February 08, 2005

Here's the latest of several stories that alleged Islamist enemy combatants were tortured by the U.S. military:
Gitmo Detainees: U.S. Troops Abused Them

Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp contend they were wrongly imprisoned after repeated abuse by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including beatings with chains, electric shock and sodomy, their lawyer said Monday.
[...]
The government has denied using torture, but multiple investigations into abuse at detention camps in Afghanistan and Guantanamo are under way. It is not clear whether some of the men's statements could be dismissed if investigators confirm there was abuse during interrogations.

Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said all "credible" abuse allegations are investigated, but he suggested the Kuwaitis' claims were consistent with al-Qaida tactics to falsely allege abuse or mistreatment.

"That these detainees are now making allegations of abuse seems to fit the standard operating procedure in al-Qaida training manuals," Shavers said in response to questions from The Associated Press about the Kuwaitis' accusations.

London's Daily Telegraph reminded us last week how we know this is undeniably an AQ tactic to defang us in this war:

[...]
The men's claim that they were tortured at Guantanamo should also be set in the context of the al-Qa'eda training manual discovered during a raid in Manchester a couple of years ago. Lesson 18 of that manual, whose authenticity has not been questioned, emphatically states, under the heading "Prison and Detention Centres", that, when arrested, members of al-Qa'eda "must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security investigators. [They must] complain to the court of mistreatment while in prison". That is not, of course, proof that the Britons were not tortured in Guantanamo. But it ought to encourage some doubts about uncritically accepting that they were – which seems to be the attitude adopted by most of the media.

Ah, the perfect marriage--IslamoFacist killers, Liberal Left trial lawyers and the MSM!
I long for the day when our judges and ultimately, the USSC, shut the door on this tactic for good for the duration of the war.
And this lesson applies to the Abu Ghraib thing, too.
While the pictures were bad (Proving yet again that "Pictures speak louder than words."), no real harm seems to have been suffered by the enemy detainees in Iraq under U.S. military jurisdiction other than emotional and sexual humiliation from being forced to form nude pyramids or to wear women's panties on their head by an American women soldier smoking a cigarette.
The brouhaha made by the Dimocrats and their messengers in the MSM over the Abu Ghraib incident served only to tie the hands of our military in a war zone and I'm convinced that the consequent backlash lead directly to this incident last week:
U.S. troops fire on prison riot as 4 die

American troops opened fire to put down a riot Monday at a prison camp in southern Iraq that left four inmates dead and six wounded, U.S. military officials said.
[...]
The U.S. military said guards opened fire about 45 minutes into the riot, when verbal warnings and nonlethal measures failed to subdue the rioters.

Hope the Left is proud of themselves!
The whole Abu Ghraib mess, as well as the Gitmo charges of "abuse," will continue to be a successful strategy for the IslamoNazis to employ over and over, while for the Dems, the Media and the EUrowhiners it's their most accessible way to denigrate U.S. troops and to attempt to embarrass and weaken the offices of both President Bush and SecDef Rumsfeld.
Why not next time, instead of getting these killers an ACLU lawyer, we tell them to take their laments to Allah in their 5-times-daily prayers?