The Bush Administration has presided over a stain on the nation’s honor that will never be removed. James Yee, who was charged by the military with espionage in order to silence him, details just how low BushCo has taken us.
"We say that the war on terror is not a war against Islam, but that’s not how it felt most days at Guantánamo," Yee writes in "For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire," his 2006 memoir. The environment at Guantánamo "excused, if not encouraged, open hostility toward Islam."
By almost every measure, Yee’s tour at Guantánamo was a nightmare, offending his sensibilities as an American and a Muslim. For 10 months, from November 2002 to September 2003, Yee says, he bore witness to man’s inhumanity to man as the Guantánamo prisoners were systematically beaten and humiliated by U.S. military police and interrogators.
Yee says he was horrified to see "religion used as a weapon" against Guantánamo detainees — as prisoners told him of detainees being forced to bow down in the middle of a satanic circle in an interrogation room and profess that Satan was their god, not Allah. Detainees were mocked during prayer and taunted or teased sexually by American women while chained. At first, Yee thought it an act of compassion that Guantánamo detainees were allowed to keep a Quran in their cells. But the detainees begged Yee to have them taken away, he says, for American MPs took such delight in mishandling the books or breaking their bindings during random searches.
Beatings and sexual humilations. Routine. Someone ask Cindy McCain if she’s proud of this.
Read the whole interview. It’s shocking.
Related posts:
- Taxi to Guantanamo: Uzbek Driver, Under 18 When Detained, Released to Ireland
- Guantanamo: When Justice Meets “Evidentiary Thresholds”
- NYT’s Bumiller Bangs the Fear Drum — But for Whom?
- US Forces Linked to Afghanistan Prisoner Massacre, Says Report; DoD Investigation Still MIA
- US Government Covered Up War Crimes Committed by CIA’s Warlord
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America does not torture
It’s never too late for war crimes trials. Thanks, BT, this is a very sobering post.
It’s never too soone, either.
SO?!?
Zackly, Lou.
Bushie is going to jail!
McCain was against torture before he was for it before George W. Bush changed his mind. What a maverick!
So?!? a la Cheney, I assume?
Yes, SO?!? is the only Death Cheney quote where he didn’t lie.
BT, thanks for the excellent post – and for reminding us that these hideous violations of international law have flesh and blood authors who live here in the US.
I wish nations still had travel offices sending out dead tree brochures.
Until he is “rendered” there, I’d like to think of James Yee seing glossy invitations to visist the Hague every time he picked up his mail at UC Berkeley.
We can’t let McCain get away with his lies about torture. He interrupted his campaign to vote against the Intelligence Authorization Act that would have banned waterboarding, and yet here is what WaPo said about his field trip:
If he’s trying to reassure the world that he is against torture, why doesn’t he vote against it?
OOPS – my bad _ i was trying to describe Prof John Yoo at UC Berkeley, not the honorable Chaplain Yoo.
Preview is my firend – again, my apology.
Chaplain Yee.
OK – no more blogging without coffee.
America is racist.
It is not uncommon for people of any religion to have contempt for adherents to another religion.
Bigotry may be an expression of underlying feelings of insecurity and incompetence.
Yee is the former chaplain.
Yoo is the abomination at UC Berkeley.
Yoo who?
For me, it’s not caffeine. It’s sugar. If I try to write before eating the results are disastrous and usually incomprehensible.
Thanks BT for reminding us about this important concern.
For me, this is the money question and answer from the interview.
Were the situation reversed, we would call these same people patriots.
I hope you are just trying to be snarky on a Monday. Yoo and Addington should be included in any list of potential war crimes cases.
America is racist.
What does that mean? Define it.
Yes!
(triple checked. now for coffee: with sugar.)
truth is, I don’t see much public interest in holding anyone accountable -at least not at this point.
still crossing my fingers tho
but, but, but ….. Bush says we don’t torture!
Yee was the chaplain who was a moslem.
Speaking of outrages.
There is a man who was working on an advanced degree in London who is from Queens, NY who is muslim and who apparently met and allowed someone to stay and leave a suitcase in his london flat. That guy was cuaght as a terrorists and turned and is telling the feds every move he made.
So they arrested this guy who had nothing to do with terrorism and no knowledge of what was contained in the suitcase.
