I wasn't sure if I should post this in a seperate thread, if it doesn't generate a response, I'll probably do that. This Salon.com article gives more details on the Abu Ghraib and related abuses,
including the abuse and resulting coverup of an American soldier who suffered brain damage as a result of the abuse.The article also includes a link to the ACLU website describing and listing ~10,000 pages of related documents obtained via FOIA. Among those documents is a .pdf where the FBI complain how "torture techniques" are being used by interrogators pretending to be FBI, so that the FBI would be left holding the bag if there were a resulting lawsuit. I've included those links below.
(...)
A physician at an undisclosed Iraq prison told investigators that a prisoner had complained of being beaten. But the doctor said that he did not see bruising. The medical record could not be found. In 2005, Army investigators thought believable the complaint of a Tikrit inmate that he had been chilled with an air conditioner, beaten, kicked, and dragged. But they closed the investigation because no medical records could be found and the detaining soldiers could not be identified. Another Tikrit inmate described three days of beatings after which his urine became bloody. Again, Army investigators could not find a medical record. In another 2004 case in Iraq, a medic recorded, in a medical note, abrasions, bruises, a broken nose, and a fractured leg. The attending physician signed the note without examining or interviewing the battered prisoner. When the prisoner brought formal charges of abuse through the prison's complaint system, the lack of a doctor's note harmed his credibility. The prisoner decided to drop his complaint and signed a formal statement, "I swear under oath that I do not want to file a complaint against the American Forces so I can get released."
The misplacement of medical records also was used to discredit an American soldier. In January 2003, Spc. Sean Baker put on a Guantanamo prisoner's uniform to allow soldiers to practice extracting a prisoner from a cell. The extraction team did not know that Baker was an American. He recalls, "They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and … got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down." Guard Scott Sinclair "began to choke me and press my head against the floor." He twice "slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me." Baker was hospitalized for brain trauma, given a medical discharge, and continues to suffer from regular seizures. The videotape of the training exercise was lost.
An Army Physical Evaluation Board concluded that Baker's injuries and disabilities were due to the beating and gave its report to Baker. Yet 18 months later, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Laurie Arellano told reporters that Baker's medical discharge was not related to his duties in the military. When Baker released the Army Board's statement, Arellano conceded that the beatings were a factor in Baker's discharge, stating that she had new information.
In the course of the investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Army Major Anthony Cavallaro testified, "What bothered me most about what happened at Abu Ghraib was that no soldier came forward and said this is wrong." The same can be said of the doctors, nurses, and medics.
http://www.slate.com/id/2144590/And the beat(ing) goes on...
Main ACLU website:
http://www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/13794res20050429.htmlFBI complaint:
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/FBI_3977.pdf