Guantánamo abuse continues

The New York Times has discovered that the Red Cross has found "that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion 'tantamount to torture' on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba."

What is more worrying than their 2003 findings of essentially the same thing is that medical personnel are being used to better facilitate these coercive sessions. Medical professionals who have sworn their oaths to do no harm. The technicality being used here is that the professionals themselves aren't performing the harming tasks, only their data is being used. This has the side-effect of having detainees not trust their sole source of medical care.

In the words of the article:

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

As in, well after Abu Ghraib had hit the American media, and during the loudest of the firestorm that followed. My theory is that the Red Cross started pressing the US for access as soon as the story hit a certain threshold in the media, and the US consented to the access as part of a damage-control process. My theory, not substantiated.

The fact that this activity continues to this day is just more fuel for the fire. I'm ashamed this hasn't caught more attention in the media, because this is exactly the sort of thing that is harming us internationally. We do need to address this. This administration has placed the rights of the United States above those of Human Rights and that is one of the bigger steps towards tyranny.

The Administration claims that these are 'enemy combatants' and are being kept off of US soil. Because of this, the rules for their handling and rights are very minimal to non-existent. Furthermore, they claim that we are either in technical compliance with Geneva, or that Geneva doesn't apply to these detainees. What is abundantly clear is that the US finds Geneva restrictive and a road-block to what it would really like to do.

And that is one of the scarriest things I've read in a while. Things are beginning to devolve back to the 'bad old days' on the ole civil liberties front. We have the US informally wishing to change Geneva to be something more permissive of coercion, and we have an amendment slip into an appropriations bill that would allow a specific Congressional Committee to review any tax-return. The latter was outlawed in the wake of Watergate as Nixon had used just that right to target his 'enemies list'.

The fact that the Republicans control both houses and the White House means that there isn't going to be much stopping an increase in Executive power short of filibusters. Right now my best hope is that the hubris the Bushies are experiencing now gets out of hand far enough to scare the populace into a mid-term 'regime change' in Congress. Hopes for an impeachment process hinge soley on a very big smoking gun that includes both Bush AND Cheney; and considering who controls congress right now that hope is about as remote as detecting alien radio signals in the next four years.