The process of having a feeding tube inserted into one's nose is extremely painful, much more so than you'd expect. Out of all the injuries I've had (e.g. broken collar bone, 4 concussions, etc), none reached the immediate pain intensity level as having a feeding tube inserted.
For me, the tube felt way too small to fit. Blood started trickling down the back of my throat and my whole body seized up in pain. It's scary to have such an internalized pain immediately next to one's brain.
Guantanamo Bay is one of the most disgusting institutions in the "civilized world". How is this acceptable? Treating humans as garbage, no trial, just meat stored for torture.
Every day this piece of shit prison is open is a god damn disgrace for the entire human race.
You have a point in that torture happens elsewhere, too.
But there is still the difference between torturing people in your prisons for things they allegedly did in your country, with charges and sometimes (rarely though) a trial even -- and just kidnapping them from all over the world, and then treating them so badly that just this bad treatment is argument enough for some people to accept that Guantanamo needs to stay open.
^ You're not going to tell me that's just because the fashion sense that developed in Guantanamo is quirky that way? That this doesn't make your stomach turn?
> The problem with Guantanamo isn't the conditions. Its the legal limbo the prisoners are caught in.
Why can't it both be a problem? If Guantamo was a luxury hotel, we would envy the legal limbo. This is like saying something isn't torture, because "the" torture is happening elsewhere.
Not in the UK they wouldn't, no. Only in your barbarous country do such things (legally) happen in prisons. We recently had a debate over Ian Brady staying in a mental prison vs. prison prison, as under psychiatric care they can force feed you, but not in prison.
And Ian Brady doesn't lack that capacity. The judgment to keep him in Broadmoor was yet another example of "the moral state", not abiding by the rule of law, and instead abiding by selective, moral justice.
People have the right to refuse medical treatment if they have capacity to make that decision.
There is a range of choices - people die much sooner than they need to because they refuse blood, or people die a little quicker than they need to because they refuse painful cancer treatment.
When someone refuses to eat they'll eventually need the medical treatment - force feeding - to keep them alive. Some of those people have capacity to make that decision. Others (people with anorexia) don't.
Were I in the shoes of one of the kidnap victims at Guantanamo (for that is all they are - they are neither prisoners nor combatants, just abductees), I would not wish to continue that existence. The right to death is as important as the right to life.
Oh please. You can argue about whether the Guantanamo Bay detainees are being treated fairly as prisoners of war, but they were caught fighting against Allied forces in a war zone. It's an absurd characterization to call them "kidnap victims."
And the U.S. does not recognize a "right to death" for anyone in the U.S. You can argue about that policy, but the Guantanamo detainees are not being treated inconsistently there. Our policies are strongly anti-suicide across the board. See: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/guantanamo-is-not-an-an....
Neither characterization is true. GTMO detainees weren't kidnapped, but there's little evidence to suggest that most of them were actual combatants.
It upsets me a little to see discussions about things like GTMO distracting themselves from the core issue. The problem isn't detention at GTMO, or drone strikes, or the citizenship status of targets. To engage yourself fully with any of those problems is to nibble around the edges of the real issue.
The problem is that in 2001, Congress issued a declaration of war (that's what the AUMF was) against an ideology. At the time, that might have seemed sensible; a way to take the threat of armed terrorism more seriously than we had. But the problem with it is obvious and it's something Obama is facing down now: you can't eradicate an ideology, which leaves us in a permanent state of war.
If we'd declared war against Afghanistan, the status of prisoners at GTMO would be clearer; we'd at some point declare the conflict over (we'd have to, because contra the Daily Kos left, the USG does not actually want to station hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan) and the prisoners would be released.
To be fair, the AUMF was not a declaration of war against an ideology. It was a declaration of war against whichever specific non-state military groups planned and committed the September 11 attacks and anyone who harbored them. From the AUMF:
"(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
The AUMF refers to prevention of "future acts of international terrorism" but specifically authorizes force only against those who were involved with the 9/11 attacks.
"Those nations, organizations, or persons [...] planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks [...] or harbored such organizations or persons" describes an ideology.
