Mike Carlton writes a weekly column in the Sydney Morning Herald. He takes no prisoners and his tongue is often firmly placed in his cheek. Part of this week's "gem":
"The Pentagon press secretary, a smooth-talking former TV hack named Geoffrey S. Morell, wanted the world to know he'd had a bad few days.
Thx to Wikileaks we spent Easter weekend dealing w/NYT and other news orgs publishing leaked classified GTMO docs," he tweeted from Washington on Monday.
Tough, Geoff. Although I dare say not as tough as spending five or six years banged away as a prisoner of JTF-GTMO, the US military's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The latest truckload of leaks has revealed what any sensible person has long known, that physical and psychological abuse was routinely employed at Gitmo as a deliberate policy of the administration of George W. Bush.
"We do not torture," Bush told a news conference back in 2005, thereby cementing his reputation as a bare-faced liar. If any cement was needed, that is. But if the folks at the CIA were ever squeamish about doing the dirty work they could always get by with a little help from such friends as Hosni Mubarak.
The Australian Mamdouh Habib was one of dozens of supposed terrorists illegally abducted by the CIA and packed off to Egyptian prisons under the so-called rendition program. His file reveals that in 2001 "he spent six months with Egyptian interrogators before being transferred to US custody''.
Not being tortured, of course, but "under extreme duress", in the delicate wording of Brigadier-General Jay W. Hood, the Gitmo commander. John Howard, Alexander Downer & Co have never admitted they knew all about this and condoned it.
The truly startling revelation was not the illegality or the cruelty of the system but its sheer incompetence. Among those being held as "the worst of the worst" was an 89-year-old man with senile dementia, and an Afghan village boy of 14 who had been found carrying a gun.
A 30-year-old goatherd named Sharbat was imprisoned for six years as an "enemy combatant", even though his Gitmo file reported that "this detainee's knowledge of herding animals, which he readily talks about, and his inability to discuss simple military and political concepts, tend to support the detainee's contention that he indeed is just a simple shepherd''.
Well duh."
"The Pentagon press secretary, a smooth-talking former TV hack named Geoffrey S. Morell, wanted the world to know he'd had a bad few days.
Thx to Wikileaks we spent Easter weekend dealing w/NYT and other news orgs publishing leaked classified GTMO docs," he tweeted from Washington on Monday.
Tough, Geoff. Although I dare say not as tough as spending five or six years banged away as a prisoner of JTF-GTMO, the US military's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The latest truckload of leaks has revealed what any sensible person has long known, that physical and psychological abuse was routinely employed at Gitmo as a deliberate policy of the administration of George W. Bush.
"We do not torture," Bush told a news conference back in 2005, thereby cementing his reputation as a bare-faced liar. If any cement was needed, that is. But if the folks at the CIA were ever squeamish about doing the dirty work they could always get by with a little help from such friends as Hosni Mubarak.
The Australian Mamdouh Habib was one of dozens of supposed terrorists illegally abducted by the CIA and packed off to Egyptian prisons under the so-called rendition program. His file reveals that in 2001 "he spent six months with Egyptian interrogators before being transferred to US custody''.
Not being tortured, of course, but "under extreme duress", in the delicate wording of Brigadier-General Jay W. Hood, the Gitmo commander. John Howard, Alexander Downer & Co have never admitted they knew all about this and condoned it.
The truly startling revelation was not the illegality or the cruelty of the system but its sheer incompetence. Among those being held as "the worst of the worst" was an 89-year-old man with senile dementia, and an Afghan village boy of 14 who had been found carrying a gun.
A 30-year-old goatherd named Sharbat was imprisoned for six years as an "enemy combatant", even though his Gitmo file reported that "this detainee's knowledge of herding animals, which he readily talks about, and his inability to discuss simple military and political concepts, tend to support the detainee's contention that he indeed is just a simple shepherd''.
Well duh."
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