Cheney is lying about torture

Dick Cheney calls Gitmo torture a ``myth''. Deep Blade Journal responds with this guest post from Mike Walls. Thanks, Mike.

GUEST POST: Libyan Man from Sussex, England tortured at Guantánamo
I read in my local evening newspaper (The Evening Argus, Brighton, England) about a 35-year-old Libyan man who has been detained at Guantánamo Bay since 2002. Omar Deghayes has as yet not been charged with any crime, but in the Orwellian nether region of the Bush Administration where international law does not apply, where the Geneva Convention does not apply and where rules and regulations can be dispensed with, we are, to quote one David Rivkin, "releasing people because we're humanitarian, we're compassionate". For Omar Deghayes, however, this outpouring of "humantarianism", when in reference to its true correlate, namely torture, is described as follows in the Evening Argus, a Brighton newspaper:

The prisoner [Omar] complained of having a hose stuck up his nose until he was drowning, electric shock torture and being placed in a room painted with black and white stripes, containing a glass wall, behind which were snakes.

Mr Stafford Smith added his client had been told his wife would be
sold into prostitution when he was first taken into custody.

This is all further proof that Amnesty's usage of the term ``Gulag'' to describe the US prison archipelago across the Middle East and elsewhere, was correct. And even if the head of Amnesty may be accused of a degree of hyperbole, no doubt engendered by the horrors described by former Gitmo inmates, he can in no shape or form be accused of downright mendacity, the likes of which we have been exposed from Rivkin and his neocon coalition in recent years.

It is vitally important that more and more of these tragic accounts are reported, so that the body of evidence may one day overwhelm lackeys of the Bush war and mould public opinion and, who knows, shape future policy decisions. Fortunately for Omar, MP George Galloway’s Respect Party are to bring this issue up in Parliament at the next parliamentary meeting and pressure is being put on Brighton’s local New Labour MP to act quickly on this. Let us keep our fingers crossed for Omar and others like him in the hope that true humanitarianism may come their way.
--Mike Walls