corrente

Here is the standard operating procedure at Gitmo:

Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp, an investigation by The Observer has revealed.

[UK citizen Tarek Dergoul, a] 26-year-old, from Mile End in east London, spent 22 months at Guantanamo Bay from May 2002. Today he tells The Observer of repeated assaults by Camp Delta's punishment squad, known as the Extreme Reaction Force or ERF.

'They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec[reation] yard, and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows.'

Dergoul who now reveals that every time the ERFs were deployed, a sixth team member recorded on digital video everything that happened.

Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed this last night, saying all ERF actions were filmed so they could be 'reviewed' by senior officers. All the tapes are kept in an archive there, he said. He refused to say how many times the ERF squads had been used and would not discuss their training or rules of engagement, saying: 'We do not discuss operational aspects of the Joint Task Force mission.'
(via The Observer)

Well, so much for the bad apples theory! The torture, and the filming, was indeed systemic.

So, Miller organized Gitmo, then Miller organized Abu Ghraib. Clearly the filming technique was part of the interrogation technique he brought with him—and the videos may indeed just have been for CYA. However, someone in Iraq thought of using the videotapes for blackmail.... I wonder who?

And, as we keep asking? What was the distribution list for the photos and tapes?

After all, we know that Bush keeps a list of targets in his desk drawer, and likes the cross off the ones that "are no longer a problem" (back). Hmmm... Wonder where those photos came from? Wonder if, well, any new photos are ever compared to the old ones?