Truespeak

Luckily for poiliticians, the general public has a short memory. If a person can ride out a scandal long enough, people tend to forget about it or become bored with it and unless something brings it back into the media spotlight, it's gone forever. Remember Rep. Gary Condit and missing intern Chandra Levy? Gone from the media, gone from our memory. Such is the case with the prisoner abuse scandal. Remember the outrage and disgust upon seeing those pictures for the first time? Remember the embarassment when you found out that it was Americans who were doing those things that we always suspected other countries of doing? Remember our government insisting that this was an isolated incident ivolving a few rogue MPs? Now, it's more recent than Gary Condit and maybe not so far gone, but the media had virtually let it die. Until now.

With the preliminary hearing for Pfc. Lynndie England, the scandal has come back full force. We're going to start seeing the pictures again and we're going to start hearing the stories. This has to scare the hell out of certain people in the Bush administration because details are going to come out that they would prefer stay hidden. Like the fact that Military Intelligence ordered certain detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison to be kept hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq ordered military police soldiers to keep several detainees hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross, leaving a coded message on cell doors to indicate which detainees the visitors were not allowed to see or interview, according to court testimony here Wednesday.

Staff Sgt. Christopher Ward, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company who was in charge of the day shift at Abu Ghraib's most secure cellblock, said that during at least three official visits last fall and winter, he was ordered to steer the ICRC away from certain detainees whose cells were tagged with signs bearing the words "Article 134." Some of them were kept in a part of the prison's Tier 1A that was obscured by two separate doors.

"I didn't understand it, and I can't tell you what that meant," Ward testified, saying he had no idea what Article 134 was. Military prosecutors here also could not say what the term meant. Ward said military intelligence "directed it. MI put the signs on the door."

The testimony at a preliminary court hearing for Pfc. Lynndie R. England, 21 -- a soldier charged with abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib last fall -- echoes findings of an Army investigation that severely criticized officials there for keeping "ghost detainees," those who were hidden from international humanitarian workers.

Donald Rumsfeld must be thrilled to have this come out. For months now he's been claiming that these MPs were acting on their own and now Staff Sgt. Christopher Ward testifies that this was directed from MI. This is the ironic thing about trials, sometimes the truth actually comes out. I can't wait to see what truths come out in the trial of Saddam. Will he be allowed to talk about the support the United States gave him during the eighties? What about the biological and chemical weapons that we gave him? What about our support for him in the Iran-Iraq war? The Bush administration might want this trial held in private to save Poppy Bush's reputation. It could get ugly.

Anyway, back to the abuse. We were told that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, but yesterday three British former "enemy combatants" released a 115-page statement claiming abuses at Guantanamo Bay.

Three British former ''enemy combatants" freed from the prison at Guantanamo Bay released a 115-page statement yesterday claiming they were beaten, sexually humiliated, and held in prolonged isolation during their two years of detention.

They said harsh treatment and incessant interrogations at the US Navy base in Cuba eventually led them to confess to being in a video with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But British intelligence later determined that they had been in England at the time the video was shot in Afghanistan, contributing to the British government's decision to let them go free once they were transferred from Guantanamo.

In one alleged incident, one of the three claimed he was assaulted while riding a ferry from the airstrip to the prison.

''We had been told to keep our hands by our sides," he said. ''This was uncomfortable as we were shackled, and after some time I moved my hands into my lap. A soldier came up to me and said, 'Put your hand on your left knee,' which I did. The soldier said, 'This [expletive deleted] speaks English,' and then kicked me about 20 times to my left thigh and punched me as well. I had a large bruise on my leg and couldn't walk for nearly one month."

The accounts -- if corroborated -- would call into question the Bush administration's contention that prisoners at Guantanamo are treated humanely even though the president decided not to apply the Geneva Conventions to Afghanistan war detainees. The accounts were released by their US lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

Isolated indeed.