The problematic word is "organizations". The most important lesson we should learn from the 2000s is "never allow the word 'organizations' (or any of its synonyms) to appear in an AUMF again". You can invade a nation, you can kill a person, but there's simply no clear definition of what it means to eradicate an organization.
> but they were caught fighting against Allied forces in a war zone.
Wow, that is incredibly misinformed. And even if it were true (it is not), it does not justify torture. Torture is always despicable, and there's a permanent moral stain on the nation that perpetrates torture, no matter who is being tortured. There is no excuse. No excuse.
Torture is despicable, but there is an ongoing debate about whether anything going on at Guantanamo (as opposed to Abu Ghraib) is actually torture under the international definitions. It's not a settled issue like you're making it out to be.
Maybe they were caught on the battlefield, maybe they weren't.
These prisoners were tortured and deprived of habeas corpus. Without a fair trial it's fair to question anything regarding their detention. Seeing it as kidnapping seems quite reasonable.
Enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights and never have. When Allied forces captured German soldiers in World War II, they were not required to present them to a judge and those soldiers weren't sentenced; they were held until the conflict ended. If Allied forces accidentally rounded up German civilians in the process, those civilians could also expect indefinite detention.
In a world historical sense, such treatment is a mercy; in total war, the only alternative, of course, is to kill the detainees.
GTMO represents a great moral failing of the United States, but let's also not forget that the USG is the lesser of two culpable parties; the greater responsibility lies with an irregular army that deliberately exploits its civilian host population to conceal itself, relying on the fact that retaliation will inevitably harm more innocents than fighters. The Taliban isn't the Viet Cong. The cause of the Taliban and "Al Qaeda" (whatever that means) is a lost one, fueled entirely by an obscene willingness to see thousands of innocent people murdered solely prolong the inevitable.
That's fallacious reasoning. Just because they were treated wrongly in one way does not mean it becomes correct to mischaracterize "anything regarding their detention."
And Guantanamo prisoners are getting habeas petitions heard: http://ccrjustice.org/GTMOscorecard. It's not happening fast enough, and partly for logistical reasons (no U.S. state wants to host trials for them and foreign countries don't want them back), but it is happening.
1) Many (most) weren't "caught" doing anything, other than going about their business. The majority were kidnapped from airports.
2) "Allied forces"? We white. Them black. Therefore them bad. Try to see the world from a perspective other than your own.
3) "War zone" - no it wasn't. It became a warzone after most of those in Gitmo were disappeared. That's like saying that what happened to jewish people before WWII was fine because it became a war zone.
4) It's not a characterisation, it's exactly what it is, if you interpret the situation through the Geneva convention, which the US is inexplicably a party to.
1. Many of them were in fact armed combatants. A significant problem in securing the release of GTMO detainees is that they were handled so clumsily that it was difficult to sort out which detainees were victims of circumstance and which were violent. Several people released from GTMO have later been killed or captured in armed conflict with NATO forces.
2. By "allied" he meant "NATO". There are plenty of "black" people in NATO.
3. Afghanistan was in fact a war zone long before 2001. At its most orderly, under the brutal control of the Taliban, it was a loosely organized state embroiled in a civil war destined to produce a breakaway non-Pashto state. Also: the word "disappeared" means something specific, and you dilute that meaning by using it here. The "disappeared" of Central and South America are so named because they're never heard from again; they're often murdered by death squads.
4. Nothing in the Geneva Conventions speaks to the definition of "kidnapping".
The US government has a tremendous credibility problem.
Its representatives make many claims, trying to spin the narrative in their favor. Some people seem to buy much of this narrative. They apparently believe the stories that governments, spy agencies, police, torturers, and PR hacks spin.
It is impossible to know whether such a position of credulity is genuine or merely apologetic. But it should be noted that many others in the world don't believe the spin. They've witnessed the government, spy agencies, police, torturers, and PR hacks caught in too many self-serving lies.
