Broad Use of Harsh Tactics Is Described at Cuba Base 

NEIL A LEWIS / New York Times 17oct04

[Mindfully.org note: We feel that Hollywood is a big part of why such stuff can go on as status quo.]

Washington — Many detainees at Guantánamo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment, several people who worked in the prison said in recent interviews, despite long-standing assertions by military officials that such treatment had not occurred except in isolated cases.

The people military guards, intelligence agents and others described in interviews with the New York Times a range of procedures that included treatment they said was highly abusive over a long period of time, as well as rewards for prisoners who cooperated with interrogators.

One regular procedure that was described by people who worked at Camp Delta, the main prison facility at the naval base in Cuba, 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, said one military official who witnessed the procedure. The official said it was designed to make the detainees uncomfortable, as they were accustomed to high temperatures both in their native countries and their cells.

Such sessions could last 14 hours with breaks, said the official, who described the treatment after being contacted by the Times.

"It fried them," the official said, explaining that anger over the treatment the prisoners endured was the reason for speaking with a reporter.

Another person familiar with the procedure who was contacted by the Times said: "They were very wobbly. They came back to their cells and were just completely out of it."

Those who spoke of the interrogation practices at the naval base did so under the condition that their identities not be revealed. Although some former prisoners have said they saw and experienced mistreatment at Guantánamo, this is the first time that people who worked there have provided detailed accounts of some interrogation procedures.

The issue of what were permissible interrogation techniques has produced a vigorous debate within the government that burst into the open with reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and it is now the subject of several independent investigations.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan, the Bush administration has wrestled with the issue of what techniques were permissible in interrogations, with many arguing that the campaign against terrorism should entitle them to greater leeway.

David Sheffer, a former senior State Department human rights official in the Clinton administration who teaches law at George Washington University, said the procedure of shackling prisoners to the floor in a state of undress while enduring loud music and lights clearly constituted torture.

"I don't think there's any question that treatment of that character satisfies the severe pain and suffering requirement, be it physical or mental, that is provided for in the (Geneva) Convention Against Torture," Sheffer said.

Pentagon officials would not comment on the details of the allegations. Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Plexico issued a Defense Department statement saying the military was providing a "safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantánamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism."

The interviewees described a system of punishment and reward, with prisoners who were favored for their cooperation with interrogators given the privilege of spending time in a large room nicknamed "the love shack" by the guards. In that room, they were free to relax and had access to magazines, books, a television and a video player and some R-rated movies, along with the use of a water pipe to smoke aromatic tobaccos. Those prisoners also were occasionally given milkshakes and hamburgers from the McDonald's on the base.

Although many critics of the detentions at Guantánamo have said the majority of the roughly 590 inmates are low-level fighters who have little intelligence to impart, Pentagon and intelligence officials have insisted the facility houses many dangerous veteran terrorists and officials of al Qaeda.

Much of the harsh treatment described by the sources was said to have occurred as recently as the early months of this year. After the scandal about U.S. mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public in April, all harsh techniques were abruptly suspended, they said.

The new accounts of mistreatment at Guantánamo provide fresh evidence about how practices there may have contributed to the abuses later uncovered at Abu Ghraib. One independent military panel said in a report that the approach being used at Guantánamo "migrated to Abu Ghraib," where abuses grew exponentially.

The vigorous debate within the administration about permissible interrogation techniques was set off when the Justice Department provided a series of memos to the White House and Defense Department providing narrow definitions of torture. In February 2002, Bush ordered that the prisoners at Guantánamo were to be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate with military necessity, in a manner consistent with" the Geneva Conventions.

In March 2002, a team of administration lawyers accepted the Justice Department's view, concluding in a memo that President Bush was not bound by either the Convention Against Torture or a federal anti-torture statute because he had the authority to protect the nation from terrorism. When some of the memos were disclosed, the administration tried to distance itself from the rationale for the harsher treatment.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/politics/17gitmo.html?ei=5094&en=e29ccfe1afd6371a&hp=&ex=1098072000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position= 17oct04

'OPERATION SANDMAN'

One of the interrogation procedures described by people who worked at the Guantánamo Bay prison called for an inmate to be awakened, subjected to an interrogation, then returned to a different cell.

As soon as guards determined that the inmate had fallen into a deep sleep, he was awakened again for interrogation, after which he would be returned to yet a different cell. This could happen five or six times during a night, they said.

The procedure was described by those who participated as part of something called "Operation Sandman."

source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/17/MNGQ89B9IO1.DTL&type=printable 17oct04

Operation Sandman. . . the movie. This review from Amazon.com

In a barren desert outpost, a team of soldiers are taking part in a top-secret experiment. A scientist, played by Ron Perlman (TV's Beauty and the Beast), has developed a revolutionary new drug nicknamed 'juice.' This drug heightens the soldiers' senses and allows them to function for weeks at a time without sleep. However, they have to get a shot of the juice every day. As the soldiers take part in holographic missions for three weeks in a row, another side effect occurs. The soldiers start seeing people who are not a part of the simulated missions. These hallucinations, induced by the combination of the drug and sleep deprivation, are called 'freaks.' After a soldier is killed by one of these 'freaks' in a training mission, things start to quickly unravel. The soldiers become more violent and paranoid, and start seeing more hallucinations, even when they're not on missions.

The low budget and mostly unknown cast actually work in this movie's favor. You get the feeling that the government doesn't want to spend much money on this project, by the fact that they stuck the soldiers in a rundown outpost that looks and feels like a prison. They also treat the soldiers as expendable commodities, forcing them to keep taking the juice and going on missions, even though more violence occurs. Eventually, the soldiers (and the viewer) have greater and greater difficulty separating fantasy from reality. The ending is similar to that in classic horror movies, in which the mad scientist's creation exacts revenge on its creator.

source: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000063UTO/102-7374565-3027313?v=glance  17oct04