He was arrested in Heathrow and taken to jail in NYC and is in solitary confinement, cannot speak to anyone except his lawyer and family, is under charge which will put him in a federal lock down for 70 years.
Habeus Corpus?
We don’t “torture”?
This is an outrage going on 20 miles from where I sit.
People discriminate against others of different race. They are rude, nasty, deny them jobs, housing medical care. You name it.
People are rude? How rude! Which countries do not have this problem?
BT: the article says that this experience has left Yee in debt for $260,000. Is that for his legal defense? Has a legal defense fund or other assistance fund been set up for him?
Would you please follow this story for us? It’s awful but the Bushies have to arrest people to show that there really or terrorists or their whole game plan dies. FEAR!
“are” EDIT, please
America is racist.
Many Americans are racists.
It is not uncommon for people of any religion to have contempt for adherents to another religion.
This is bigotry. There are other useful terms. Xenophobia, Ignorance, etc. Racism is the wrong word here.
Bigotry may be an expression of underlying feelings of insecurity and incompetence.
This is true.
Petreaus points the finger of blame for the recent Green Zone shellings on Iran.
Operation Liberate Iran is making headway.
-G
1,791 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Blue Texan and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
Why is the Democratic Party not presenting itself and it’s candidates across the country as the Anti-fascist Popular Front…there is only one political reality and that is that our system has been taken lock,stock and barrel by fascists who aren’t about ta give it back. We simply MUST start usin’ the word “fascism” to describe the politics that has gotten us to this point.
I don’t wanna hear any more proposals to repair the corrupt machinery that is killin’ people by the thousands here and around the world…and puttin’ Mrs. Clinton-McCain in charge of solvin’ our problems is like puttin’ a pay toilet at the end of the diarrhea ward of the hospital.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION IF YA DON’T KNOW HOW TA SHOOT!!
It should be noted that Yee is a West Point graduate. It’s not in his wiki, but I think I remember from the interviews he did on democracynow, that there are other(s) in his family who also went to West Point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Yee
El Linky no worky?
Yes, Pet. sez he has evidence. That’s the last we’ll ever hear about the evidence.
FIXED: Operation Liberate Iran is making headway.
You have such a way with words. You make me smile and make me think, and sometimes make me just roll on the floor laughing. thanks.
You can be assured that the MSM will make every effort to conceal Yee’s association with West Point.
It certainly is. The Bush/Cheney/Rice criminal gang will build a case of construed quasi evidence until they reach the point of imminent danger. That should be very soon. And, what is Congress doing this time? If we know, they know.
I will and try to get this man’s name.
That would be funny if it wasn’t so f’ing terrifying.
It certainly sounds like Petraeus is setting the stage for an attack on Iran. As I said this morning this most likely will begin with an Israeli strike. Then Petraeus can say well see what did the Iranians expect and did I mention how they were behind attacks in Iraq? If Bush, Cheney, and Petraeus are going to do this, the 5th and 6th of April and the same dates in May are the best times: new moon, surge troops in Iraq, day of the week, etc.
BT, with (more than) one in one hundred Americans in prison, I’m astonished at MSM’s failure to connect the dots between Gitmo and the local jail.. The torturers in our military jails come home. With the number of vets in law enforcement and
correctionsthe prison-industrial complex, what happens at Gitmo happens here.Even if our prisons were as enlightened as any in Scandanavia – the uniformed torturers come home to be fathers, mothers, partners. What they do to others, they will do to their families.
I so respect Chaplain Yee for his truly heroic stance against these hideous acts. The fact the Army falsely sought to charge him with aiding the enemy, treason, and espionage (hence putting him at risk for execution, IIRC) testifies both to the utter depravity now pervasive in the US military leadership..
and to the fear the Pentagon tyrants have when even one man dares speak truth to Power.
I fear our democracy and our Republic will not be safe unitl we have impeached the Federalist fifth column in the Judiciary, rooted the criminal Bushie cadres out of the DOJ and Executive Branch, and cashiered the entire chains of command complicit in the DOD’s worldwide torture empire.
The greatest threat to America’s freedoms go to work every day on both sides of the Potomac in D.C.
Chaplain Yee’s ordeal spotlights the thread by which our democracy hangs – thanks BT for reminding us of his trials and our peril.
Scott Ritter On Iran
I think you mean one in one thousand. Jail population, iirc, is around 3 million.