Some people apparently choose to believe alleged testimony given by helpless people who've been tortured in a prison they may never leave, or testimony given by secret sources before a kangaroo court, or the testimony of spies who are essentially professional liars. These people have zero credibility for the rest of us. Yet their narrative is swallowed by others and then presented as uncontrovertable fact: "Many of them were in fact armed combatants" Oh yeah? Says who? Says who who has a shred of credibilty? Prove it. Prove it without resorting to a witch trial before a rubber-stamping kangaroo court that brings shame to the United States and the world.
This glib sentiment ignores the reality that there are in fact thousands of armed militants in Afghanistan who will happily kill tens of innocent Afghanis on spec just for the prospect of killing a single NATO soldier, and that the vast majority of those militants have not been captured.
One needn't support GTMO, or even tolerate it, to acknowledge the fact that our adversaries in this conflict are both real and despicable.
They're not despicable. Just piteous, and angry, and at the guys who really screwed shit up for them - that's the US right now - used to be the USSR. The militants were borne out of these historic conflicts, and were largely armed by such. They will not go away through force. They cannot. It is ridiculous to think that one can resolve something through yet more of the very thing which instigated it. They can and will go away if their root cause, Imperialism, is no longer an issue. Currently, they seek to do this by force, and they're winning; the US I see today compared to that I knew and loved and lived in some 15 years ago bears precious little semblance. This could be resolved diplomatically, but only through tripartite talks between the Afghani government, the Taliban and the US.
Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?
Neither Russia nor the US forced militants to establish a despotic theocracy in Afghanistan dedicated to the facially ridiculous prospect of establishing an Islamic Caliphate that would run the middle east under medieval religious law, or to host a transnational irregular armed force dedicated to the delusional prospect of hastening that lost cause by targeting and murdering civilians abroad.
If you want to pursue a line of argument that leaves you sticking up for the Taliban, that's your prerogative, but I don't think doing so will strengthen any case you have to make about the US.
The fact that the Taliban was a despicable force for evil doesn't moot the idea that politicians and demagogues in the US and Europe have exploited Islamaphobia, nor does it imply that the Taliban or Al Qaeda is a threat worthy of the degree of state machinery we've allocated to it.
1. Some, not many. The majority are noise. There is signal there, in terms of what The US are looking for most likely, but who knows in the abscence of any trial. Innocent until proven guilty. They weren't arrested. They weren't taken as POWs. Just abducted. Sorry, rendered.
2. I meant black and white from the polar point of view. Germany and Italy were allies.
3. Yup, but plenty of these guys ain't from the 'stans, and Afghanistan was self contained. The history of conflict in Afghanistan is long and bloody, and rarely bought about by Afghanis - usually empires looking for resources and an enviable bit of geography.
4. No, but it talks about the lawful taking and holding of POWs, which, operating outside of such, makes Guantanamo a criminal enterprise in international law, and it's actions therefore being nothing more than kidnapping.
I used to disagree with that sentiment, after all Congress did its best to stop the closure of Gitmo by not only blocking funding for the effort but also blocking the use of any pre-existing funds too.
And then he does, and the media makes a big deal out of it and people cry out "never again", "how did we not see this coming?", "whos accountable?".
Setting them free and closing the illegal prison is the right thing to do. If I was calling the shots I would close it and release them.
BUT:
I just see why they haven't done it yet. It's a quagmire, with extreme consequences. Sure, let a prison full of "suspected terrorists" out into the world, what could go wrong?
How nice would it be to live in a world where we all trust each other and enjoy peace and harmony?
I don't think anything will go wrong if we let them go.
Everyone knows that they will be monitored up the wazoo by the NSA. Any smart terrorist operative will not associate with the released prisoners. And the ones that do will provide a nice honeypot for the NSA.
The real quagmire will be when the NSA picks up intel about the released prisoners and fails to pass it along to any other intelligence agencies.
Then we'll be blinded by our own incompetence and go back to the media blame you mentioned in your comment.
I get your point, but really it's more like "Oh I have this guy in my basement I've been torturing for four years, I can't let him go now because he's going to want to kill my family who couldn't stop me from torturing this guy anyway".
