In today's pages: A Gitmo lawyer speaks
Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer for Guantanamo detainees, is surprised by how routine mistreatment has become:
I had a morning meeting scheduled with Sami Haj, the Al Jazeera journalist, no more a terrorist than my grandmother.... On the fifth anniversary of his detention without trial, his patience wore thin and he went on a hunger strike, the age-old peaceful protest against injustice....
Sami's strike began 271 days ago. Medical ethics tell us that you cannot force-feed a mentally competent hunger striker, as he has the right to complain about his mistreatment, even unto death. But the Pentagon knows that a prisoner starving himself to death would be abysmal PR, so they force-feed Sami. As if that were not enough, when Gen. Bantz J. Craddock headed up the U.S. Southern Command, he announced that soldiers had started making hunger strikes less "convenient." Rather than leave a feeding tube in place, they insert and remove it twice a day. Have you ever pushed a 43-inch tube up your nostril and down into your throat? Tonight, Sami will suffer that for the 479th time.
Columnist Joel Stein considers a world turned upside down by global warming, making Ed Begley cool. Columnist Rosa Brooks congratulates the Bush Administration for finally discovering that diplomacy works. Contributing editor Bill Stall discusses the state's great unknown water giveaway.
The editorial board laments Vladimir Putin's intent to make himself prime minister of Russia, and notes that the iPhone's first upgrade rendered some devices into useless "iBricks". Finally, the board expresses dismay at arrest contests in the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.
"Rather than leave a feeding tube in place, they insert and remove it twice a day. Have you ever pushed a 43-inch tube up your nostril and down into your throat? Tonight, Sami will suffer that for the 479th time."
I had the displeasure of having that done once in an emergency room a couple of years ago--seems like just yesterday. The tube was only in for half an hour or so and yes, shoving a tube up your nose and down your throat is extremely unpleasant, but the worst was the choking sensation once the tube was in place. I don't suppose many of us know what it feels like to be strangled, but being strangled from within--I know exactly what that's like.
I remember trying to pull the tube out. I remember the orderlies holding me down so I couldn't pull it out. I remember screaming at them, "I can't breathe!" over and over again. They said the choking/strangling sensation would subside eventually. They said they'd sedate me for a day or two until the choking sensation went away.
Even if they were doing this to extract information from a terrorist, information that might save innocent lives, even then, I might still have reservations. I don't know if this constitutes cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by every legal definition everywhere, but subjecting someone to such an ordeal, over and over again, unnecessarily and against his wishes, that can't possibly be the right thing to do.
Posted by: Ken Shultz | October 05, 2007 at 10:26 PM