Photos: The Banality Of Evil At Guantánamo #Fast4Gitmo

The Behavioral Health Unit where the detainees receive psychological medical care, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, April 10, 2013. (Photo By Army Sgt. Brian Godette)

The blog Public Intelligence published these photos with the note that they were released by the U.S. government on May 2, no doubt in response to more than 100 men engaged in a hunger strike since February. The men have been "treated" in the "Behavioral Health Unit" at Guantánamo by force feeding.

The majority of them have been cleared for release but continue to languish in indefinite detention -- so far, it has lasted a decade.

They are starving themselves in order to be released from this bureaucratic hell. You can join them in a solidarity fast to help get the word out -- details on how to #Fast4Gitmo here.

Feeding chair used during internal nourishment procedure inside the Joint Medical Group where the detainees receive medical care, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, April 10,2013. (Photo By Army Sgt. Brian Godette)

Feeding chair and internal nourishment preparation inside the Joint Medical Group where the detainees receive medical care, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, April 10, 2013. (Photo By Army Sgt. Brian Godette)

Outdoor recreation area in the Behavioral Health Unit where the detainees receive psychological medical care, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, April 10,2013. (Photo By Army Sgt. Brian Godette)

From Wikipedia:

Banality of evil is a phrase used by Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.^[1] Her thesis is that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics orsociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

Because convincing people to accept "the premises of their state" nearly always involves an avalanche of euphemism -- employing bland bureaucratic phrases for horrors inflicted by the state -- here is a Guantánamo glossary to accompany these photos:

Honor bound to defend freedom Hey, it's a paycheck. And if we don't fight them over "there" we'll have to fight them over here to defend capitalism's stranglehold on the planet's natural resources.

Behavioral Health Unit A prison department that specializes in psychological torture.

Feeding chair Equipment used to subject prisoners to full restraint in an upright position, ready for torture.

Internal nourishment procedure Forced feeding using a tube pushed through the nose and down the esophagus.

Outdoor recreation area Pen for humans treated like animals.

Psychological medical care Reports are that sleep deprivation and other brutalities have been used against the hunger strikers.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi photo published by Slate.

From the blogger Alex Kane on Mondoweiss:

Slate magazine has a sharp reminder of this illegal and inhumane treatment. The news outlet has published the memoirs of Guantanamo detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi. He has been locked up there for 11 years, despite the fact that in 2010 a judge ordered his release. Slahi’s brutal interrogation was personally signed off on by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The U.S. questioned him on his associations with known terrorists, but the U.S. never found Slahi to have been involved with a specific plot. Slahi described one aspect of his torture here: 

The cell—better, the box—was cooled down so that I was shaking most of the time. I was forbidden from seeing the light of the day. Every once in a while they gave me a rec time in the night to keep me from seeing or interacting with any detainees. I was living literally in terror. I don’t remember having slept one night quietly; for the next 70 days to come I wouldn’t know the sweetness of sleeping. Interrogation for 24 hours, three and sometimes four shifts a day. I rarely got a day off.

What is the solution to the problem created by holding random Muslim men for years in a torture prison? Apparently the current gang of thugs running the U.S. government believe it is bombing civilians around the planet with drones. Because air strikes on a village are "surgical" and "humane" and, in theory, they eliminate enemies rather than creating them in droves. Right.

Source: American Friends Service Committee