I don't see how you can be so sure the prisoners are most likely to be (if given the chance) terrorists now. I'm sure many will harbour extreme hate after what's been done to them, but most people don't deal with extreme hate by blowing other people up. Long-time prisoners of the FARC aren't given the third degree to make sure they don't intend to blow up Colombians or even go on a revenge spree against the FARC.
Maybe many of these people just want to go home and try to forget the last 10 years of their life?
All that said I understand that it's a terrible position to be in, having imprisoned these people for such a long time. The thing is, it just keeps getting worse and worse...
If they weren't "terrorists" before, they most likely are now. Think about it, that's the real problem.
You speak as if the rest of the world isn't noticing wtf is happening there, including the families of the detainees. As if these people being kept there wouldn't motivate a lot more people to become terrorists, than freeing them would.
This isn't even burning the village to save the village. This is nuking a whole hemisphere to turn off an alarm clock.
One idea would be to bring them on to American soil and treat them under the same conditions as those held in US jails and in accordance with US law, instead of doing it in Cuba of all places.
Taking innocent taxi drivers, subjecting them to the "gift of democracy" that is extraordinary rendition and torture while being detained without trial or charge is already an effective recruiting tool for terrorists.
Allowing the detainees to kill themselves turns them into martyrs, and becomes even more effective at turning people to violence.
Don't forget that this behaviour just shifts the curve of moderateness towards extremism a little bit, but that makes extremism easier. People are more likely to donate money to organisations that promote violence; people turn a blind eye when they find out someone is planning something; people share information even if they're not going to use it themself, "Anti-West" sentiment is more acceptable, and so on. This means that the small number of actual terrorists find it easier to work.
US people don't realize how much US is hated... They are force fed so much propaganda on how US are heroes that go around the world saving people from evil, that they don't understand for example why lots of Brazillians cheered 9/11 (yes, Brazillians CHEERED 9/11, some even threw parties, the US people I knew that were here in Brazil acted very confused, not understanding at all why people would be happy that 10 thousand "good people" died)
Why on earth would anyone cheer for 3000+ people dying? Insanity. I say that those you cheered during 9/11 has been force fed anti-US propaganda.
Holy shit, what an disgusting attitude. I may not like some US politics but cheering for 9/11... That is insane. I would love to see sources on Brazilians celebrating 9/11.
> US people don't realize how much US is hated... They are force fed so much propaganda on how US are heroes that go around the world saving people from evil
This strikes me as intellectual arrogance. How do you know what "US people" do or do not realize?
I think you may be conflating your own sadism with something normative and just. Despite your assertions elsewhere that the whole world is just waiting for an opportunity to turn the United States into a graveyard, most people around the world do not not, in fact, hate the United States so vehemently that 9/11 made them cheer. Most people around the world reacted the way human beings with empathy do, with horror and sadness. I would even bet most Brazilians didn't hold parties celebrating the bloodshed.
Your point of view isn't normal. Please stop acting as if it is, and please stop acting as if that level of enmity represents something good and noble about the people of Brazil. You make your country look like a bunch of psychopaths.
Most brazillians did not celebrated 9/11, obviously. Most did not care.
Several of those who did, were shocked, and sad, specially those that had relatives there.
But several were VERY HAPPY, usually those that got screwed during the cold war.
My point is: people forget, that when you make yourself a hated enemy, people WILL hate you, in irrational ways, it is easy to create terrorist and a vicious cycle of violence.
Brazil up to WWII liked the US, bought craploads of US stuff, and even joined WWII for the US side despite the president being fascist and having connections to the Italian fascists (of course, the fact US offered a steel mill in bribe when Brazil had none, was a huge factor).
During cold war, US backed the military coup here, and quickly things turned into "we vs them", we had during the cold war a US embassador kidnapped, citibank branches bombed or torched, english speaking soldiers killed (the most famous was two UK navy sailors that were here on vacation) and so on.
What make you think, that after you make people believe you are their enemy, that you are at war with them, they will stop believing that after situation change?