I agree with yur substantive points.
If Petraeus didn’t see an Iranian terrorist behing every rock in the Green Zone, he’d be out of a job. So, let the man do his job.
May James Yee continue to record history and bear witness.
I promised myself this would be a day of the occasional lurk while I deal with a nasty allergy attack – beautiful pear trees all around me in full bloom. The airfilter is going, I’m drinking green tea, eating local honey and lemon and resting. Any other suggestions? I do the natural thingie. Don’t like meds.
I can’t resist a comment or two along the way. Warning: I’m on the grumpy side today.
I’m starting to wonder if McCain’s “gaffe” on Iran and Al Qaeda was just a case of his getting ahead of the game. Isn’t it at least possible that he already has been briefed about the plan to attack Iran and that it would be based on manufactured evidence of an Iran-Al Qaeda connection? Maybe he just forget where things stood in terms of the actual execution of the plan.
The evidence for his charge is – well, ‘thin’ is an understatement. Assuming that they have actual pieces with manufacturer’s labels, which I seriously doubt, then if the occupiers were being hit with US-built rockets, would he say it was a US-backed attack?
Didn’t think so.
Ooops my bad. Decimal point errors really easy to make. It is one in one humdred = 3 million out of 300 milliion.
Sorry you aren’t feeling well. I have allergies and absolutely everything has bloomed in just a few days and I can’t breathe. Nothing works for me.
I agree with you about James Yee. Justice is no longer here in this country.
No offense, but I’m so glad. Between agraphia and acaluclia, I was about to go get a neuro eval.
I’m hoping the tremors are only from excessively rapid caffeinatioon
Most embarrassing to make the error you were trying to correct.
Though I’m substituing a Molita filter for the customary tinfoil, yesterday’s news of a US nuclear sub transiting the Suez Canal to the Red Sea is not encouraging.
What I pointed out about this at the time is that Bush’s speech on the 5th year anniversary of the war said that if we left both al Qaeda and Iran would be emboldened. al Qaeda would take over Iraq’s oil reserves and would presumably need to take over Iraq to do so since most of those reserves are in the Shia South with the remainder in the Kurdish North. Meanwhile Iran would take over the Middle East. Now how these two scenarios could happen at the same time is a logical impossibility, but my point is that’s what Bush said. And what McCain said is essentially an extrapolation of Bush’s view, that if they are both to be strengthened by our exit then they both must be working together.
With my # 12 above, I’ve all too much basis for empathizing :{
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Polit…..038;page=1
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.
Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.
Be on the watch for more communications cables being cut.
What’s the latest on aircraft carrier movements?
I know how you feel. I haven’t found the “one” relief. My airfilter comes close, as long as I stay inside. It’s beautiful weather but oh what a twenty minute walk does, as you well know.
Back to lurking and sniffling.
Stop-loss coercion notwithstanding, of course.
Dick Cheney is a soulless monster.
John Maynard Keynes is reported to have said: When I make a mistake, I change my mind. What do you do?
I have tried to track it down, without success. If I remember my google on it, only second hand evidence or hearsay.
Callous, but not surprising.
I guess to Vice, there is no distinction between volunteering for service & volunteering for death.
I was just getting a link…STOP LOSS!
For Cheney to say that Bush is carrying this burden is absurd. Bush couldn’t organize a PB&J sandwich. Cheney is devious and cold with no regard for us or any other people. He should be tried and go to jail for crimes against humanity.
…”the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush”…. So fuck off? Is that what he didn’t say? Or did ABC delete it for him.
Heart breaking.
Notice that Cheney doesn’t claim that he carries any burden. In this, he is simply being honest. He couldn’t care less how many people die.
”the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush” says Cheney.
True, is it not. Bush is the Unitary Executive. Legally, does he not , as the unitary executive, issue the order and carry the burden of the war crime of torture?
“We say that the war on terror(sic) is not a war against Islam”
War on terrorism? War against Islam?
How do you go to war against a tactic and a religion? We need to get better at saying what we mean. Or, perhaps, obscuring what we mean is really the point…
(((Quaker Girl)))
This allergy season in the Bay Area is so severe that even my uber-complementary health care friends have been guilty sneakig loratidne (so long as the lorataidine is vegan)
_ _ _
So – losing your dad when your five is every bit as traumatic as King George trying to count the zeros in “4,000″?
