Be: Master Of Torture

Saturday, May 07, 2005
On this day:

Master Of Torture

This should keep the heat off of Rumsfeld- master of torture.

Former Abu Ghraib prision commander demoted.

AFPFri May 6, 3:27 AM ET WASHINGTON - President George W Bush ordered the demotion of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the former commander of the Abu Ghraib prison, after an army investigation found her guilty of dereliction of duty and shoplifting, the army said.
The action made Karpinski, an army reservist, the highest ranking officer to be punished in the wake of the prisoner abuse scandal at the Iraqi prison.
"Today, the president approved a recommendation to vacate the promotion of Brigadier General Karpinski from her rank of brigadier general," the army said in a statement. "This decision reduces her to the rank of colonel in the US Army Reserve."
Karpinski was arrested for shoplifting at a US air force base in the United States but failed to report it to her superiors or on official forms that asked if she had ever been arrested, an official familiar with the investigation said.
The army's inspector general also substantiated allegations against her of dereliction of duty, the army said, citing leadership failures rather than specific actions that contributed to the abuse at the prison.
"Though Brigadier General Karpinski's performance of duty was found to be seriously lacking, the investigation determined that no action or lack of action on her part contributed specifically to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib," the army said.
Karpinski commanded the Abu Ghraib prison during the period in late 2003 and early 2004 when military guards were photographed abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners.
She has said she had no knowledge of the abuse and insisted she was being made a scapegoat to protect higher-ups and the role in the abuse of military intelligence.

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And this from The Observer

Paul Harris in New YorkSunday May 8, 2005

Saar arrived at Guantánamo Bay in December 2002, and worked there until June 2003. He first worked as a translator in the prisoners' cages. He was then transferred to the interrogation teams, acting as a translator.
Saar's book, Inside the Wire, provides the first fully detailed look inside Guantánamo Bay's role as a prison for detainees the White House has insisted are the 'worst of the worst' among Islamic militants. His tale describes his gradual disillusionment, from arriving as a soldier keen to do his duty to eventually leaving believing the regime to be a breach of human rights and a disaster for the war on terror.
Among the most shocking abuses Saar recalls is the use of sex in interrogation sessions. Some female interrogators stripped down to their underwear and rubbed themselves against their prisoners. Pornographic magazines and videos were also used as rewards for confessing.
In one session a female interrogator took off some of her clothes and smeared fake blood on a prisoner after telling him she was menstruating. 'That's a big deal. It is a major insult to one of the world's biggest religions where we are trying to win hearts and minds,' Saar said.
Saar also describes the 'snatch teams', known as the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), who remove unco-operative prisoners from their cells. He describes one such snatch where a prisoner's arm was broken. In a training session for an IRF team, one US soldier posing as a prisoner was beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage. It is believed the IRF team had not been told the 'detainee' was a soldier

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