How’s Gitmo/Bagram looking now?

KABUL— Afghan officials used torture while investigating suspected militants kept in some detention centers, the United Nations said in a report Monday, weeks after NATO troops halted the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities because of alleged mistreatment of the inmates.

The report found that detainees endured treatment that amounted to torture in 47 detention facilities, run by Afghan police and intelligence service, in 24 of the country’s 34 provinces.

The 74-page report raised particular concerns about detention centers run by the Afghan intelligence agency, known as the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, which held an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 detainees during the period when the investigation took place.

It found “compelling evidence” that 46 percent of the detainees interviewed who had been in NDS detention centers had been tortured and that “torture is practiced systematically in a number of NDS detention facilities throughout Afghanistan.” Most of the torture, the report said, was intended to extract confessions or information. The United Nations “also found that children under the age of 18 years experienced torture by NDS officials.”

Suddenly, being held captive under U.S. authority isn’t looking quite so bad is it? But I’m sure the detainees themselves have always known this, whether it’s Club Gitmo or Bagram, the preference of those held captive is to be held in U.S.-run detention facilities. It’s the liberal “do-gooders” who need to get the memo.

Courting Disaster, pg 283-4:

There have been more than a dozen major reviews of U.S. detention operations in the war on terror- led by twelve active duty generals and admirals, a former Air Force General, former Democratic and Republican Secretaries of Defense, and a former Member of Congress. None of these reviews found a pattern of abuse at Guantanamo or anywhere else. And all rejected claims of a government policy directing, encouraging, or condoning torture in any theater of the war on terror.