Gitmo suicides 'a PR stunt'

Thanks carpro for the interesting article.

I couldn't get the 2nd one to work - could you run it thru tinyurl or some such?

 

Ok, I think I found the correct link here.

If no one else will take them, perhaps we should ourselves since we are responsible for their plight.

 

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]How US hid the suicide secrets of Guantanamo[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]After three inmates killed themselves, the Pentagon declared the suicides an act of 'asymmetric warfare', banned the media and went on a PR offensive. But as despair grows within the camp, so too does outrage mount at its brutal and secretive regime[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif] David Rose
Sunday June 18, 2006
The Observer

[/FONT] In Guantanamo Bay's Alpha Block, the night was like any other: sweltering and seemingly endless. Although the temperature was down to the high 70s outside, the block's steel roof and walls were radiating heat, and in the two facing rows of 24 cells it felt little cooler than it had at midday. 'The nights are worse than the days,' the British former prisoner Shafiq Rasul recalled yesterday. 'You hear the rats running and scratching. The bugs go mad and there's no air. Especially where that block is: there's no breeze whatsoever.'

According to Guantanamo's rules, a six-person team of military police should have been patrolling constantly, and as usual the bright neon lights stayed on. A guard should have passed each detainee's cell every 30 seconds. 'From the landing, you can see right into every cell,' said Rasul. 'They don't have doors, just gates made from wide-spaced mesh. There's no privacy. If you hang up a towel because you want to go to the toilet, they make you take it down.'


The high degree of surveillance has foiled dozens of previous attempts by prisoners to take their own lives. 'It happened in front of me several times. The soldiers would see what was happening and they were in the cell in seconds,' Rasul said. But somehow, in circumstances that the Pentagon has succeeded in keeping totally obscure, late on Friday, 9 June, three detainees, all weak and emaciated after months on hunger strike and being force-fed, managed to tease bedsheets through their cells' mesh walls, tie them into nooses and hang themselves. With the cells little taller than the height of a man, they stood no chance of breaking their necks: the only way they could die was slowly, by hypoxia.


'That would take at least four or five minutes, probably longer,' said Dr David Nicholl, consultant neurologist at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, who has been co-ordinating international opposition to Guantanamo by physicians. 'It's very difficult to see how, if the landing was being properly patrolled, they could have managed to accomplish it.'


Continue...

 

We? Who? You and the mouse in your pocket?

I dont care how people who arent Christians look at people who are Christians. Jesus is right and they are wrong, deal with it.

As for the suicides in Gitmo, there have been attempts such as these all along. One of their lawyers told them if the camp had three suicides, then the US would consider closure of Camp Delta. OH. Sorry ...did you miss the LAWYER part? I betcha did. :thumbs:

They are in a detainee facility and live in conditions 1000 times better than in their homelands. I know this because Ive been to both. They were captured on a battlefields, with their weapons pointed in our direction. They dont have to be charged with much more than that. Its war folks. Read some WW2 history and gawk there. There isnt much to see in Cuba.

The prevailing line of thought isnt that they want to shut the place down really, its that some of them were about to be returned home. Some of them act as if we dug their graves and asked them to kneel over them so we could whisk their heads from their necks, instead of giving them freedom to go home. Makes you wonder what kind of place they were born into doesnt it?

Where is the outrage over Sgt Keith Maupin and the two recent MIA's? Just wondering.

Dont be such a media pushover.

 

I have the more than the slightest idea who they are, and let me tell you - they are already condemned men. Not in my eyes, but in the eyes of God. What they have done and what they claim they will do - you are just better off not knowing, which is likely why you dont hear it on talk radio or see it on the news.

The detainees have access to lawyers. They have access to more than Mike Spann, Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and quite a few others ever had. I dont hear you keening for them.

 

Thanks

If you were military, and I assume you were, thank you for giving so much for us. I, for one, appreciate it greatly! :thumbs:

I work civilian Army and we appreciate all the green-suits do for us. You are the important ones, the ones we try hard to support. The ones who have their lives on the line while we sit in front of our computers in our air-conditioned offices. Thank you, SIR!

 

I am still active duty, heavily involved with detainee process (although I am female raise: ). After the last four years of this particular vein of work, I am tired of the rhetoric that people flip out there on this subject.

I appreciate your comments, and leave you with this: it is an honor and a privilage to serve my country.

 

Unocal is a country now?

 

Right, everyone of them is exactly the same to you. You can see into the hearts, minds and souls of men - gosh, I am so in awe of you and your omniscience!!!

Since what date?

That's because you don't know how to listen.

Yeah? Which of their lawyers told them that and when?

That's ridiculous. At home, they are not kept in solitary, they do not have tubes shoved down their noses and laxatives shove into them while they remain shackled to a chair. At home, they are not chained to the floor their cells, etc, etc - read the reports. At home they are not going out of their minds with boredom and anxiety.

Ok, now I know you're just making things up. Yes, some of them were captured on battlefield, but a lot of them were not. A lot of them were turned in for bountie$$$.

According to the news accounts, the one that was about to be sent home, hadn't been told.

They want to shut the place down? Gee, I shocked!

Mostly mixed in with the general outrage against the war and against our enemies. Apparently, you don't have enough to even remember the names of the two recent MIAs.

Ah, eac, how you love to order people about!

 

:sleeping_2:

Not too swift in the upstairs area, are you? That wasnt an order, but as I sit here looking at the 'amusing to only you comments', I gathered with that last rant of yours that you simply reached the pinnacle of your wit and intellect. Congratulations.

At home, they dont have tubes shoved into their noses to FEED THEM because if they wanted to die in the motherland, there are plenty of their own countrymen who are happy to help them along. Especially if they return from Gitmo.

Yes we are all American demons making them take nourishment any way we can because we dont want them to kill themselves. :tear:

They arent chained to the floor of their cells either...I believe you have some US Marines confused with detainees in Cuba. (Good job. :thumbs: ) But they (the detainees not the Marines...follow closely here) do get subjected to the horrifying event of being restrained when they attempt to hurt themselves. OH NO! Guess youre okay with letting them cut themselves up? Im not. Its barbaric and horrible for everyone involved. Youre entirely way off base. And if you feel so moved over 'the reports' you think you know are gospel, then do something besides post about it. I doubt your concern will go further than one more post. That is pretty much what has been demonstrated to mean 'general outrage about the war'.

Poncho, what in the WORLD are you talking about? Never mind, I bet you couldnt explain it yourself without help of charts and powerpoint presentations.

 

Your insults are a mirror reflecting your own image.

What an odd insult, but for the record, I don't find abuse amusing in the least. I don't 'get' sadism.

It violates the basic human right to refuse informed medical treatment and the manner in which the forced feedings are administered are inhumane.