Prisoner Torture

No wonder why Bush threatened to veto a bill that would ban torture by the US military. Just read this sorry tale and you'll understand.

Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.

FBI agents working at the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques in e-mails to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union showed. The agents tried to get the military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions of terrorists because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.

Democrats need to seize this information and spread it during the upcoming midterm elections: America cannot stand for torture. This President has abandoned the core values of American Freedom. How dare this President allow - indeed, encourage - torture! We need to gain a majority in both houses of Congress and impeach the corrupt figure-head.

According to the memos, the FBI favored a law-enforcement approach geared toward collecting evidence that could be used later in prosecutions, while military officials preferred a more psychologically and physically aggressive approach derived from counterinterrogation methods taught at the Army's survival school.

The FBI shouldn't be surprised. The administration has no intention of prosecuting any of the prisoners in Gitmo or elsewhere. They're being indefinitely detained, courtesy of the Patriot Act. There's no need to worry about using information gathered in Gitmo through torture in courts when those prisoners will never see a court in their lifetime.