1115.org

A couple of months ago, we read of accusations made by former Army translator Erik Saar, who described what can best be described as unconventional interrogation techniques used on detainees. How unconventional? Female interrogators would wear tight clothing and use sexually provocative taunts to belittle prisoners, one going so far as to smear red ink on a captive’s face while telling him it was menstrual blood. A charming story to be sure, which we proceeded to make even more tasteless with a little Photoshop manipulation.

As his book is almost ready to be released, Saar is back in the news again. And his new accusations are even more disturbing than the previous ones:

The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims in a new book scheduled for release Monday.

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar said the military chose detainees for the mock interrogations who previously had been cooperative and instructed them to repeat what they had told interrogators in earlier sessions, according to an interview with the CBS television program “60 Minutes,” which is slated to air Sunday night.

Staged interrogations…just lovely. And while it’s too early to tell if Sarr is completely credible or just trying to create controversy to sell books, ask yourself this — with a group of people in charge who have suppressed terrorism numbers, wrote memos justifying torture, created the Abu Ghraib scandal and pulled down statues as manufactured photo-ops, is it an impossibility that they would be involved in staging interrogations?

Of course not. It will be interesting to see how Saar’s credibility holds up over the next few days; I hear certain people are already investigating the fonts used in his manuscript…