US takes torture to a new level

Writing in The Guardian George Monbiot says:

"That the US tortures, routinely and systematically, while prosecuting its "war on terror" can no longer be seriously disputed. The Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project (DAA), a coalition of academics and human-rights groups, has documented the abuse or killing of 460 inmates of US military prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. This, it says, is necessarily a conservative figure: many cases will remain unrecorded. The prisoners were beaten, raped, forced to abuse themselves, forced to maintain "stress positions", and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation and mock executions."

This most disturbing piece is a must-read for it shows the level of depravity and inhumanity the US has employed in its treatment of many people, said to be terrorists, not even charged with any offence. As Monbiot concludes in his piece:

"President Bush maintains that he is fighting a war against threats to the "values of civilised nations": terror, cruelty, barbarism and extremism. He asked his nation's interrogators to discover where these evils are hidden. They should congratulate themselves. They appear to have succeeded."

Meanwhile, those 2 clowns, Ministers Downer and Nelson, have demeaned and disgraced themselves, and Australia, by in Washington this week trumpeting wholesale support for the war-effort of the US in Iraq. Not a word, apparently, about the release of David Hicks. Let's not forget that Lord Downer of Baghdad is the Foreign Minister of Australia whose department, DFAT, is repsonsible for Oz citizens overseas.

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