Thursday, May 22, 2008

Torture is Fun, Kids

When you're new to something like torture, you always want to solicit advice from those who have more experience in the industry. So I guess it doesn't surprise me all that much to learn that the U.S. military collaborated with its Chinese counterparts in torturing and interrogating detainees at Guantanamo Bay, beginning with a 2002 secret treaty.

Secret treaties like this are common in intelligence matters. Canada's currently subject to several hundred, according to public testimony. (Naturally there's no list of them anywhere.)

"... an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators... When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment."

And so on, and so on.

Source: Justin Rood, "Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators," ABC News, May 20.