Torture Chicks Gone Wild, Maureen Dowd

[paineinthearse]

"Who are these women? Who allows this to happen? Why don't the officers who allow it get into trouble? Why do Rummy and Paul Wolfowitz still have their jobs?....."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/opinion/30dowd.html?oref=login&hp

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Torture Chicks Gone Wild
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: January 30, 2005

WASHINGTON

By the time House Republicans were finished with him, Bill Clinton must have thought of a thong as a torture device. For the Bush administration, it actually is. A former American Army sergeant who worked as an Arabic interpreter at Gitmo has written a book pulling back the veil on the astounding ways female interrogators used a toxic combination of sex and religion to try to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba. It's not merely disgusting. It's beyond belief.

The Bush administration never worries about anything. But these missionaries and zealous protectors of values should be worried about the American soul. The president never mentions Osama, but he continues to use 9/11 as an excuse for American policies that bend the rules and play to our worst instincts.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the former sergeant, Erik R. Saar, 29, told The Associated Press. The A.P. got a manuscript of his book, deemed classified pending a Pentagon review.

What good is it for President Bush to speak respectfully of Islam and claim Iraq is not a religious war if the Pentagon denigrates Islamic law - allowing its female interrogators to try to make Muslim men talk in late-night sessions featuring sexual touching, displays of fake menstrual blood, and parading in miniskirt, tight T-shirt, bra and thong underwear? It's like a bad porn movie, "The Geneva Monologues." All S and no M. The A.P. noted that "some Guantánamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by 'prostitutes.' " Mr. Saar writes about what he calls "disturbing" practices during his time in Gitmo from December 2002 to June 2003, including this anecdote related by Paisley Dodds, an A.P. reporter.

more......