jjjveryness.com

From BBC:

Tran Trong Duyet - a sprightly retiree and amateur ballroom dancer - must rank as one of John McCain’s more unlikely supporters.
Four decades ago, during the Vietnam war, Mr Duyet was in charge of the notorious Hoa Lo prison - the place where Mr McCain says he was brutally beaten and tortured during five-and-a-half years as an American prisoner of war.
…
“But I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners.”

It’s to our enduring shame that America has engaged in torture, and even more disgraceful that we’ve claimed actions we call torture acceptable when we practice them.

But as John McCain has rightly asserted many times, he was tortured. Unfortunately, some of the same techniques used to torture Senator McCain have been used by the US to torture. We are a torturing nation. There’s no way to parse or equivocate that. Though it seems likely most of the people responsible won’t be tried by the US anytime soon, the rest of the world may not be so lenient. The shred of redemption in this escapade is that various leaders within the American community can use this opportunity to dust off truths we’ve let languish too long and own them again, like my pastor did in an op/ed for the Orlando Sentinel:

• The Golden Rule: The U.S. will not use any method of interrogation that we would not find acceptable if used against Americans.
• One national standard: We will adopt a single standard for interrogation across U.S. agencies and departments.
• Rule of law: The U.S. will acknowledge all prisoners to our courts and the International Committee of the Red Cross and provide fully adequate judicial processes to provide detainees an opportunity to prove their innocence.
• Duty to protect: The U.S. will not transfer prisoners in our custody to governments when there is a likelihood that they will be tortured.
• Checks and balances: The U.S. will reaffirm the legitimate role of the legislative and judicial branches in understanding, reviewing, and in some cases setting detention policies.
• Clarity and accountability: All U.S. personnel deserve the certainty that they are implementing policy that complies fully with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law.

Unfortunately America’s reputation will likely further suffer before it can begin recovering, with so many more stories coming to light (like our alleged secret prison ships in international waters used as torture house).

From Karl Rove’s op/ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours. The torture so badly busted up his shoulders that to this day Mr. McCain can’t raise his arms over his head.

Regarding Donald Rumsfield in the Wall Street Journal (via Yale):

U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could put prisoners in “stress positions” for as long as four hours, hood them and subject them to 20-hour-long interrogations, “fear of dogs” and “mild non-injurious physical contact,” according to list of techniques Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved in December 2002.

McCain’s torture in Vietnam was, in part, being held in stress positions. The very same stress positions were approved as an interrogation technique by the US in the war on terror.

So what was considered torture to McCain is not considered torture in Guantanamo.

From CBS news:

“Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down. And the doctor came to watch if I can still survive to not. He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart. And when he said okay, then they pulled me back up,” Kurnaz says.

“The point of the doctor’s visit was not to treat you. It was to see if you could take another six hours hanging from the ceiling?” Pelley asks.

“Right,” Kurnaz says.

“I suspect you know that the U.S. military will deny this happened. The U.S. military will deny that you were shocked. It will deny your head was held in a bucket of water. It will deny that you hung from a ceiling for days at a time,” Pelley remarks.

“Doesn’t matter whatever they will say. The truth will not change,” Kurnaz says.

“And you’re telling me in this interview that this is the truth?” Pelley asks.

“This is the truth,” Kurnaz insists.

Kurnaz isn’t alone in these allegations: other freed prisoners have described electric shocks at Kandahar, and even U.S. troops have admitted beating prisoners who were hanging by their arms. Kurnaz’s story fits a pattern.
…

Six months after Kurnaz reached Guantanamo, U.S. military intelligence had written, “criminal investigation task force has no definite link [or] evidence of detainee having an association with al Qaeda or making any specific threat toward the U.S.”

…

“Have you ever in your legal career run across anything like this?” Pelley asks Baher Azmy.

“In my legal career, no,” Azmy says. “But in Guantanamo, no detainee has ever been able to genuinely present evidence before a neutral judge. And so as absurd as Murat Kurnaz’s case is, I assure you there are many, many dozens just as tenuous.”

And a U.S. federal judge agreed. She ruled the Guantanamo military tribunals violated the prisoners’ right to a defense, and she singled out Kurnaz’s case as an example.

60 Minutes asked the Department of Defense to talk to us about Kurnaz. Instead they sent 60 Minutes a statement, calling his allegations “unsubstantiated” and “outlandish,” adding that claims that the U.S. military “engaged in regular and systematic torture of detainees cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny.” The statement didn’t address why Kurnaz was held to begin with. (Click here to read the full Department of Defense statement.)

We have zero convictions for ‘enemy combatants’ at Guantanamo, which begs the question of whether this is the exception or the norm.