Bush’s only burden is avoiding giggling about it in public. He made it very clear back during the 2000 debates that he gets off on death.
“Dick Cheney is a soulless monster.”
Along with many other Republicans, including the current President and Secretary of State.
It’s practically an unofficial requirement if you want to be high up in Republican circles these days.
Here’s a couple of links to Yee on democracynow
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..mes_yee_on
http://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/3/headlines#11
Tucker: Cheney ‘kind of a hero’ for ignoring Americans’ opinions
I say we get a collection started to build a nice IKEA table for Pelosi…
Torture, 4000 soldiers, war profiteering, sociopaths and psychopaths…
Impeach these ratfuckers.
Then send them to The Hague.
In honor of the first day of attacking Iran, McBush or McChaney or McCrazy should throw out the first ‘grenade’…and please don’t argue over the ‘honor’.
Tucker is kind of an asshole for saying something like that. Why is he still poisoning our airwaves?
We did call them patriots and we Revere them still.
ugh… the double standard still works.
Ritter interview on Marck 17th indicates that all the ducks are lined up for an attack on Iran. Darth Cheney’s lone ME tour portends it; and this recent Betrayus report conflating Iran with the Green Zone incident yesterday gives them the smoking gun they have been seeking.
Fucker’s show got canceled cause people don’t like him.
HeHeHeHeHeHeHeHeHe
I guess he was “kind of a hero” because he was unpopular.
Quaker Girl, we have allergens around here too. My Healing with Whole Foods book suggests steeping onion in water and adding honey to that. Onion inhibits an allergic reaction, so it would make sense to use it with the honey. I haven’t tried it yet, though. Use one onion every 4 hours. Hope you feel better.
Fucker’s show got canceled cause people don’t like him.
And yet he still spews his verbal toxic waste as an “analyst.” I think we need to give Jon Stewart another crack at him.
Thank you :))
Do you eat the onion, drink the water, or breathe the fumes? :)
ecahn at 60–try here for john maynard keynes quote-i marked it on his 1st page.
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/John_Maynard_Keynes/
i love this site, i just like reading it.
Talk about a fall from grace. Young Conservative star of Crossfire, New Political Show on MSNBC, Tucker, to worst rated show on cable tv, to now a political pundit. I think his daddy’s political clout faltered after the Scooter Libby defense fund was exposed.
He is the very model of a modern, boyish GOP asshole.
An asshole with a bow-tie. Graphics, quick!
I think they’re is but that’s an excellent quesiton.
Tucker Carlson leaped in to defend Cheney. “He’s kind of a hero in that way,” Carlson suggested. “I know I’ll probably have my car egged for saying this, but … it’s so nice to see someone that old-school. ‘Hey, you kids, get off my lawn.’ That’s Dick Cheney. I love that.”
Tucker can only wish he just gets egged. Old School is back to Jim Crow days. Them’s fighten’ words.
This long Cheney trip in the troubled parts of the world can only bode ill for children and other living things. He’s a warmonger; it’s what he does. He is mongering the next war, and Petraeus gave him the stick he needs.
BT, thanks for bringing James Yee to our attention. Excellent post. I hope Mr Yee is available to testify at the war crimes trials.
His words will convict the most high.
How many times do we call these people monsters before it doesn’t mattter anymore?
They know they’re monsters. And They. Don’t. Care.
Elect more, and better, Democrats.
“matter”
Let’s go egg his car then.
Isn’t Tucker still age-eligible for military service? Since the pundit gig didn’t work out, maybe he should chat with a recruiter.
Onion is simmered in water until soft with honey added. Eat the whole concoction. It’s a traditional cough remedy.
Citizen Norske: ROFLMAO, Totally agree with that great analogy. Careful about using that flamethrower near the toilet though….
Didn’t see the exact quote. This one on same subject
Looks like a cool site. Thanks.
wiki shows him as not quite 39 and IIRC the current top end age is 42. Maybe he and Tagg can enlist together on the “buddy” plan.
My 97 in response to dmac at 86.
Very well said. The only thing I would add is that I bet that some of them were torturers before they went to Iraq.
As if.
Yoo who?
“What would Yoo do?
Life without parole?
Thanks. Actually that doesn’t sound too bad since I love onions.
