Guantánamo gets worse?

An Australian terror suspect being held at Guantánamo Bay today told relatives that conditions at the prison camp had worsened...

[David Hicks] told his family that the guards at the prison had become "very tough" since three inmates committed suicide last month, and said he thought other inmates were being punished for the deaths.

Mr McLeod [Hicks' lawyer] said Mr Hicks was not suicidal, but he could understand why the three dtainees had killed themselves.

"We're being pushed, pushed, pushed all the time - don't be surprised if things happen," Mr McLeod quoted Mr Hicks as saying in an apparent warning that there could be more suicide attempts.

Mr Hicks said conditions had worsened significantly over the past few months, and that he was being kept in solitary confinement inside a concrete cell for up to 24 hours a day.

He said all furniture had been removed from his cell and that he had been forced to sleep on the floor until guards gave him a thin mattress around two weeks ago.

"He has to lie on the floor, the air conditioning is kept on full, he has very few clothes, and he shivers lying on the floor," Mr McLeod said.

What is the point of all this now? While not my preferred method, let's grant the possibility of Guantánamo inmates having important information about terrorist planning or some other kind of valuable information. Let's even grant for argument's sake that sensory deprivation, disorienting techniques, and even physical and other psychological abuse are appropriate instruments in a war on terror. What, still, is the point?

After three years, don't you think sensory deprivation and other forms of torture have either yielded useful information or not? Could information be at all useful after three years of psychological and physical abuse? Can you even know who you are any more, where you are, which histories are real and which are imagined? Isn't suicide an attractive alternative (although the recent claims of three suicide deaths are disputed by other detainees, who say it was murder)?

In the end, the only possible explanations I can find are either some notion of retributive justice or deterrence (since we can engage in immense cruelty, watch out if we catch you). The retributive claim is perverted since guilt or innocence is generally unknown and the procedural system appears to be quite arbitrary. The US has dumped innocent, but now quite insane, former inmates onto the streets of Kabul and those who have admitted to whatever the guards want. The Washington Times alleges that some former prisoners have "returned to terrorism." The implication is that indefinite detention is better than release, regardless of innocence or guilt.

What to make of this, then? [Former detainee] Sher Bad Khan said "There was no respect for human beings in Guantanamo, they don't treat the prisoners as a human being, we were inside a cage. During interrogation we were treated very badly, they were beating, slapping, and punishing us. They had no respect for human beings at all."

At some point, we have to acknowledge the American capacity for cruelty in the way it wields its power. As I've said over and over, the American claim to legitimacy in the international sphere has always been a function of its relative respect for human rights and dignity. It is at great risk, if not already collapsed.

Breaking treaties and promises is one thing; the overt breaking of international norms of decency that the US itself helped to shape is quite another.