Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war
crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush
administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the
defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new
investigation published exclusively in the Guardian today. The
investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, quotes one
former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which guards would
"fuck with [detainees] as much as we could" by inflicting pain on them.
The Bush administration repeatedly assured critics that inmates were
granted recreation periods, but one Pentagon adviser told Hersh how,
for some prisoners, they consisted of being left in straitjackets in
intense sunlight with hoods over their heads. Hersh provides details of
how President George Bush signed off on the establishment of a secret
unit that was given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate
"high-value" suspects - considered by many to be in defiance of
international law - an officially "unacknowledged" programme that was
eventually transferred wholesale from Guantánamo to the Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq.[more 
]
- Rice Denies New Prisoner Claims '
There were some concerns about conditions of overcrowding. But nothing
that suggested, to my recollection, that there were abuses ... going on
at Guantanamo, and certainly nothing that would suggest the kind of
thing that went on in Abu Ghraib,' she said, referring to the infamous
Iraqi prison[more ]
- Pictured above: U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mixed up al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden and deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech on
Friday about the war against terrorism. [more ]
