"We Do Not Torture"

More revelations about the Bush torture policy...

NY Times: In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations...

...Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said....

(bold added by me)

"No rules". Sounds like the Bush administration motto. Abu Ghraib just scratched the surface. In the years to come, we will learn the full extent of all this. Torture, murder- Under the Bush/Cheney/Rummy/Gonzales regime, this is what the U.S. military is known for around the world. This administration calls themselves heros. I call them war criminals.