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Afghan prisoners taking part in a US study have claimed they were abused at a secret jail inside the main American military base in Afghanistan. Share Yahoo StumbleUpon Google Technorati del.icio.us Digg Reddit Mixx Propeller Former inmates told the Open Society Institute they were subjected to sleep deprivation, extended periods of isolation and a lack of food and blankets. Some of the claimed abuses date from this year, despite President Barack Obama's pledge to overhaul prison practices. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said this does not surprise him because “the Obama administration is many respects worse than the Bush administration.”...

WASHINGTON -Fending off demands that he resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that he had found a legal way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces." "It's the right thing to do," Rumsfeld said. "And it is my intention to see that we do." Six years later, the U.S. Army is unable to document a single payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Nor can the more than 250 Iraqis or their...

Today’s Los Angeles Times is featuring a report by Ned Parker that reveals the existence a secret prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki (L.A. Times photo above). Sunni Muslim prisoners and others there-in were allegedly tortured by beatings, electrical shocks, and anally raped. I am not surprised by this report. I have long believed that an invading Infidel army would never be able to broker a truce, ameliorate, assuage, mitigate, tranquilize, becalm, or otherwise call a halt to the centuries-old war between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims over the lawful ascension to leadership of the Muslim...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Jan. 12, 2009) — Department of Defense personnel announced Monday that Maj. Gen. David E. Quantock, who currently heads American prison facilities in Iraq, will succeed Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin as Fort Leonard Wood’s commanding general. Quantock, a career military policeman who previously served as the commandant of the Military Police School at Fort Leonard Wood, is known as the American commander brought in to repair the damage caused by the 2004 detainee abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in which several American soldiers abused Iraqi detainees and photographed them in various sexually humiliating positions....

War On Terror: As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed receives the benefits of U.S. justice, three Navy SEALs face court-martial for allegedly punching a captured terrorist who hanged Americans from a bridge in Fallujah. Apparently our efforts to impress the world about the marvels of our criminal justice system require us to give foreign terrorists such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the man who invented the manned cruise missiles that flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and plowed into a Pennsylvania field on its way to the Capitol Building, the full rights and protections of the American citizens he conspired...

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And for their trouble, three of the SEALs, members of the Navy's elite commando unit, are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com. The three have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and requested a trial by court-martial. Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it....

War On Terror: Sen. Dick Durbin calls a plan to transfer 100 Guantanamo detainees to northwest Illinois "a dream come true." It would paint a bull's-eye on America's heartland in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses. It seems the question of where to put the Guantanamo detainees is being settled as we speak, with liberal Democrats in the very blue state of Illinois welcoming them with open arms and outstretched hands for the federal dollars that will come with them. Federal officials last Friday inspected the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a town of 500 on the Iowa border,...

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Republican Senator John McCain has denounced the use of torture on terrorism suspects during the administration of former president George W. Bush. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said McCain. In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, the Arizona senator said that the enhanced interrogation techniques also helped al Qaeda recruit additional members. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq,” said McCain, who added that he...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator John McCain, a torture survivor from his days as a captive during the Vietnam War, says his private comments about harsh interrogation methods were misrepresented by the Bush Administration in a recently released legal document intended to justify a six-day-long course of sleep deprivation for one CIA detainee in November of 2007. The newly declassified memo by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel mentions a secret briefing McCain and other members of Congress received sometime before October 17, 2006. The memo says the lawmakers were told about six CIA interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation....

Says Abuse of Detainees Helped al Qaeda Recruit Terrorists, But Opposes Investigation into "Enhanced" Interrogations. BY MICHELLE LEVI Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he thinks it is a "serious mistake" for the administration to focus on the past when investigating the interrogation techniques of the CIA under President Bush on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "For us now to go back, I think, would be a serious mistake. "I believe that the president was right when he said we ought to go forward and not back. I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing...

And the Democrats have won. President Obama will use the emotional capital of the Senator's passing to push through--via reconciliation--legislation that SHALL include the public option that the Pelosi wing of the party wants. Any Republicans who dare to speak against this will be portrayed as heartless demagogues, spitting on the grave of a liberal legend.

WASHINGTON – A lecture by the woman who became the public face of the Abu Ghraib scandal was canceled Friday at the Library of Congress after threats led to concerns about staff safety. Former Army reservist Lynndie England had been scheduled to discuss her biography as part of a veterans forum on Capitol Hill. The book by author Gary S. Winkler is called "Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World." Members of the Library of Congress Professional Association, the employee group holding the talk, received an e-mail from president Angela Kinney saying the event was...

Five years after the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos came to light, Lynndie England says the government's "softening up tactics" are acceptable ways to get information from prisoners. In an interview with the BBC, England defends herself and fellow soldiers who posed Iraqi prisoners in degrading positions for photographs in 2004. "Compared to what they do to us, that's like nothing," England says in the BBC video, referring to instances where Americans were decapitated, burned, dragged through the streets or hung from a bridge by insurgents. She likens the physical degradation that appears in the Abu Ghraib photos to the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain said Thursday the United States must recover from the "moral failures" of human rights abuses and called for Americans to stand on the "right side" of history as a leader of the free world. "I believe American leadership in opposition to human rights abuses, not silence, is the truest expression of our national character," McCain said in a speech to the Junior State of America, a civics education organization for high school students. "The United States since its founding has embraced a set of moral duties, among which I believe is the obligation to...

KEYSER, W.Va. – More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home. Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.

In this deeply disturbing interview, the trailer trash torturer who appalled the world by appearing in shocking 'souvenir' photographs remains utterly unrepentant and says she has 800 MORE torture photos that could rock the White House Normally, not much happens in Keyser, West Virginia, but today the folks in this quaint little railroad town, nestling in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, are spoilt for choice. Either they can whoop and holler along to fiddle music at the annual Strawberry Festival or head down to the bookshop, where a local 'celebrity' - as her agent-cum-lawyer describes her - is signing...

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

In our view May 14: Obama Flip-Flops By trying to hide truth about prisoner abuse, president abuses public's right to know Thursday, May 14 | 1:00 a.m. Much of President Barack Obama's success in last year's election was based on his promise to foster open government, transparency and accountability. Now he has reversed that course as he tries to block the release of hundreds of photos showing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan being abused. How many more times will Obama reverse or abandon positions that he articulated in his campaign for the presidency? His reasons for changing his mind in...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the detainee abuse photos he wants to block from release are "not particularly sensational" and would do no good if published. He said he will not tolerate abuse of prisoners. But he also said Wednesday he had directed his legal team to fight the court-ordered release of the photos because he was concerned about how they might affect the safety of U.S. troops. Obama spoke on the South Lawn of the White House, not long after his decision to fight in court to block the photos' release was made public by aides.