There are lots of people here that has a grudge not only with US, but with all of its citizens as well, injust as that might be, the destruction of the World Trade Center, a economic symbol of the US, and the attack on Pentagon, is something that several people around the world cheered (obviously more on middle east, where people threw wild parties in the street and shot upwards) because those people viewed it as the invincible bully being hurt for the first time, people saw it, horrible as the actual event was in numbers of civilians killed, as a successful war attack, revenge, justice, david hurting goliath, etc...
People are NOT psychopaths, they are normal people, hurt by US government so deeply, that any chance they have to see it hurting back will make them happy, even if it means the deaths of thousands of innocents.
This is what fuel wars...
United States huge military is a deterrent for countries attacking it, but don't mistake that peace for the world agreeing with the US, I am very sure few countries would side with the US in a hypotetical world war with a level amount of military (ie: not US having alone half of the world military power, as current it is).
I am very sure that if you leave a US citizen (any citizen, the most adorable citizen even) near one of the territories were PCC is popular (PCC is a huge organized crime thing here, created during the cold war with purpose of fighting US-backed government), people (normal people, civilians, not members of PCC) will be happy to do things to that citizen that is best not describe here...
> People are NOT psychopaths, they are normal people, hurt by US government so deeply, that any chance they have to see it hurting back will make them happy, even if it means the deaths of thousands of innocents.
> I am very sure that if you leave a US citizen (any citizen, the most adorable citizen even) near one of the territories were PCC is popular (PCC is a huge organized crime thing here, created during the cold war with purpose of fighting US-backed government), people (normal people, civilians, not members of PCC) will be happy to do things to that citizen that is best not describe here...
You're describing antisocial behavior and a diminished capacity for remorse, which are defining characteristics of psycopathy.
Remorse do not apply when there is deep hate involved.
People are unfortunately capable of great evil, and feeling good about it, when they think they are on the right side.
People can do evil things, and think they are doing good, it is obvious they won't feel remorse, you cannot feel remorse for something that makes you feel like a hero of sorts.
So we (if only we could just blame the Americans, but we are all responsible, unfortunately) respect their religious rights but completely ignore their rights to liberty or even a fair trail.
You have to admit, it's hilarious. Even the Soviets could not have made up this stuff.
It's just a tad ironic. Disrespect their basic rights to freedom, fair trial, cause them physical harm and torture - but respect a small point of ramadan fasting procedure...
Eating during Ramadan is not a sin. You fast to sacrifice and share together (really, in spite of what you heard people get fat during Ramadan). But young children, the elderly, and the sick aren't required to fast nor is it considered a sin not to.
The doctors could have force fed them swine blood at high noon and it would not make an iota of difference. To the detainees it's a bullshit maneuver that says, "see, we're respecting Islam, we aren't burning the Koran anymore," when everyone can clearly see this is utter bullshit.
Surely everyone watching this had their bullshit detectors go off???
Regardless of how you feel about Guantanamo Bay, there is clearly some acting -- some "dramatic exaggeration" -- going on in this video.
Bey volunteered to undergo the procedure. So he knew they would stop at any point if he asked them to. There was no need, therefore, for all the screaming of "no" and "please don't."
For Bey, this procedure was akin to you or I needing a painful procedure performed at the doctor's office. You might hate it, you might cry out in pain, but you don't react with the distress of knowing that you're being forced against your will.
If someone wants to make a video for the purpose of exposing me to some truth I'm unaware of, great. But don't go enhancing it with your own bullshit. There's already enough propaganda and bullshit for me to discern my way through to start with.
that's a very normal reaction, lookup any 'funny' video of people not being able to hold the pain of getting tattooed... they wanted it done, they paid, they try to sustain what they're going through since they accepted it in the first place(which is not the case of your criminal country abductees) and then it explodes in a violent reaction when they figure out "I really can't take it", go, look it up.
For me, the tube felt way too small to fit. Blood started trickling down the back of my throat and my whole body seized up in pain. It's scary to have such an internalized pain immediately next to one's brain.