Taking A Cue From The Bataan Death March & Other Bush Torture Regime News

BATAAN: The ship and the march

The Bataan Death March was one of the great horrors of World War II. The march involved the forcible 60-mile transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war from the Bataan Peninsula to Japanese prison camps on the mainland. Many of the POWs were physically abused and at least 16,000 perished, many beheaded or bayoneted to death after they fell and could no longer walk.

How fitting then that the Bush administration is now accused of using the USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship named in honor of the victims and survivors of the death march, as a floating prison for terrorism suspects who are interrogated, in all likelihood tortured, and then rendered to undisclosed locations to meet undisclosed fates.

The use of the Bataan and as many as 17 other ships is detailed in a forthcoming report by Reprieve, a human rights organization that also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the Bataan and USS Peleliu and USS Ashland. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the U.S. and U.K.

The report raises particular concerns over the activities of the Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture Al Qaeda terrorists.

Many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces during this period in a systematic operation involving systematic interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA, according to the report. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were "disappeared" to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

The report includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship:

"One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo . . . he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

More here.

PUTTING TORTURE IN CONTEXT

The Pentagon, a sometimes reluctant ally in the Bush administration's use of torture, has made public two declassified documents that help put into context the infamous March 2003 memo justifying the use of torture by John Yoo, head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. They show the military's concerns about accepting at value Yoo's use of junk law to argue that international treaties could be ignored because the president could do whatever he damned well pleased.

And, as Emptywheel notes, so determined was the White House to run roughshod over anyone who might get in the way of its torture regime that Vice President Cheney sought to control the promotion of judges advocate general-- the military lawyers who were handling terrorist cases -- so that the JAGs who did not fall into line could be weeded out.

Retired Major General Thomas Romig, the Army's top JAG from 2001 to 2005, called the Cheney proposal:

An attempt "to control the military JAGs" by sending a message that if they want to be promoted, they should be "team players" who "bow to their political masters on legal advice.

"The implication is clear: without [the administration's] approval the officer will not be promoted."

HE'S GOT HIS KNICKERS IN A KNOT

Representative Dana Rohrabacher is taking a stand: He argues that it is not torture to make suspected terrorists to wear women's panties on their heads.

The California Republican said interrogation-by-panties was more akin to hazing during a recent debate about the way detainees are treated at Guantánamo Bay and took issue with FBI complaints about inappropriate and potentially illegal tactics used to get Al Qaeda detainees to talk.

Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt pointedly told Rohrabacher that the issue went beyond panties, saying interrogators were also seen physically abusing detainees.

More here.

BORN IN THE USA, INDEED

What do Bruce Springsteen, Eminem and Barney the Purple Dinosaur have in common? Songs by them are at the top of the CIA's list of songs that are piped into terrorist's cells at Guantánamo Bay as a form of psychological torture.

Reports Clive Stafford Smith of the New Statesman:

"I am writing this on my 21st visit to Guantánamo Bay. One prisoner whom I am visiting is Binyam Mohammed. He is the British resident from Kensington, central London, who was tortured for 18 months in Morocco. The abuses were pretty medieval for the most part, including a razor blade to his genitals, but I was surprised when Binyam told me that the psychological tactics were worse than the physical torture. He explained it well: given the terrible choice between losing your sight or losing your mind, anyone would choose to be blinded over becoming insane."

With all the talk about music piracy and illegal downloads hurting the music industry, Smith suggests that some concern be shown to music being used to abuse human rights.

More here.

BANNERS ACROSS AMERICA

As disconnects go, the fact that Americans are said to be the most religious people in the world but how rarely the most un-Christian practice of torture is discussed in churches is a disconnect and then some.

That may begin to change because of the Banners Across America program supported by the National Religious Coalition Against Torture. More than 250 congregations in all 50 states will display a banner outside of their place of worship during June, which NRCAT has declared Torture Awareness Month.

More here.