[Ninong]

When you read this article in today's New York Times, just keep reminding yourself that this was an American civilian contractor held in prison by the American military for 97 days before being released. And it happened this year! This is the sort of treatment you can expect from the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Department of Defense.

Excerpts:

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the FBI about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

[...]

Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons it was selling to suspicious customers, including a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The ministry had ties to violent militias and death squads. He said he had also witnessed another employee giving American soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs.

[...]

On a visit to Chicago in October 2005, Mr. Vance met twice with an F.B.I. agent who set up a reporting system. Weekly, Mr. Vance phoned the agent from Iraq and sent him e-mail messages. “It was like, ‘Hey, I heard this and I saw this.’ I wanted to help,” Mr. Vance said. A government official familiar with the arrangement confirmed Mr. Vance’s account.

In April, Mr. Ertel and Mr. Vance said, they felt increasingly uncomfortable at the company. Mr. Ertel resigned and company officials seized the identification cards that both men needed to move around Iraq or leave the country.

On April 15, feeling threatened, Mr. Vance phoned the United States Embassy in Baghdad. A military rescue team rushed to the security company. Again, Mr. Vance described its operations, according to military records.

“Internee Vance indicated a large weapons cache was in the compound in the house next door,” Capt. Plymouth D. Nelson, a military detention official, wrote in a memorandum dated April 22, after the men were detained. “A search of the house and grounds revealed two large weapons caches.”

Read the entire article to see just how long it can take to get released, how few rights you really have, and what sort of treatment you can expect while in custody.

P.S. -- He was arrested for being an employee of the company he blew the whistle on! After 97 days of harsh confinement and interrogation, the military decided there was nothing to charge him with and they released him. They wanted his assurance that he would not "write a book" about his experience.

[mistermikev]

wow. what have we become?

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by mistermikev

wow. what have we become?

That's a tough question for us as Americans to answer. It's something we would rather not have to think about.

Here's the view of someone writing in the British press about our authorized interrogation techniques. We engage in torture, we just refuse to call it torture.

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

P.S. -- He was arrested for being an employee of the company he blew the whistle on! After 97 days of harsh confinement and interrogation, the military decided there was nothing to charge him with and they released him. They wanted his assurance that he would not "write a book" about his experience.

Originally Posted by Ninong

That's a tough question for us as Americans to answer. It's something we would rather not have to think about.

Here's the view of someone writing in the British press about our authorized interrogation techniques. We engage in torture, we just refuse to call it torture.

Lack of accountability for their actions is the single fact that allows them to do what they have done to this person.
I lived for 26 years in a country like this and run away from there with the first opportunity present.., only to realize that it feels like I never left at times.

[Ninong]

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." --Thomas Paine