"Our Talented Professionals" at Guantanamo

You have a pre-Spanish Inquisition mindset. Anyway, this is legal now, right?

Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo "told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison," the statement said.

"One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee's head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others," but that he was never punished, the statement said. The paralegal was identified in the affidavit as a sergeant working on an unidentified Guantanamo-related case.

Remember, asswipes like Duncan Hunter want you to think the detainees at Gitmo are treated like kings because they get really nice meals! (Yeah, fed intravenously through a tube against their will)

Other guards "also told their own stories of abuse towards the detainees" that included hitting them, denying them water and "removing privileges for no reason."

"About 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees" and that included "punching in the face," the affidavit said.

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees."

Look, these guards have it tough, they're just blowing off steam.

The next 20 years are going to bring a steady diet of abuses and murders and cover-ups of the Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib era. Now I know what someone who lived in the era of My Lai feels like.

I'd like you all, for this weekend's homework, to take a look at this story about torture and fascism at Orcinus. Here's an excerpt:

It's not that torture is unique to fascism. It has, after all, been around since the Dark Ages, and remained alive as a component of theocratic and feudal states for centuries. Certainly it has always been a commonplace feature of communist regimes as well, with the Soviets and Chinese providing abundant examples. What can be said generally is that torture is a feature of totalitarianism, regardless of its content.

But it occupies a unique position in the fascist ideological hierarchy, which is, after all, not so much a cohesive ideology but a multifaceted pathology. What makes fascism so potent on a personal level is its psychosexual component, expressed mostly as a desire to purge "unhealthy" elements through eliminationist violence, including the control of the body of the Other, and the ability to inflict purgative pain and suffering on that body. (For more on this, see Klaus Theweleit's study of this aspect of fascism, Male Fantasies, especially Vol. II.)

Fascists are particularly fond of torture because it represents such a complete expression of the fascist will to power. So when a nation adopts torture as an officially condoned policy -- as the United States has just done -- it immediately raises the specter that, indeed, it may be descending into the fascist abyss.

I'd also like you to think if you could name ONE benevolent nation that has sanctioned torture in human history. Torture is typically associated with countries like Nazi-era Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia, apartheid-era South Africa, modern-day Iran... Torture is sanctioned by societies that believe in, or at least are unconcerned by, cruelty. How is that consistent with any American value?