Git mo Blues ... development

posted by The Vidiot @ 9:07 PM Permalink

Guards tighten security to prevent more deaths
Human rights groups, defense lawyers call for investigation of 3 men's suicides in military prison

Even as demands grew for an independent investigation into the weekend suicides at Guantanamo Bay, military leaders inside the prison began cracking down on inmates to prevent more deaths.
[...]
"Right now, we are at ground zero," an emotional prison commander, Col. Mike Bumgarner told his officers at his morning staff meeting.

"The trust level is gone. They have shown time and time again that we can't trust them any farther than we can throw them.

Sounds like he speaks from experience ... I wonder what his personal best is?

There is not a trustworthy son of a ... in the entire bunch."

With that, Bumgarner, a Kings Mountain native, ordered his staff to assess and curtail existing policies on detainee clothing, meals, recreation time, prison lighting and discipline.

So folks are so desperate they'll kill themselves and the solution is to take away what little they have and punish them more!? Hey, why not, it's worked so well so far.

Meanwhile, back at the raunch:

The suicides occurred early Saturday morning in three cells on the same block. The detainees, a Yemeni and two Saudis, hanged themselves with strips of knotted cloth taken from clothing and sheets. They used pillows and blankets to make it appear they were sleeping in their beds. They left suicide notes in Arabic. And Bumgarner said each had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices.

Wait a minute ... they left suicide notes!? Why haven't we heard about them? You can't possibly tell me that a guy who's been held incommunicado for 3+ years has some secret message to tell his followers ... especially when one of the three dead guys was due to be released!

Harris' characterization of the suicides as acts of "asymmetrical warfare" and a State Department official's assertion that the first deaths among Guantanamo inmates were "a good P.R. move" brought renewed outrage in the Muslim world as well as among European allies.

But Cmdr. Robert T. Durand, spokesman for the prison and interrogation compound, said the admiral in command of the detention operations here stood by his view that the deaths "were not acts of despair but coordinated efforts by three committed combatants."
[...]
Bumgarner ordered a high suicide alert for "the brothers," the term used by the military personnel to describe the detainees. "Brother" also is a term of Muslim endearment the inmates use among themselves.
[...]
Mid-afternoon, Senior Petty Officer Mac King walked into the colonel's office to discuss how to handle "The General," whom Bumgarner called the leader of the detainees' military wing.

King, of Spartanburg, said The General had refused to exchange his brown prison suit for an orange one, signifying he was moving to a more restricted status.

Bumgarner put his face in his hands. "Why does this brother do this to me," he said.

Why do I think there's a battered wife in his past!? And a racist father.