US use torture?

[Samuel]

KABUL, Afghanistan - The United States operated a secret prison in Afghanistan as recently as last year, torturing detainees with sleep deprivation, chaining them to the walls and forcing them to listen to loud music in total darkness for days, a human rights group alleged Monday.

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The prison was run near Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report based on the accounts of several detainees at the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

CIA officials have not commented on various allegations of torture, but Vice President **** Cheney on Sunday denied that the United States engaged in torture.

"I can say that we, in fact, are consistent with the commitments of the United States that we don't engage in torture, and we don't," Cheney said in an interview to be broadcast Monday on ABC News "Nightline." Cheney was not responding directly to the Human Rights Watch report, but to questions about anti-torture legislation before Congress.

According to the report by the rights group, the detainees were kept in total darkness — they called the facility "Dark Prison" — and were tortured and mistreated by American and Afghan guards in civilian clothes, an indication the facility may have been operated by the CIA.

"They were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time," the report said.

"Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise."

Human Rights Watch did not speak with the detainees directly because the United States has not allowed rights organizations to visit detainees at Guantanamo or other overseas detention sites.

Instead, the detainees' accounts were given to their lawyers, who passed them on to the rights group. The group said the allegations were credible enough to warrant an official investigation.

"We're not talking about torture in the abstract, but the real thing," said John Sifton, terrorism and counterterrorism researcher at Human Rights Watch. "U.S. personnel and officials may be criminally liable, and a special prosecutor is needed to investigate."

The report said Benyam Mohaofftopicd, an Ethiopian-born Guantanamo detainee who grew up in Britain, claimed he was held at the facility in 2004.

"It was pitch black, no lights on in the rooms for most of the time," he was quoted as telling his lawyer. "They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days."

Mohaofftopicd went on to say that he was forced to listen to Eminem and Dr. Dre for 20 days before the music was replaced by "horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds."

"The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night," he was quoted as saying. "Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off."

The report said the prison was closed after several detainees were transferred to a U.S. military detention center near Bagram, just north of Kabul, late last year.

The United States' handling of detainees has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks.

Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, is suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment and torture, saying he was seized in Macedonia on Dec. 31, 2003, and taken by CIA agents to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly abused before being released in Albania in May 2004.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said the United States acts within the law and argued that Europeans are safer because of tough U.S. tactics, but she refused to discuss intelligence operations or address questions about clandestine CIA detention centers.

Senior members of the European Parliament, meanwhile, have proposed setting up an investigative committee to determine whether U.S. agents held terror suspects in secret European prisons.

I expect this out of everyone, but not US.
What do you guys think?

[Jordantt]

Why would you expect it out of everyone, but not the US?

I'm sure the US engages in forms of torture, especially when it comes to issues of terrorism and national security.

I'm not necessarily condoning it, but I wouldn't be surprised

[crzyinluv]

What planet have you been living on?

[ArmyRanger]

Moved to Off-Topic.

[3RisMe]

From what I have seen reported through U.S. media, the U.S. does not torture. We do seem to be providing free abductions, air fare, and prison accomidations for people going to countries that do torture prisoners while American advisors are present.

[Ferosia]

Sadly, your surprise demonstrates the effectiveness and reach of American propaganda, which minimizes American abuses, while emphasising the abuses of others.

It is only now that the world is starting to wake up to the massive scale of American torture abroad.

Recent events, such as "Abu Ghraib" are not isolated instances. Torture is a grand American tradition which reaches back AT LEAST to the Korean war, and has enjoyed both presidential, and popular support.

The United States is a dangerous nation out of control. It must be economically and diplomatically isolated until its capacity to project misery and death upon the world is removed.

[MindlessSelfIndulgence]

Please tell me you're being facetious.

[OJDyouknowme♥]

Jeez - I'd have thought many people here on this forum were old enough to remember the School of the Americas issue and the many other debacles that the US has been involved with in one form or another over the years.

I could make a list but we'd run out of bandwidth.

Microhard - if you read up on American history other than what is in the mainstream, syndicated media and texts you'll find the many of the American adminiostrations have been fairly complicit in matters like torture.

America is not the holy grail of moral action despite the spin that nationalist rhetoric puts on it. Far from it.

[il0verrsy0u]

Please tell me you're aware of sarcasm.

[MaddyB]

you gotta remember, in America everything is about perception, you ship a load of potential terrorists off to a remote country with no moralist lobby, then you get that country to torture them, then you merely use the information provided. This means the politicians can vehemently protest that the US does not practice torture, they just provide the means by which someone else can.