A:Guantánamo Meets Geneva Rules, Pentagon Study Finds http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/us/21gitmo.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=pentagon%20report%20guantanamo&st=cse

The president’s request, made as part of a plan to close the prison within a year, was widely seen as an effort to defuse accusations that there were widespread abuses at Guantánamo, and that many detainees were suffering severe psychological effects after years of isolation.

B:Then there's this, from The Center for Constitutional Rights:

Current Conditions of Guantanamo Confinement, Still in Violation of the Law", February 23, 2009:

The descriptions of ongoing, severe solitary confinement, other forms of psychological abuse, incidents of violence and the threat of violence from guards, religious abuse, and widespread forced tube-feeding of hunger strikers indicate that the inhumane practices of the Bush Administration persist today at Guantánamo, despite President Obama’s Executive Order, and should be remedied immediately.

Washington Talk: Intelligence Operations; A Debate on Making Secrets and Keeping Them

"[...] Before the early 1970's, Congress exercised little supervision over the Central Intelligence Agency. But when the agency was disclosed as a ''rogue elephant'' that assassinated foreign politicians and spied on domestic dissidents, the lawmakers adopted a series of measures to insure the agency's accountability to both the President and Congress.[...]

''I don't think there should ever be retroactive [Presidential] findings, that's just an open door to mischief,'' said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. ''If you start that policy, what you're saying to the intelligence agency is, do what you want. If you get into trouble, don't worry, we'll cover you. That's the worst kind of back-dated check."

Washington Talk: Intelligence Operations; A Debate on Making Secrets and Keeping Them, NYT, 7/24/1987

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40711F63D5D0C778EDDAE0894DF484D81

And about the CIA:

Learning Lessons, circa 1976

From: "The President's Secret Army: A Case Study -- The CIA in Laos, 1962-1972," by Fred Branfman, then director of the Indochina Resource Center

“Had more of us looked more closely and honestly at what Presidential actions in Vietnam told us about executive value systems, for example, the American public might have been better prepared for Watergate. Indeed, Watergate might have been prevented.”

Valtin ends with:

“Can we now see how this failure to understand led to the Iraq debacle, Abu Ghraib, and currently, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Will we learn the lessons this time?”

Learning Lessons, circa 1976 http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/learning-lessons-circa-1976.html

but I think your name could be on that list.

And as for your "fun fact", that just proves they were human, as opposed to those whose actions were being described.

Go ondelette!

You are undoubtedly correct about that. Bagram [I don't know so much about the other prisons ondelette referred to] has been a hell hole, from all I can gather.

January 12, 2009 - US Army Reserve JAG Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, and former prosecution lawyer against Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad, offers his “declaration in support of Mohammed Jawad’s petition for habeas corpus.” At paragraph 29 Vandeveld states: “[…] The chaotic state of the evidence and the absence of any systematic, reliable method of preserving and cataloguing evidence, all of which have plagued the Tribunals and Commissions since their inception in 2002 and 2006, make it impossible for anyone involved (the prosecutors) or caught up (the detainees) in the Commissions to harbor even the remotest hope that justice is an achievable goal.” Vandeveld’s conclusion: “I personally do not believe there is any lawful basis for continuing to detain Mr. Jawad. There is no reliable evidence of any voluntary involvement on Jawad’s part with any terrorist groups.” [26] See also his essay in the Washington Post, 1/18/09 [27] For another insider view of the Commissions, see Bob Woodward’s interview with Convening Authority Judge Susan Crawford at [61]

The statement by Hafetz that Bagram is "Guantanamo all over again" is pretty ominous.

How is it even POSSIBLE that we have not learned from the major mess-up called GTMO?

That's it! Thanks so much. It was driving me crazy! ;-)

It's like they deliberately set out to fail.

Here's a side bar from the report "Guantanamo and its Aftermath"

U.S. Military Detention Facilities In the half century between the end of the Second World War and the events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. military had maintained detention facilities in six wars and military operations overseas. In these conflicts stated U.S. military policy was to apply the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (GC III) and the Geneva Conventions Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (GC IV) and other relevant conventions and international instruments. The nation’s most recent use of wartime detention facilities, prior to the war in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war, was during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. In this conflict, the U.S. and its allies captured 86,743 Iraqis. A total of 69,820 POWs and civilian internees were marshaled through U.S.-operated facilities in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia between January 19, 1991, and May 2, 1991. The transfer of prisoners back to their home countries was so well organized that officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that the handling of Iraqi prisoners was the best they had observed under the Third Geneva Convention. The same could not be said of later detentions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

http://ccrjustice.org/files/Report_GTMO_And_Its_Aftermath.pdf

Thanks for posting that!

Not the "supposedly American woman who" but "the American woman who supposedly..."

I think I was wrong before in referring to Lynddie England...the story I meant to reference was the one of the supposedly American woman who fought something like Angelina Jolie when her squad was attacked...or something like that...when in reality, the truth was nothing like that...anyway sorry for getting it wrong.