***Jeff, you missed the point. No one, including Horton, believes the detainees committed suicide by swallowing rags.***

Hmmm. Okay. I’ll go take a look at it again.

Uh, let me apologize for taking that tone with you. I do push-back, sometrimes. You seem inclined to be fair-minded, so I’ll dial it down some.

I find this business interesting. A real life murder mystery, maybe playing itself out not merely right in front of us, but possibly with our help, if we pay attention and push a little.

Look, I came to this discussion a little late, and didn’t realize there was a part two, and I think now, a part three. So if you agree, shall we take this over there (two or three, wherever it is) and stay current with the discussion. I’ve been thinking about this some, and I think I’m ready to take it to another level.

From the Harper’s article:

… Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death….

…But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells.

*******end quote********

Fanciful? Misquote? The dead men had rags down their throats. Not a rumor, a fact. Whether the men who “all knew” this fact by directly looking down the corpse’s throat, by hearing it from someone who had, or from someone even further removed, doesn’t change a thing, it was still a fact. Not a rumor. Not a “silly” rumor. “Two plus two equal four” is not a rumor, it’s a fact. “Two plus two equals seventeen”,… that might be a “silly rumor”.

Baumgarner stands in front of fifty men and says “you all know”… This statement is put in quotes to show what Baumgarner knew to be the truth. Did you not get that? He confirmed the rag-choking-cause-of-death. He then told the troops that this truth would not be told, but concealed, and a suicide by hanging put in its place. How blatant does a lie have to be for you to acknowledge that it is a lie, Salpete?

Open your eyes. Drink less Kool-aid. Learn to think.

You misquote Horton quoting Bumgarner. Horton says Bumgarner told the soldiers “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags. Do you think Bumgarner really meant they all knew that, or was he being sarcastic? It’s no wonder he would have told them not to contradict the real story with silly rumors.

Here’s the deal. The three were murdered intentionally– tortured to death. The proof is straightforward: had the first death been unintentional, the victim would have been rushed immediately to the medical clinic, and it would have stopped there.

That a cover-up followed is equally obvious: when the facility’s commanding officer says, “You all have heard that the detainees choked to death on rags. Keep your yaps shut about that. The “official” version will be that they committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells.” It just doesn’t get more overt than that.

And one small note: the victims did NOT die while being interrogated. They’d already been in US custody for years, thoroughly interrogated years earlier, and — surprise! surprise! — found to be innocent bumpkins. No, these guys were killed intentionally, so forget about any delusional conscience salving you might hope to derive from the justification of “while being interrogated”.

Now for the kicker. Why were they killed? Give this a try. It was June 2006, the Iraq war was imploding, Bush was losing political control, the torture business — Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, renditions, and CIA black sites — had been exposed, and torture crews, CIA and JSOC, were seriously concerned about their increasing exposure to prosecution. How to avoid prosecution? Murder three detainees knowing full well that both the military and the Bush Justice Dept will cover it up. Problem solved. The cover-up would then be the torturers’ insurance policy. Any subsequent Justice Dept investigation would surely implicate the Justice Dept itself. And it wouldn’t matter if it was a Bush or Obama Justice Dept. Continuity of personnel would mean a Justice Dept attacking itself. That couldn’t happen under Bush, and Obama clearly wants nothing to do with “looking backward” because legal action to hold “patriots” accountable would be political poison.

This is why the three were killed, to create a poison pill for the government, that would shield the torturers from accountability.

I think your most persuasive point is the difficulty of maintaining a conspiracy that required so many people. Considering that, in fact, you only need a dozen or so who know the whole truth, and given the power of the government to declare information classified, I don’t think it’s out of the question, especially since most of the people conspiring are guilty of crimes that are being covered up.

Given that I hated what Bush, Cheney, Addington, and the whole neocon cabal did to destroy adherence to law and order in this country, I really want them to be guilty of another crime, but I’m grateful to you for applying healthy skepticism to Horton’s story.

I think one point you’ve failed to address, how did the prisoners get the extra cloth they are supposed to have used to (a) braid ropes to bind their hands and feet and (b) hang up at the front of their cells to hide what they were doing. A second point that is troubling is that there is no evidence that the guards on duty that night were disciplined. However, I don’t thing this is a point that would be covered in the report of the investigation.