Lawyers representing military detainees at Guantanamo Bay have expressed concern that the government has violated a federal court order by losing or erasing several years' worth of digital video recordings that could shed light on the legality of detainee treatment.
The concerns are based in part on a recent court filing by Guantanamo's commander, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, who said video surveillance recordings in several areas of the facility have been automatically overwritten and no longer exist.
"In January 2008, it was brought to my attention that such . . . [recording] systems may have been automatically overwriting video data contained on recording devices, at predetermined intervals," Buzby wrote. "That is, only a specified number of days' worth of recorded data could be retained on the recording devices at a time."
I call bullshit on this pathetic attempt to hide the government's behavior.
You know the reason that cops have that little video camera on the dashboard of their vehicles is so they can be protected from claims of police brutality by citizens, but also so those same citizens can be protected from overly aggressive cops.
If these torture tapes were made we have to ask why? If it was to protect the military from charges that they had used torture then they certainly would have been preserved. Or else what is the point?
Unless. Unless they show that the interrogators at Gitmo did indeed use torture. But if that were the case then wouldn't only THOSE tapes that showed torture being used have turned up missing?
What does it mean that over 20,000 tapes of interrogations are missing? Just how many prisoners have been tortured at Guantanamo? And will we ever know?
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Don't feed the trolls!
It just goes directly to their thighs.