Head in the sand

Last Sunday on the McLaughlin Report, Eleanor Clift had been talking about allegations of torture, including torture at Guantanamo when this exchange took place:

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Detainees in U.S. custody, the number of deaths is 44; homicides, 21; coercive interrogations, eight. Now, that's not a very nice --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Zero at Guantanamo.

MR. BLANKLEY: When you say tortures at Gitmo, I don't believe there's been a single allegation of that.

Good old boy Tony Blankley from the Washington Times making stuff up again. From today's Independent:

The extent of the torture and abuse that British residents held at Guantanamo Bay claim to have suffered is revealed for the first time in a series of recently declassified interviews between the detainees and their human rights lawyers.

Documents submitted to the American courts allege that one of the detainees was strapped to a chair by prison guards and beaten and tortured to the point of death.

Other British suspects are still being held in solitary confinement, four years after their capture, where they are subjected to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and the confiscation of the most basic necessities, including lavatory paper and blankets.

None has been charged with any crime.

Some of the most serious allegations of torture concern the treatment of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national who until his arrest four years ago had been living in London with his wife and four children.

In June this year, Mr Aamer claims he was badly beaten and tortured because he failed to provide a retina scan and fingerprints to the camp authorities. He says he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs.

The habeas corpus motion filed in the court of the District of Columbia states: "The MPs [military police] inflicted so much pain, Mr Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose so hard he thought it would break.

"They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a Maglite [torch] in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out."

And, this is by no means the first allegation. I suppose that qualifies as "not a single allegation" since it's multiple allegations.