"forced masturbation"? Really?

The United States Army and Central Intelligence Agency personnel committed a series of human rights violations against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents received widespread condemnation both within the United States and abroad, although the torturers received support from conservative media in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse#Convictions_of_soldiers

The Taguba Report (the result of the investigation by a US Army Major General, Antonio Taguba) was released in April 2004. The report concluded that 60% of the detainees at Abu Ghraib "were no longer deemed a threat and clearly met the requirements for release."  (Ref. Page 25)

In other words, the treatment of those detainees, by US Army soldiers and by CIA personnel, was committed against people who were guilty of NOTHING. Against innocent civilians.

On Page 16 of the Taguba Report, Major General Taguba states, "I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped."

Friend, that is some sick shit.

Abu Ghraib (and Guantanamo) were never about the treatment of terrorists by Americans ... they were about how Americans were treating people against whom no evidence of terrorist activities can be demonstrated.

It makes all the difference.

The logic that was used was: "since we can't prove them not guilty of any crime, they must be, therefore, assumed guilty."

That's obviously contrary to long-standing American values; codified as the supreme law of our land, but espoused in our Declaration of Independence as the God-given rights of all men.

To accept the claim that only terrorists were treated inhumanely by Americans is tantamount to a submissive acceptance of a fascist state (one in which power overrules justice, law, and common decency). I reject that claim. I rejected it 16 years ago, and I reject it now.

How about you?

Who is Suleiman Abdullah Salim ?

Suleiman Abdullah Salim was the primary named plaintiff in the first civil lawsuit filed against the US Central Intelligence Agency (5 years ago) by victims of "extrajudicial detention" (no charges, no trial, no judge, no jury) in secret "black sites" (torture centres).

Mr. Salim was a Tanzanian fisherman who was sold by pirates in March 2003 to the Americans in Somalia.  He was taken to a secret prison in Afghanistan that was run by the CIA.  He was held there for fourteen months.  During that time, he was tortured regularly; torture which included anal penetration, mock execution, being doused with icy cold water, and waterboarding.  In July 2014, the CIA turned him over to the US military, who placed him in Bagram prison outside Kabul.
In August 2008, Suleiman Salim was released with a paper which stated that there were no charges against him and that he had been “determined to pose no threat to the United States Armed Forces or its interests in Afghanistan.”

In other words, he was a completely innocent man.  Held unlawfully for five years and tortured, by Americans.

In October 2015, the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, and two other CIA torture victims, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, who was a Libyan exile from Muammar Gaddafi’s regime; and the estate of Gul Rahman, an Afghan refugee who froze to death while being "interrogated" (tortured).

The lawsuit named as defendants two CIA contract "psychologists", James Elmer Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, who were independent contractors of the CIA.  For their "services'', these two men billed the CIA between $75 million and $81 million.

From the day he was sold to the Americans, Suleiman Salim was a dead man walking; the fact that he's alive today is remarkable.  There are Americans (at least two of them) wishing, now, that they'd "disappeared" him when they had the chance.

Americans didn't violate Suleiman Salim's "civil rights".  He had no such rights or any expectation of humane behaviour.  What was violated in Afghanistan was not anyone's "civil right"; what was violated were core American principles of behaviour.  Before Americans violated anyone's rights; before a single person was tortured or held without trial; Americans violated their own principles; they betrayed their own honour.  And there's a price to pay for that demonstration of weakness.

Americans need to accept the fact that the worst violations of American principles have not been of any prisoners' legal or human rights (indeed, the US has declared that "detainees" essentially have no such rights) ... the worst abuses have been of American principles of justice, morality, and of the standards that define "civilized behaviour."

Americans betrayed themselves.

No people who are guilty of that deserve our respect.  Ever.  It's an irredeemable violation of honour.

Let history record it so.


Update:  Salim v Mitchell was scheduled to go to trial before a jury in Spokane Washington on 5 September 2017.  The lawsuit was settled out-of-court (for an undisclosed amount).  Despite that, the lawsuit brought out into the open hundreds of pages of previously classified documents about the planning and operation of the CIA’s "extraordinary rendition" program, and produced an evidentiary record of over 4,000 pages.

Suleiman Abdullah Salim