Oh yes. Back in Seattle in 1999, the jail thugs routinely used torture (hypothermia, chemical weapons spray, threats of rape) against the citizens detained in the state of siege there.
Life without parole?
Put me in the “I’m good with that” column…
Woo Hooo.. Detroit has filed 12 charges against Mayor and Beatty…….
here is the best info i could find – global security has not updated their page recently:
USS Eisenhower – is it still in the persian gulf area? i can’t find any recent news.
USS Truman – fifth fleet area, which includes the persian gulf.
USS Nimitz and USS Kitty Hawk – Taiwan Strait area
USS Lincoln – usa west coast
USS Theodore Roosevelt – Norfork?
USS Enterprise – Norfork?
… hoping for corrections….
linky…
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
new thread upstairs
97-i like that one, ecahn.
==========
want to mention, yay! pledge weeks are over on pbs!!!!!!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…..escription
description of what the show covers is on the site above.
2 part frontline/bush’s war on pbs tonight and tomorrow night. old footage from 40 shows and new footage.
they are streaming shows online, now, too.
have a show about tibet on the main page.
Religion as a tool of warfare and political domination? As old as pharaoh and his Jews. As old as ancient Rome forcing Jews into the Diaspora after having Jerusalem. As old as an emperor putting first Christians, then non-Christians, to death in the Coliseum. As old as the pope or his Crusaders murdering Jews, conversos, Moslems, Renaissance thinkers, and recalcitrant natives who refused to be led to the Light. As old as a Hundred Years war among Catholics and Protestants. And as close to home as Orange and Green in Ulster or outside a pub in Guildford, or as close as a small black church in rural Mississippi.
But to Bush, it is a new “para-dig-me”: a new, improved, ne plus ultra way to fight the twenty-first century’s “greatest threat”. Which is not global warming, or global competition over oil, wheat and water, but a big word Jonah Goldberg can’t stop repeating until he learns what it means: “Islamofascism”.
It is George Bush re-legitimizing what the last century’s politicians dreamt they had overcome – warfare as a political way of life, a way to medieval riches and totalitarian authority. A world of superstition and torture, where the sovereign took a life just because he could. Mr. Bush imagines that he talks to God; does he hear her reply?
Thanks, selise. I worry when Cheney is on the loose.
me too.
Here’s another way US prison guards routinely and sytematically torture. I thought this stuff was why we were at war with the Soviets for fifty years – I didn’t realize we were just trying to knock off the competition.
Oh yea we torture prisoners and we are torturing “suspects” who have not even been convicted forced to live under WORSE condition in lower Manhattan center of corrections TODAY, NOW as we chat.
On Saturday, Hamas and Fatah spoke for the first time in months. On Sunday Cheney spoke in Israel about how Hamas was trying to derail the “peace process”, oh of course in cahoots with Syria and Iran. I would like to think Cheney is just stupid, but sadly I can’t. A really bad man.
Then there’s this
“The Malthusian component of our economy is our banking system, more specifically ‘debt based leveraged banking’ misnamed by the Banks as ‘fractional reserve banking’.
Without geometric expansion of debt the whole system crashes as new money must be forever increased to pay the interest on the ever larger existing debt. It is leveraged debt on the way up and leveraged money destruction on the way down. A debt spiral up and down.
To monetize this ever increasing debt economies must forever expand using more and more natural resources. This is why growth is considered imperative, because our financial system collapses without ever more growth.
Is there a way out? Yes … Public Central Banks that create their own money and act as a lender at interrest to banks whose loans must be made on a one to one basis with private deposits and borrowed deposits from the Public Bank.This takes the leverage out of the system and empowers private deposits to capture a real rate of return. Frugality is rewarded instead of taxed by inflation. The Public Central Bank garners income from its lendings to Private Banks while shedding interest paid to the Federal Reserve. And really, why shouldn’t the public garnner income from its money, and indeed, Why the Hell should it pay interest on its’ own money?”
correct on the carrier locations
excellent link from hugh:
http://www.gonavy.jp/CVLocation.html
You got Yee mixed up with Yoo. John Yoo is the monster who drafted the infamous torture memo for Gonzalez. James Yee is the former Navy chaplain who served at Guantanamo. Yoo is a neocon and Yee is cursed to live in reality.