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May 17, 2007
Mental Torture in George Bush's America
The BBC reports on claims that we're mentally torturing inmates at Gitmo.
US detainee 'mentally tortured'A Pakistani-born US resident detained at Guantanamo Bay has said he was "mentally tortured" there, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.
Majid Khan, who has been accused of planning to blow up petrol stations in the US, also described how he tried to commit suicide by chewing on an artery.
After tales of how Mr. Kahn denies being an enemy, the last 3 paragraphs of the story described this awful "mental torture".
Mr Khan complained about how US guards had taken away pictures of his daughter, given him new glasses with the wrong prescription, shaved his beard off, forcibly fed him when he went on hunger strike, and denied him the opportunity for recreation.This led him to attempt to chew through his artery twice, Mr Khan said.
Later, Mr Khan produced a list of further examples of psychological torture, which included the provision of "cheap, branded, unscented soap", the prison newsletter, noisy fans and half-inflated balls in the recreation room that "hardly bounce".
Oh, the ever-luvin' humanity. And this is what passes for "news" from the BBC. You can't just scan the headlines at the BBC; they may say the exact opposite of the truth. No mention in the headline that this was just a "claim" of mental torture.
And is this really newsworthy; a guy at Gitmo proclaiming his innocence while claiming that cheap soap and noisy fans are mental torture? It is to the BBC, apparently. Wild claims of torture where there is none are featured on their "Americas" front page. It has about as much validity as the latest UFO conspiracy theory, but that doesn't make the front page.
It's still all about the narrative.
Posted by Doug at May 17, 2007 02:48 PM
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My my... you don't quite understand the use of quotes, do you?
Perhaps a bit of brushing up on your standard English punctuation - and what the usage implies - might be in order before you begin to accuse the British of doing something that they're not actually doing at all.
Education is a marvelous thing.
Posted by: D. Danielson at May 17, 2007 10:22 PM
D. Danielson's comment was totally irrelevant. I thought the story you referenced here was hilarious. Needless to say, the USA does not practice torture at Gitmo. If liberals need to know what torture really is, I've posted a few examples over at napoleon15.blogspot.com Noisy fans do NOT constitute torture.
Posted by: napoleon15 at May 18, 2007 12:16 AM
Mr. Danielson, I know full well the use of quote marks. But the one word "claim" could just as easily been added to clarify. News sites do it all the time, they just decided to leave it out on this story. Leaving that out leaves the impression that what is quoted is true.
And they saved all the actual claimed abuses until the end of the story, where they would have the least impact, because not everyone reads the whole thing.
Even carrying the story itself is a way to push public opinion. As I said, clearly false claims on a different topic, like UFOs or a cancer cure, wouldn't get front-page treatment. But clearly false claims about the US "torturing" do.
These are all editorial decisions that seek to support "the narrative".
Posted by: Doug Payton at May 18, 2007 09:23 AM
Fortunately, there are several blogs that track what the BBC is up to:
Biased BBC
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/
Beebwatch
http://www.beebwatch.co.uk/
Last Night's BBC News http://www.lastnightsbbcnews.blogspot.com/
Posted by: beloml at May 18, 2007 04:25 PM