937

peace

[fraud08]

4. 911: US (GITMO) abuse could be war crime - Red Cross

Vikram Dodd and Tania Branigan
Thursday August 5, 2004
The Guardian

Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of US interrogators and guards in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said yesterday.

The organisation, which maintains a rigidly neutral stance in public, took the unusual step of voicing its concerns in uncompromising language after the former detainees, known as the Tipton Three, revealed that they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody.

Their vivid account of the harrowing conditions at the camp, as told to their lawyers and published for the first time in yesterday's Guardian, has reignited the debate about the treatment of prisoners and the British government's role in their questioning and detention.

Last night the Red Cross was joined by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which argued that if the allegations were true they indicated systematic abuse, amounting to torture.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' deputy leader, called for the Foreign Office to mount a "searching investigation" into what British officials had seen or been told when they visited Guantánamo Bay.

more...
http://globalfreepress.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/30/110202

psst... pass the word ;->

peace

[TahitiNut]

3. "the end of the war on terrorism"??? (sheesh!) Something longer than ...

... a life sentence? Without a trial? These people are fucking insane!!

[bobbieinok]

5. that phrase hit me too...war on terror may last forever

[TahitiNut]

6. Let's jail Bush and Cheney until the end of the war on poverty.

Let's call 'em "illegal combatants" in the war on poverty. No trial needed.

[izzie]

7. I think the International Red Cross is a Swiss bases org.

Now since that country has all those great banks we are in a moral dead end here, for the GOP. We can not bomb the country and if I recall right it was home of that great Christian, Calvin and his 'city on the hill' group. This really looks bad. :shrug:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Bush basic

"I can do whatever I want whenever I want to whomever I want."

Disgusting.

[Just Me]

9. Whoops. "Pentagon spokesperson defies SCOTUS decision."

That's what it appears.

He noted that the administration believes it has the legal right to detain such suspects until the end of the war on terrorism because they are unlawful combatants not subject to the protections of the Geneva conventions.

SCOTUS disagreed.

I wonder what happens when an executive acts in contempt of the Supreme Court?

[Supersedeas]

10. Just one point of view amoungst many that don't merit attention from Bush

Surprised?