POLITICS: More "Isolated" Instances of Torture Revealed: "New detailed accounts, obtained by Human Rights Watch, have surfaced from sources in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 48 hours, detailing systematic abuse, torture, and murder at military detention facilities. The source of these accounts? At least 3 U.S. officers assigned to those facilities.

Three U.S. army personnel - two sergeants and a captain - describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee's leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees' skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan.



According to the soldiers' accounts, U.S. personnel abused detainees as part of the military interrogation process or merely to 'relieve stress.' In numerous cases, they said that abuse was specifically ordered by Military Intelligence personnel before interrogations, and that superior officers within and outside of Military Intelligence knew about the widespread abuse. The accounts show that abuses resulted from civilian and military failures of leadership and confusion about interrogation standards and the application of the Geneva Conventions.

These first-hand accounts, coupled with documents obtained by the AP, detailing that the Navy secretly contracted jets used by the CIA to render suspects to countries known for their use of torture, clearly contradict claims by the Bush administration that detainee abuses by U.S. forces abroad have been infrequent, exceptional and unrelated to policy.



Be prepared for the smear campaign levied against the officers who came forward to present yet more substantial damning evidence that this administration is clearly and actively subverting the rule of law in its campaign 'to bring democracy' to the Middle East.

(Written by: Dead_Ringer)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)