MORE 'BAD APPLES'

We're all familiar with Dear Leader's bogus claims, and those of his cronies, that torture of prisoners (or if you prefer the euphemism, abuse) was limited to a few "bad apples" and that systemic torture was never, never the case.

Now comes major evidence in a new report in this morning's London Guardian that "US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking 'trophy photographs' of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation" -- and then destroying the photos to cover it up after the scandal in Iraq.

According to the Guardian, documents it obtained "contain evidence that such abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near the southern city of Kandahar." Further:

[P]hotographs taken in southern Afghanistan showing US soldiers from the 22nd Infantry Battalion posing in mock executions of blindfolded and bound detainees, were purposely destroyed after the Abu Ghraib scandal to avoid "another public outrage", the documents show. ...

In a separate case, which the Guardian reveals today, two former prisoners of the US in Afghanistan have come forward with claims against their American captors.

In sworn affidavits to a British-American human rights lawyer, a Palestinian says he was sodomised by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Another former prisoner of US forces, a Jordanian, describes a form of torture which involved being hung in a cage from a rope for days.

Go read the complete story.

To my knowledge the evidence of systematic torture at Bagram, and the attempt to cover it up, have yet to appear in the American press. Fancy that! I'm checking further. When I have more definitive knowledge, I'll post it.

Whoops, I take that back. It's been reported all over. The Associated Press has it. Reuters has it. The Boston Globe has it. The New York Times has it. The Washington Post has it. And here's one in The Times of London.

The Guardian story and the rest are based on information released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has posted the incriminating documents here. The 1,000 pages of "evidence from U.S. army investigations released to the American Civil Liberties Union" about torture of prisoners in Iraq -- to which the Guardian refers -- have also been reported on in the American press. The ACLU has dripped the documents out to generate a huge number of stories.

Meanwhile, have a look at "'Nobody is talking,'" another Guardian story this morning, which details how "9/11 created the will for new, harsher interrogation techniques of foreign suspects by the US and led to the abuses in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond." Not incidentally, "it is the British who refined these methods and who have provided the precedent for legalised torture."

The story is occasioned by British publication of American journalist Mark Danner's book, "Torture and Truth," and another book, "The Torture Papers," edited by two American lawyers, Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel. Both books have been reported on in the American press. But the Guardian lays out the themes and details better than I've seen anywhere else.