Torture

Here is some excruciating writing by William Gregg on torture by the CIA and its clients:

One of the most popular destinations for victims of "extraordinary rendition" is Uzbekistan, a pocket of Stalin-grade Communism in Central Asia ruled by Islam Karimov, a Soviet-trained dictator of the old school.

Former British Ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray lost his job and has endured severe vituperation at the hands of his government because he objected to Britain's collaboration in CIA-sponsored torture conducted in Uzbekistan.

"If you are put into prison in Uzbekistan the chances of coming out again alive are less than even," writes Murray. "And most of the prisons are still the old Soviet gulags in the most literal sense."

Within a few weeks of being posted to the country, Murray attended a show trial of an elderly man who had been tortured into confessing involvement with al-Qaeda and implicating his nephew as well. This Stalinist spectacle, recalls Ambassador Murray, was "put on partly for the benefit of the American embassy to demonstrate the strength of the U.S.-Uzbek alliance against terrorism."

Unfortunately for the American commissars and their local clients, the elderly defendant refused to play his scripted role. Gathering strength from somewhere "he said, 'This is not true. This is not true. They tortured my children in front of me until I signed this. I had never heard of al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden.'"

This elderly Uzbek was taken out and murdered for his defiance, but in telling the truth he reclaimed his humanity. He died as a man, something Cheney and his ilk will never understand. He was but one of thousands who have been tortured during the past decade by Uzbek Chekists, many of them on the specific instructions of Washington. In that case and others, Murray recalls, Uzbeks made use of a torture method specifically endorsed by the execrable John Yoo: Torturing children in order to compel the parents to submit.

Yoo, the impenitent war criminal who wrote many of the key torture memos for the Bush regime, claims that the president has the authority to order the sexual mutilation of a child if he considers such action necessary.

According to Murray, the Uzbek regime apparently got a copy of the relevant memo: "Mutilation of the genitals was common. Suffocation was common, usually by putting a gas mask on people and blocking the air vents until they suffocated. Rape was common, rape with objects, rape with bottles, anal rape, homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, and mutilation of children in front of their parents."

Ninety percent of all "rendition" flights that visited the former KGB prison in Poland used as a CIA torture facility "went straight on to Tashkent," Murray observes. "There was an overwhelming body of evidence that ... people from all over the world were being taken by the CIA to Uzbekistan specifically in order to be tortured."

(The mortal remains of Muzafar Avazov, who was boiled alive by Communist Uzbek intelligence officers working as subcontractors for Washington.)

The CIA's Uzbek subcontractors occasionally grew tired of commonplace abuse and occasionally boiled a victim alive. Murray recalls the case of Muzafar Avazov, who was submerged in a boiling liquid after his finger nails had been pulled from his hands.

This case was neither unique nor uncommon. Murray had no trouble compiling a large and detailed dossier on the routine, systematic torture being carried out with the blessing of his government and the Washington-based empire that holds its leash.

When Murray expressed his concerns to his superiors, he was chastised for being "over-focused on human rights." When he dispatched a deputy to confront the CIA's station chief with his concerns, Murray's associate was told that the "intelligence" being gathered by the Agency was indeed produced through torture, "but we don't see that as a problem in the context of the war on terror."

Give Karimov and his junta credit for being bold and candid in embracing this evil. The American torture state operates on exactly the same totalitarian premises, but tries to disguise this reality beneath a thick lacquer of supposed righteousness.