Dick Durbin

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

When did Eichman get the trial? Oh! That would be after WWII was over. As in after Germany surrendered. I don't think we're quite at that point.

Then please make that point to John McCain so he can stop slandering our troops and giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

[mousepod]

"We certainly have all seen the rejections of Nazi Germany's abuses of science. As a society and a nation, there ought to be some limit on what we can allow or should allow."
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), October 11, 2004
Speaking in opposition to stem cell research

[Scrooge McSam]

Enjoy, Leo.

Soldier sues over Guantanamo beating

A U.S. military policeman who was beaten by fellow MPs during a botched training drill at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for detainees has sued the Pentagon for $15 million, alleging that the incident violated his constitutional rights.

Spc. Sean D. Baker, 38, was assaulted in January 2003 after he volunteered to wear an orange jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee. Baker said the MPs, who were told that he was an unruly detainee who had assaulted an American sergeant, inflicted a beating that resulted in a traumatic brain injury.

You mean they didn't just chain him naked to the floor without access to toilet facilities, food or water for days at a time? Because I've got a friend that tells me that's OK.

Baker, a Gulf War veteran who reenlisted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was medically retired in April 2004. He said the assault left him with seizures, blackouts, headaches, insomnia and psychological problems.

In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Lexington, Ky., Baker asked the Army to reinstate him in a position that would accommodate his medical condition. He said the Army put him on medical retirement against his wishes.

"Somebody has to step up to serve, and I still want to serve," Baker said Friday in a telephone interview from his home in Georgetown, Ky. "There's some task somewhere I can do in the Army."

A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment, saying she had not seen the lawsuit and could not discuss pending litigation.

The Pentagon initially said that Baker's hospitalization following the training incident was not related to the beating.

Well, if the Pentagon said it, it must be true... no, wait

Later, officials conceded that he was treated for injuries suffered when a five-man MP "internal reaction force" choked him, slammed his head several times against a concrete floor and sprayed him with pepper gas.

The drill took place in a prison isolation wing reserved for suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees who were disruptive or had attacked MPs.

Baker said he put on the jumpsuit and squeezed under a prison bunk after being told by a lieutenant that he would be portraying an unruly detainee. He said he was assured that MPs conducting the "extraction drill" knew it was a training exercise and that Baker was an American soldier.

More Pentagon honesty?

As he was being choked and beaten, Baker said, he screamed a code word, "red," and shouted: "I'm a U.S. soldier! I'm a U.S. soldier!" He said the beating continued until the jumpsuit was yanked down during the struggle, revealing his military uniform.

The lawsuit says of the extraction team: "Armed with the highly inflammatory, false, incendiary and misleading information that had been loaded into their psyches by their platoon leader, these perceptions and fears … became their operative reality, and they acted upon these fears, all to the detriment of Sean Baker."

No one has been disciplined or punished for the assault, said Baker's lawyer, T. Bruce Simpson Jr.

EXCUSE ME!!!!! Now let's remember here people, the ONLY reason you're hearing about this is because these THUGS (Yes... THESE SOLDIERS = THUGS! Kiss my rusty butt if you don't like it!) had the misfortune of abusing a United States citizen. Now see if you can convince yourself we'd hear about this if it happened to a non-citizen.

"While it is unfortunate that Spc. Baker was injured, the standards of professionalism we expect of our soldiers mandate that our training be as realistic as possible," the spokesman said.

Unfortunate? UNFORTUNATE?? FVCKING CRIMINAL IS WHAT IT IS!!!

AND WHAT EXACTLY DOES "STANDARD OF PROFESSIONALISM" HAVE TO DO WITH THIS SORDID MESS?

And our Pentagon officials do nothing?

Step us and defend our actions here and I'll show you who the truly disgusting individual is.

We will do this to our own in a training missing, but we won't do it to detainees? Riiiiight!

Wake up, people!

[scaeagles]

Scrooge - why do you think I would defend that? What have I said to make you think I would defned beating anyone close to death? Have I not said the perps from Abu Ghraib should be prosectued? Of course those responsible for the beating should be prosecuted, and prosecuted under the UCMJ, which I believe has much more strict penalties than the US justice system.

