While President Obama has called for the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to be shut down by sometime in 2010, the ACLU has nonetheless been digging, FOIAing records like a demon to get at what wen on there. The organization has posted a batch of redacted documents released by the Department of Defense And whoa nelly, it seems that the Bush Administration was in such a rush to round up and shove suspects (guilty, not guilty, who cares?) in there that it failed to, oh, get anything right.

The Associated Press reports that,

The now-retired Maj. Gen. Michael Dunleavy commanded the Guantanamo interrogation operation in 2002. Dunleavy described the chaos he found when he arrived: a lack of security and control over detainees who would riot and throw food and turned items like spoons, magnets and welding rods into weapons. He said his interrogators were virtually inexperienced and that the military linguists “were worthless.”

Right. Why communicate with prisoners when you really don’t care what they say? I’ve heard that most of the military linguists used in the U.S. “war on terror”, for years, could only speak “Monterey Institute” Arabic and Farsi/Dari.  In other words, not so good. And forget about dialects. And lest you think Bush didn’t really know what was going on at Gitmo, Dunleavy also says he got his orders directly from The Decider himself. Anyway.

The AP story goes on…

Most of the details of the detainee’s account were blacked out. But he said he once was forced to stay awake for 70 days, that interrogators put ice all over his body directly against his skin inside his clothes, and that there was a room that the detainees called the “freezer.” He said he made a false confession while being tortured.

Another document detailed “troubling” interrogation techniques used against the detainee during that period, including a threat that if he didn’t talk he would “soon disappear down a very dark hole” and that his “very existence would be erased.”

The same document, undated, noted that at the time 40 percent of the abuse allegations in Iraq were being substantiated by investigations.

I’ve had the chance to hear an official or two speak off the record about Guantanamo Bay. What we’re reading in those partially blacked out pages? Nothing compared to what really goes down. Just because the details are hidden from us, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who don’t know, and who won’t hold the U.S. morally accountable for all the brutality and mistreatment. And that judgement? We’d have it coming.