From the BBC:
New allegations of prisoner abuse by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been revealed in documents released by the US Army.
The alleged incidents include beatings and mock executions. In one case, a man said he was hit with a baseball bat. The documents were the latest in a series obtained via legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"It's increasingly clear that members of the military were aware of the allegations of torture and that efforts were taken to erase evidence, to shut down investigations and to humiliate the detainees in an effort to silence them," ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told AP news agency.
I would draw rightwingers attention to John Pike, a conservative blogger who has finally woken up to the horror:
I was just like most conservatives when we started capturing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq..."torture them to find out where al-Qaeda/WMD's/insurgents were". And we all assumed that some level of torture was necessary because of the exigent circumstance.
But it has gotten out of hand. Between the mind-boggling memos the Justice Department prepared to detail specific allowable levels of torture, and to tortuously attempt to explain why the international accords against torture don't apply to us...I mean, come on!
John reports on an Iraqi prisoner who died under clear conditions of torture, suspended from his wrists which were bound behind his back and "interrogated" in such a way that when taken down blood spewed from his mouth, and finishes with:
This reprehensible act was done in the name of each one of us, and those of us conservatives that are not ready to criticize it...well, shame on you.
Yup.
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