OK, Dubya, you can put yours back down. Thanks for playing. Perhaps the secret jails were a result of "intelligent design". Go with that.
Two Yemeni prisoners have claimed they were held in secret, underground US jails for more than 18 months, Amnesty International has said.
The human rights group has called on the US to reveal details of the alleged secret detention of suspects abroad.
Amnesty has said it fears the case is part of a "much broader picture" in which the US is holding prisoners at a network of undisclosed locations.
The US state department had no immediate comment to make.
Well, of course they didn't. If they did, it'd be along the lines of the "few bad apples" sort of misdirection they specialize in. Or is that the Defense Department? It's so hard to keep 'em straight these days.
The two Yemeni men, Muhammad Faraj Ahmed Bashmilah and Salah Nasser Salim Ali, were arrested separately but reported almost identical experiences to Amnesty.
Both say they were arrested in 2003 in Jordan and tortured for four days by Jordanian intelligence services.
Alleged methods include being beaten on the feet while bound and suspended upside-down. One of the men claims he was threatened with sexual abuse and electric shocks.
Each says he was then flown to an unnamed underground jail, where he was held in solitary confinement for six to eight months with no access to lawyers.
So it's really another case of "extraordinary rendition", except these people are being rendered -- that is, disappeared -- to extranational jails run by us. Sweet.
Of course, we've also been doing okay with the jails we admit to.
Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.
It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.
The sleeping bag was the idea of a soldier who remembered how his older brother used to force him into one, and how scared and vulnerable it made him feel. Senior officers in charge of the facility near the Syrian border believed that such "claustrophobic techniques" were approved ways to gain information from detainees, part of what military regulations refer to as a "fear up" tactic, according to military court documents.
The circumstances that led up to Mowhoush's death paint a vivid example of how the pressure to produce intelligence for anti-terrorism efforts and the war in Iraq led U.S. military interrogators to improvise and develop abusive measures, not just at Abu Ghraib but in detention centers elsewhere in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mowhoush's ordeal in Qaim, over 16 days in November 2003, also reflects U.S. government secrecy surrounding some abuse cases and gives a glimpse into a covert CIA unit that was set up to foment rebellion before the war and took part in some interrogations during the insurgency.
Yep, just a few bad apples, just a bunch of crazy kids blowin' off steam. Nothing systematic or deliberate, nobody here but us chickens. Hey, weren't they going to release the rest of those Abu Ghraib photos a couple months ago? Sure they were, until we all got distracted by Karl Rove and Bob Roberts.
And then there are some who just don't give a shit about the silly concept of due process of law, those brave souls that don't consider the likelihood that most of the people in Gitmo were apparently sold to us by warlords looking to turn a quick buck on reward money. Oh well, let's just kill 'em all and let Allah sort 'em out.
O’REILLY: I don’t give them any protection. I don’t feel sorry for them. In fact, I probably would have ordered their execution if I had the power.
Do people still watch The Falafel Factor?
So I guess it's no wonder that Brand America is beginning to take a real beating in the world marketplace of ideas and respectability. But hey, we don't care what the other 95% thinks. Good thing.
The US is increasingly viewed as a "culture-free zone" inhabited by arrogant and unfriendly people, according to study of 25 countries' brand reputations.
The findings, published online today, will add to concerns that anti-Americanism is hurting companies whose products are considered to be distinctly "American".
The Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index found that although US foreign policy remained a key driver of hostility, dissatisfaction with the world's sole superpower might run deeper.
"The US is still recognised as a leading place to do business, the home of desirable brands and popular culture," said Simon Anholt, author of the survey. "But its governance, its cultural heritage and its people are no longer widely respected or admired by the world."
But, but....but we've got balls of plastic wrap, dude! Those poncey euros just don't understand, we're the country of balls.
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