Book Excerpt: 'Oath Betrayed'
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5516533snip...
Dilawar was a twenty-two-year-old farmer and taxi driver, whom American soldiers tortured to death over five days at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan in December 2002. When the soldiers pulled a sandbag over his head, Dilawar complained that he could not breathe.
He was then shackled and suspended from his arms for hours, denied water, and beaten so severely that his legs would have been amputated had he survived. When he was beaten with a baton, he would cry "Allah, Allah!," which guards found so amusing that they beat him some more just to hear him cry. During his final interrogation, soldiers told the delirious, injured prisoner that he would get medical attention after the session. Instead, he was returned to a cell and chained to the ceiling. Several hours later, a physician found him dead.
By then, the interrogators had concluded that Dilawar was innocent and had simply been picked up after driving his new taxi by the wrong place at the wrong time.and more...
An autopsy on December 13 found that Dilawar's death was a homicide, caused by extensive and severe "blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease" (inexplicably, "coronary artery disease" is typed on the death certificate in a different font). The Pentagon reported that the prisoner died of natural causes. Later,
a coroner testified that Dilawar's legs were "pulpified" and that the body looked as if it had been "run over by a truck." ===
What's perverted to me is how many of our fellow citizens believe that torture is acceptable or lamely claim that what we are doing is not torture.
Thanks to madfloridian for posting the link to the above article in this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5529238