However, I would not believe in any way that this would be indicative of daily happenings. Here's my reasoning - if this was something that was happening regularly to detainees, would the higher ups who ordered this training exercise have done so with a US MP? That would be the equivalent of taking a bomb squad member and training them with live explosives in the field. If it was a pattern, the commanders would not risk what happened for obvious reasons. Can I say that it hasn't happened to a detainee? No. Can I say prisoners in the US justice system are never beaten by guards? No. Can I say that policemen never abuse those they arrest? No. Is is all wrong? Yes. Do I believe that anyone of those are commonplace or the norm? No.

Also, I would offer that what Durbin quoted did not include anything of being chained to the floor without food or water for days. There was no time period for that long - at least not observed by the person who wrote what Durbin quoted. I will offer that I have no way of knowing how long they are chained that way, but also that the FBI agent who wrote that does not either.

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

However, I would not believe in any way that this would be indicative of daily happenings.

What exactly does the term "training drill" mean to you?

Am I to believe they let this "training drill" continue because they wanted to demonstrate what NOT to do?

Whenever I've participated in training, I've always believed it's because they want to impart to me techniques and procedures they WANT me to use.

Your mental gymnastics here just amaze me.

[scaeagles]

And while I would love to continue discussing this, I am leaving for DL with my family tomorrow and don't know how much I'll be on today. Certainly nothing after today for the next week. Just didn't want anyone to think that my silence was acquiescence.

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

And while I would love to continue discussing this, I am leaving for DL with my family tomorrow and don't know how much I'll be on today. Certainly nothing after today for the next week. Just didn't want anyone to think that my silence was acquiescence.

Lol!!! We would never think that, Leo.
Hey, have a great time at the park!

[scaeagles]

Actually, I believe it is your mental gymnastics that are amazing.

Do you believe they were instructed to beat the undercover MP? This is why they used an undercover MP, because they knew he would be beaten? That is absurd. Rather, I would suspect that they were quite surprised when it happened. Otherwise, they aren't going to use one of their own in the drill!

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Actually, I believe it is your mental gymnastics that are amazing.

It shouldn't surprise you that I am becoming less and less enamored with what you believe.

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Do you believe they were instructed to beat the undercover MP?

This particular man? No, though I can't be sure. Any other detainee? I don't know. I would like to be able to say that American soldiers are not trained to act this way, but I can't. They're beating what they think is a detainee with MP training officers watching them. You tell me. No, don't... I don't have the stomach to listen to whatever excuse you're going to come up with next.

What I believe is the MP's running the drill did NOT inform their trainees that this was a drill... gross incompetence there. They nearly got one of our own killed due to their gross negligence.

So these MPs hit that room believing they were dealing with a real situation. Their actions provide us an example or how MPs treat military detainees, contrary to your continued assertions that American soldiers just don't act like that. Yet, here we are. American soldiers beating a "detainee" all the way to brain damage.

(As an aside, do you think they beat detainees like that when they're torturing them for information? And I'm just talking about the few documented cases of torture that have been brought to light. After all, we all know that torture is not systemic in US prison camps, don't we? It would seem to me to be unproductive to beat somebody all the way to brain damage if you're trying to get information out of them.)

And now let's move to the reaction from the base commanders. There was none. No action has been taken against the "brave soldiers" who pepper sprayed and beat an innocent man they "thought" was an unruly detainee.

Yes, I am SO sure other detainees are being treated properly though.

And from the Pentagon? They denied it. We were never supposed to know about this. They only acknowledged it after a lawsuit was introduced. A Pentagon that actually strives to treat detainees properly, as they claim to do, would not have swept this under the rug.

We have a systemic problem in our prison camps. We have lost our way.

Originally Posted by scaeagles

This is why they used an undercover MP, because they knew he would be beaten? That is absurd.

That idea is yours, not mine, though I am happy to agree with you that it is absurd.

[scaeagles]

Senator Wyden, D of Oregon and certainly no friend of the Bush administration, after a trip this past weekend, seems to think Gitmo is no gulag:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160859,00.html

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (search) of Oregon and Ben Nelson (search) of Nebraska said that while they believe some kind of standard should be set for the status and treatment of the prisoners there, they did not observe anything in interrogation practices or conditions that would prompt them to agree with a call to shut the facility down.

"It is my opinion that closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay (search) would result in less accountability in the treatment of prisoners, not more," Wyden said. "The question we have to ask is who do we trust more to treat these prisoners humanely — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt or the United States?"

.......

Wyden said that past practices he had heard about at Guantanamo, a.k.a. Gitmo, have been changed, and procedures and conditions at Camp Delta, where the prisoners are housed, offer the best commitment to human rights.