"Extreme Repression Force"-- Spain's probe: Gitmo abuse devastating

By GottaLaff

UPDATE: Please Reddit this post, and don't forget to follow the link at the end to read more. It's mandatory that we stay informed, and get the media to pick up on this. Thanks! Love, Laffy

UPDATE #2: I bumped this up. We need to get this around. Again, please Reddit, Tweet the media. This cannot be ignored. It's horrendous, and it's being done in our name.

If this article doesn't justify an investigation BushCo and others, then I don't know what will. Here's a sick little teaser:

The 'Black Shirts' of Guantanamo routinely terrorize prisoners, breaking bones, gouging eyes, squeezing testicles, and 'dousing' them with chemicals. [...]

Omar Deghayes (whose torture began long before he reached Guantánamo, and intensified upon his arrival):

He also described seeing U.S. guards sodomize an African prisoner and alleged guards "forced petrol and benzene up the anuses of the prisoners."

"The camp looked like the Nazi camps that I saw in films."

Had enough? Too bad. Horrifying, twisted, cruel, wrong, illegal, and it all belongs to us:

According to journalist Jeremy Scahill — best known for his investigations of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Xe) — an ongoing Spanish investigation is painting a devastating picture of the brutality exercised by the US military over detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

The investigation focuses in particular on a squad whose standard procedure is to crush even minimal resistance or uncooperativeness by Guantanamo prisoners with a maximum degree of violence. “The force is officially known as the the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force,” Scahill writes, “but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force.”

[...] Scahill draws the pieces together, the extent of the deliberate burtality and dehumanization becomes agonizingly apparent.

The IRF teams’ official guidelines indicate that they should use only the minimum amount of force necessary on unruly detainees and should never use force as a method of punishment. However, witnesses tell a very different story. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, describes the IRF as “Black Shirts” and Clive Stafford Smith, who has represented 50 Guantanamo prisoners, calls them simply “goons.”

It appears that the teams were even directed to create pretexts for brutality where none existed in order to make sure that all the prisoners were fully intimidated.

According to legal expert Scott Horton, the extrajudicial actions of these teams — which include beating prisoners, using attack dogs, rubbing pepper spray directly in their eyes, and leaving them hog-tied and in excruciating pain for hours — were “fully approved” by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in consultation with the Justice Department.

[...] Stafford Smith does say that “there is photographic evidence.”

Witnesses now state that the abuses have not only continued since Barack Obama became president and called for the closing of Guantanamo but may have actually intensified.

Here's the insane part:

“The sad fact is that the best chance for justice for the victims of U.S. torture may well be an ocean away in Madrid, Spain,” Scahill concludes.

Please make yourself read the rest of the very gory details here. Then explain why we shouldn't prosecute.