Rising Hegemon
...the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force, but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force...
The IRF teams "were fully approved at the highest levels [of the Bush administration], including the Secretary of Defense and with outside consultation of the Justice Department," says Scott Horton, one of the leading experts on U.S. Military and Constitutional law. This force "was designed to disabuse the prisoners of any idea that they would be free from physical assault while in U.S. custody," he says. "They were trained to brutally punish prisoners in a brief period of time, and ridiculous pretexts were taken to justify" the beatings...
Deghayes was eventually moved to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he was beaten and "kept nude, as part of the process of humiliation due to his religion." U.S. personnel placed Deghayes "inside a closed box with a lock and limited air." He also described seeing U.S. guards sodomize an African prisoner and alleged guards "forced petrol and benzene up the anuses of the prisoners."
"The camp looked like the Nazi camps that I saw in films," Deghayes said.
A few years ago I would have looked skeptically on such reports, but I've learned to no longer doubt their possibility, if not probability. I don't have any doubt despite an Executive Order many abuses are still on-going -- if nothing less than out of habit.
So far we haven't "intentionally" gone and made an entire village of Muslims go out into the countryside and dig their own graves, strip down and lay in rows so we could sardine them (large scale bombings or missile launches on wedding parties and sleeping villagers excepted) but it may be a matter of time.
Of course, that's an over-exaggeration, but it's far too close to accurate for a nation's moral comfort.
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