Prisoner Treatment Was "Humane"

Or at least that's what we were all told just a few weeks back by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt who testified before the the Senate Armed Services Committee and stated "As the bottom line, though, we found no torture. Detention and interrogation operations were safe, secure and humane." And reported by AP back on July 13th. How very strange then because now we have WaPo reporting that Investigative records about the death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush show [He] was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again. It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.... "The indig were hitting the detainee with fists, a club and a length of rubber hose," according to classified investigative records. Soldiers heard Mowhoush "being beaten with a hard object" and heard him "screaming" from down the hall, according to the Jan. 18, 2004, provost marshal's report. The report said four Army guards had to carry Mowhoush back to his cell. Although Mowhoush's death certificate lists his cause of death as "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression," the Dec. 2, 2003, autopsy, quoted in classified documents and released with redactions, showed that Mowhoush had "contusions and abrasions with pattern impressions" over much of his body, and six fractured ribs. Investigators believed a "long straight-edge instrument" was used on Mowhoush, as well as an "object like the end of an M-16" rifle. "Although the investigation indicates the death was directly related to the non-standard interrogation methods employed on 26 NOV, the circumstances surrounding the death are further complicated due to Mowhoush being interrogated and reportedly beaten by members of a Special Forces team and other government agency (OGA) employees two days earlier," said a secret Army memo dated May 10, 2004. Now of course the soldiers bear responsibility for this death, but "The interrogation techniques were known and were approved of by the upper echelons of command of the 3rd ACR," [the lawyer for one of the soldiers] said in a news conference. "They believed, and still do, that they were appropriate and proper." That's right my friends, the ULTIMATE responsibility rests with King George (in collusion with his now Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales' approval) along with Cheney and Rumsfeld. Humane treatment indeed!!!! MORE.....