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10 Aug 2008 10:46 am

"The Worst Of The Worst"

That's how this administration has described all those detained in Guantanamo Bay. Some are. Many, many are not. And it's one thing to shepherd mistakes and innocents hors de combat; it's another thing to strip, abuse, humiliate and torture them as well. Jeffrey Rosen reviews My Guantanamo Diary today:

Other Afghan detainees who languished for years at Guantánamo before being freed include a goatherd who was turned over to the Americans by his cousin after they quarreled and two poetry-writing members of the Pakistani opposition, who were turned in by their political rivals and repeatedly questioned at Guantánamo about a joke they had told involving Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky...

Her gut-wrenching first-person accounts of detainee abuse by American soldiers at the Bagram Air Base are consistent with the findings of a recent report by the inspector general of the Justice Department on detainee interrogations in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq. F.B.I. officials observed detainees being subjected to sexual humiliation, body cavity searches and other indignities similar to the abuses that Khan reports...

It is hard to read this book without a growing sense of embarrassment and indignation.

Welcome, Jeff, to the club. The  more you find out, the angrier you'll become.

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