Revealed: Pentagon's secret prisons, legal loopholes and CIA 'ghost' detainees

Revealed: Pentagon's secret prisons, legal loopholes and CIA 'ghost' detainees

rawstory.com

Three major human rights organizations have declared the Department of Defense was running secret prisons at Bagram and in Iraq, actively sought ways around the terms of the Geneva conventions and cooperated with the CIA's "ghost detention" program which saw prisoners hidden from Red Cross oversight.

The arrival of the documents comes on the same day the ACLU published two unredacted pages of a government report which reveals detainees in US custody were tortured to death

"These newly released documents confirm our suspicion that the tentacles of the CIA’s abusive program reached across agency lines," said Margaret Satterthwaite, Director of the NYU International Human Rights Clinic, in a Thursday advisory. "In fact, it is increasingly obvious that defense officials engaged in legal gymnastics to find ways to cooperate with the CIA’s activities. A full accounting of all agencies must now take place to ensure that future abuses don’t continue under a different guise."

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I'm sorry but I don't have problem with what the CIA and the Pentagon is/has done in this area.

If these people had information we needed to fight the war(s) better, I say that we get it by any means necessary.

These are clearly bad people or they would not have been targeted for interrogation. I believe that the rules need to be bent, broken or ignored if it saves lives in the war zone.

I know that many of you think this may be way too hard of a stance on this issue. I'm not trying to offend anyone here, it's just one guys opinion here.

I know that we never hear of the successes that the CIA and the Pentagon have, we only here of their very public failures.

They are the people on the front line, the tip of the spear. They know what it takes to get information and I applaud them for their efforts.
Myself and most of you hear on the website have no clue on how to fight a war with this kind of threats.
I don't think that we should question the way they do their jobs while we bask in the freedom that they provide for us.

I'm very interested in hearing you take on this and what your arguments are if you disagree with me on this one.

SeeYa!

rawstory.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The ICRC pretty much thinks all prisons are abusive and should be shut down.

Huh your opinion is interesting, but I'm not going to address it.

I want to add one more piece of data to the OP, this article from The Guardian a few weeks ago, which slipped under the radar:



www.guardian.co.uk...

Some interesting details there.

reply to post by wolf241e


while i can see where ur coming from I think you're a fan of 24 like myself so you'll also know that many people have been innocently interrogated...the thruth of the matter is we'll probably never know the extent of what agents etc done over there for many years if ever.

I think if a known terrorist or an affilliate is apprehended then use whatever means necessary yeah, by all means...but randomly pulling citizens off the streets is wrong...

reply to post by wolf241e


And the real terrorist are? yes is easy to get into a sovereign nation, attack them, invade them and then torture to death at will what the invading nation deems necessary to "squeeze" out, after all a death body can not tell its side of the story and can never prove innocence.

But then again we are the good people right? that is why we are loved by the entire world.

Originally posted by itchy_tartan_blanket
reply to post by wolf241e

 

while i can see where ur coming from I think you're a fan of 24 like myself

so you'll also know that many people have been innocently interrogated...the thruth of the matter is we'll probably never know the extent of what agents etc done over there for many years if ever.

I think if a known terrorist or an affilliate is apprehended then use whatever means necessary yeah, by all means...but randomly pulling citizens off the streets is wrong...

Hey there. I love your AVi. I'm a huge Godzilla fan!!

Getting to the post, i agree with you that we'll never know. I also think that this should have never been made public in the first place.
It just breeds negativity and hammer public support of the war. Imo, it's a very essential form of getting info, despite what you hear from the armchair quarterbacks.

Originally posted by itchy_tartan_blanket
reply to post by wolf241e

 

...but randomly pulling citizens off the streets is wrong...

I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen, given there would be no point, it would serve no purpose, and it would be a waste of both material and human resources. By the time a suspect has been taken off country, it is a lock they have been vetted and are guilty.

Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by wolf241e

 

And the real terrorist are? yes is easy to get into a sovereign nation, attack them, invade them and then torture to death at will what the invading nation deems necessary to "squeeze" out, after all a death body can not tell its side of the story and can never prove innocence.

But then again we are the good people right? that is why we are loved by the entire world.

Hey Marg, good evening.

I agree that the situation that we have over there is far from perfect. Everything that you said is true and I agree with you on the fact that our motives about being there are very suspect.
That being said, if I had to interrogate some guy who has information that could save someone you or I care about, I do whatever I had to do.

It's not playtime in these places, serious things need to be done to win a conflict and this is one area that is nasty but necessary.

Originally posted by wolf241e
I'm sorry but I don't have problem with what the CIA and the Pentagon is/has done in this area.

If these people had information we needed to fight the war(s) better, I say that we get it by any means necessary.

These are clearly bad people or they would not have been targeted for interrogation. I believe that the rules need to be bent, broken or ignored if it saves lives in the war zone.

The Taliban, Hezbollah, the Insurgency in Iraq, and other 'terrorist' groups hide among civilians, a violation of the Geneva Conventions and laws of War. You know why they do it? Because they are fighting wars by any means necessary.

But when other people break the rules and the laws you don't think it's right, and we even use it as a reason to attack them.

Funny thing about laws: it's for everybody, all the time, not just when it's for the other guy or when it's convenient to us.

Bottom line is, the United States has legal obligations. It has signed and ratified treaties, the Geneva Conventions for instance. No one forced the US Government to sign any of those treaties. It did because at the time the people that were running this country still had some morals and values, and knew that not everything goes in war.

You don't like it? Don't like the Geneva Conventions or any other treaties? Fine, you break the law. But applauding a federal agency for breaking the law? An agency that works in the name of the people, in the name of this country and what it stands for? I'm sorry but that's wrong on many levels, the legal stand point just happens to be one of them.

To hear people like you talk as if we have to torture people, anything goes if we want to win, it's OK when we do it because we're the good guys.. well, you know what? It makes me think the terrorist have already won.

[edit on 12-2-2009 by converge]

Originally posted by stevegmu
I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen, given there would be no point, it would serve no purpose, and it would be a waste of both material and human resources. By the time a suspect has been taken off country, it is a lock they have been vetted and are guilty.

And with ZERO oversight or accountability you can be sure of this how?

Are you saying you should just trust the CIA?

Because they've done nothing to suggest they've done anything wrong in the past, right?

Originally posted by wolf241e
It's not playtime in these places, serious things need to be done to win a conflict and this is one area that is nasty but necessary.

Guerrilla warfare often turns into very protracted conflict, with many civilian casualties. There is rarely a moral victor, just one side less damaged by the conflict than the other.

Im surprised you really think the wars in their current phases are winnable.

[edit on 13-2-2009 by InSpiteOf]